I looked and realized that this week is week 30 of my mission which is accurate but it doesn't seem possible! How is everyone doing? I am doing soooo good! It is not raining today, which is a miracle in itself. It is just an amazing day!
I will give you two quick stories really quickly from last week. We had a crazy thunderstorm last week. So crazy. We are right next to the mountains here so it just echoes off the mountains and I seriously just cannot explain how loud it was, but it shook our apartment once and my companion sits up that night and asks me, "Do they have that in America?" Pretty funny! Then for haircuts here, a lot of places have a vacuum connected to the wall and they vacuum your head after. Actually pretty nice I will not lie. You do not have to go shower every time after because it gets all the hair sucked up!
But onto my thought of the week!! Today I woke up and I was just dead tired and thought how this was just like waking up at 6 on the Monday mornings when I was a deacon and we had school off, but we had to go and do flags. I remember thinking, please no, please no, please no! I would always dread getting up and doing it until I actually got out doing it and I would love it and have fun. I look back at how I loved to serve everyone, but sometimes it was not truly a part of my core. My first desire. I would often be thinking of something else I could be doing at that time. I was so selfish before my mission and that is hard for me to look back on, but thanks to this gospel, change is its focus. I am changing on my mission little by little from this work, from training, from the examples of my leaders, and the advice they give me. This is one that really humbled me from President Nagano last week. "Your love will never surpass your level of charity." I want you to think about this for a second. Think about that sentence, that principle, that truth. We truly show our love to the Father by showing our love to those around us and serving. That means more than obedience and service in the eyes of others. That means obedience and service in your heart. Is it in your Heart where only the Lord can see? Courage is not doing what is right in the sight of others, it is choosing the right when no one is around. That does not only mean when you are alone. Your thoughts and your heart is always private and is between you and the Lord. Is charity truly at the center of your being and the true desire of your heart? I hope it is for all of us because our love is measured by our charity. The love of a relationship of husband and wife, father and son, mother and daughter, friends, etc. is always measured by sacrifice. Do you sacrifice for them? I will take it further though. Sacrifice means doing something and giving up something of equal or greater value, but what is more valuable than charity?
2 Nephi 26:30
"wherefore, the Lord God hath given a commandment that all men should have charity, which charity is love. And except they should have charity they were nothing."
Moroni 7:46
46 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, if ye have not charity, ye are nothing, for charity never faileth. Wherefore, cleave unto charity, which is the greatest of all, for all things must fail
1 Corinthians 13:13
13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
Charity should not be a sacrifice, it should be a joy in our lives. The greatest joy. It should be built into our soul, our being. Our love will only be at the level of our charity. So where do we stand? I hope this week we make charity our focus and charity the roots of our thoughts, words, and deeds. I love you all so much. I am working to change to never come home and be the same as I was because that is not enough to last in the world today, and it is not enough for the Lord. I hope we can all look at ourselves and say that charity has become a part of us, I pray, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Love
Elder Trevor Aiken
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