Calling, traveling, teaching, riding, reading

I got another calling today. One I've never had before. I've always thought that more could be done with it, and the bishop did, too, and laid out his thoughts on what to do. It's ward Sunday School President. We can't spare anyone for counselors, so it's just me. My job will be to alternate teaching Gospel Doctrine, and set up a training program for the teachers in SS and Primary. I'll get someone else to ring the bell. I hate that thing.

I've excited about it. After I was sustained in church, I started writing down a mission, goals, and some thoughts that came to me. In his blessing, the bishop said that same exact things. It was a powerful experience. He also told me some personal things that I had been praying about, and that I had already asked the Lord. For instance, I had prayed about what to do prepare myself for whatever calling I was getting. And my answer, if you remember it, was to read the Book of Mormon and look for the types of Christ in it and the Old Testament. All these things point to his atonement. Well, the bishop told in my blessing to study the scriptures and learn more about the Savior's atonement from them and be prepared to teach about it and testify of it.

See? Ain't it grand?

I'm packing for my short trip to Huntsville, AL this week. I'm a facilitator for a regional NWS leadership training seminar. I'm a little nervous about it, but excited. CIndy is going to girl's camp as the craft lady. She's worked very hard on this and now it's here.

********************

I tried to take a bunch of pictures with my phone and send to various emails, to no avail. I hate AT&T.

********************

Rode to 2,050 miles from home, now near the corner of 80th Street NW and 117th Avenue Northwest, just south of Wildrose, ND.

********************

And I read another paragraph in Joseph Smith's testimony of the Book of Mormon.

Testimony of Joseph Smith, continued

Then Joseph says that ““While I was thus in the act of calling upon God, I discovered a light appearing in my room, which continued to increase until the room was lighter than at noonday, when immediately a personage appeared at my bedside, standing in the air, for his feet did not touch the floor.”

He doesn’t say how long he prayed, could have been a minute or an hour. I think the point was that he was sincere. It’s our sincerity and humility and willingness to obey the answer we get that matters, and not how long we spend on our knees. Before he was even through praying he got an answer. This is why I think it’s the depth of our prayers and way we communicate with God and not the length of time, per se. If it takes us an hour to get into that frame of mind, then so be it. But I think if we are living in that frame of mind, our answers will come more quickly and more easily understood. We get used to hearing that still, small voice, and recognize that answers to prayers come more as feelings and quick thoughts, rather than as profound philosophical insights which change nations. Too many of us are looking for that that marching band to appear right before us in the bedroom and play a rousing tune of “Here’s Your Answer” in 2/2 time, while throwing batons in the air and crashing cymbals. So when that does not happen, we discount the real answer as nothing more than a “hunch” or emotions run wild or we say that God does not answer prayers.

It’s true that Paul, Samuel, Adam, Moses, Mary, Joseph of Mary, Joseph Smith, Peter, and many more all had profound, as it were, marching bands do just that. Actually, angels, or the voice of the Lord, or the Lord himself appear or sound off, but the point of those things was EXACTLY to change nations. So be careful what you wish for, because if that happens to you, you will be expected to do much, much more with it than you might have wanted when you knealt down.

So anyway, even a “personage” other than God, can light up a room brighter than the sun at noon, and this is what Joseph is now looking at. But he had already been transfigured in some way to behold God the Father and Jesus Christ, His Son, and so now could endure this without trouble.

I thought it was a bit curious for years, well most of my life, why Moroni, this personage, stood in the air with his feet not touching the ground. The I actually pondered it! Could God or Moroni actually stand on the ground? Yes, sure they could. Then what would happen, potentially, in Joseph’s mind, when the naysayers say it was just a man that deceived him? Oh, well. Maybe it was a man. After all, he was standing on the ground. But this personage was standing in the air. Men cannot do that. Joseph had not gone to bed and suddenly secret workmen showed up and built a glass scaffold in the room while he slept so that a person could have very bright lanterns herald his “arrival” while standing on glass in “mid air”. He was awake and praying when it happened.

And true, many of the pastors of the day said the God no longer appeared to man, and that the Bible was all there was and God would never speak to man again, therefore Joseph must have had the devil appear to him.

Excuse me? God cannot appear, but the devil can? So, according to sectarian doctrine, either God does not love us anymore, and so allows the devil just to appear any time he wants to deceive young boys; or, God CANNOT appear anymore and the devil has won the war and so does appear any time he wants. Or, perhaps we do not NEED God anymore and Joseph was just stark raving mad, and lived his whole life and died for a hallucination. But God does love us, he CAN appear, the devil has not won, and there is far too much evident for Joseph being sane and full of integrity so that we can discount that last accusation out of hand.