Faith

This is an assignment for my Mission Prep class where we just needed to pick a gospel topic and write about it, with some sources from the scriptures.  I chose faith and thought I would just share what I wrote.  Feel free to post your own opinions and comments and what not!  

Faith

Many people talk about faith in the gospel of Christ and how it is important in order to live a happy life.  What I think people don’t realize is how it is the basic foundation of the gospel and without it, everything is obsolete. 

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Heb. 11:1)  Faith is belief something that cannot be seen.  It is taking the words heard on Sunday from leaders and having faith in the gospel to apply it to our lives.  It is following commandments given, even when you do not necessarily understand or agree, because you know that God knows all and loves you.  It is living in a world full of tangible things and dedicating your life to that which is intangible and cannot be seen with the human eye. 

When you have faith in Christ and in God’s plan for you, the gospel and the commandments given to you all make sense.  You are given that eternal perspective and that perspective makes everything else fall into place.  You know God’s plan and you see what will keep you from Him and what will bring you closer to Him.  Ultimate, perfect faith gives you power to live the teachings of the gospel without fail.  Because we are human and are in a fallen state faced to deal with our natural man, this perfect faith is not constant or even attainable at the moment.  While we live in a world filled with temptations that are right in our faces, ready to give us temporary pleasure and having our natural man crave that while being at war with our spiritual self, it is inevitable that mistakes will be made and that our faith will waver.  When that desperate father brought his possessed boy to Christ begging him to heal him, Christ told him, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible.”  The father replied back in tears “Lord, I believe.  Help thou mine unbelief.”  And then Christ healed his son. (Mark 9:23-24)  Christ understands that we are human and striving for perfection and thus has great mercy on us.  He knows that our faith is not always the strongest and provides us with support so that we may grow our faith and believe in Him because “If thou canst believe, all things are possible.”

            There are many things that Christ has given us that we must actually do to increase our faith, because “faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.” (James 2:17)  If we pray to Him to have faith, He will bless us.  Christ said, “Whatsoever things ye shall ask the Father in my name, which is good, in faith believing that ye shall receive, behold, it shall be done unto you.” (Moroni 7:26)  Obedience to the commandments that God has given us also increases our faith.  As we live the gospel and see the blessings coming into our lives from it, it strengthens our faith and becomes easier to follow the commandments.  He has given us them for a reason, for us to have the greatest happiness in our lives and to return back to Him.  Study of the scriptures is also very important because the lessons of the prophets of old have great worth and have been brought forth in our time to be a strength and support to us in these last days.  All of these works help strengthen our faith in Christ, but all of it starts with a desire.  If someone does not desire to have faith, it will not grow.  All the things above already take a certain amount of faith to do, especially when expecting results and blessings from God.  He has said “I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say…” (D&C 82:10) but to do the things which He says, it takes faith and a desire for faith. 

            God loves every one of us.  He put us on this earth knowing how imperfect we would be and how quick to forget of His gospel we would be.  He knew we would grow as we developed our faith in Him, being on the other side of the veil with no remembrance of our lives before.  As we desire and work with that desire for faith, we will receive blessings from the Lord and have the strength to follow His commandments so we can be clean to live with Him again, just as He has planned for us.   

Le Update...

So I haven't written in a while.  This always happens.  I get a temporary burst of creativity and then nothing for months.  You'd think I'd have lots of posts since I have to sit at my stupid computer for 8 hours at a time for my job, right?  Nope. I guess the extent of my thoughts during work are "Please kill me, please kill me, please kill me.  Shoot, I have 7.5 hours to go...oh I'm out of diet mountain dew."


So I thought that I would give an update...for the grand total of...3 of you that read this...that might be optimistic.  Irregardless, here we go.


I'm not in school right now so I'm just working.  I quit my job as a custodian at BYU campus and now work as a cab dispatcher for a cab company in Alexandria, Virginia.  Yeah I know.  Weird huh?  Here I am sitting in Utah getting calls from people who need cabs on the other side of the country and they expect me to know the area like I live there.  So I sit there for 8 hours answering the phone.  (Yeah, I know I said I didn't have much to write about work.  I guess that was a lie.  I have A LOT to write.  It's all I do pretty much.)  So I answer the phone the same way millions of times a day.  I'm getting so used to it that I kind of slur the words now so people can't understand me.  So I have to repeat it.  Again.  And Again.  It's annoying.


By the way, what's with all the people in Alexandria, Virginia that talk like they have a loaf of bread in their mouths?  This is basically how it goes.


Me: "Thank you for holding, can I get your pickup address please?"
Them: "asd;lfams;flah;asja;sl..."
Me: ".....sorry can you say that again please?"
Them: "ASD;FLASMD;FLAHSDFOAIDJF;LASDMF;ALDHF;ALSHGPOAIJ;SLDFJA!!!!!!"
Me: "....ok...can you spell that for me please?"
Them: "WHAT?? A;SFDLKFHA;SDLFJA;SDFDA;SLD.....OK.ASDLFA;SDFA FEESALSF;LAFIADF;AJD"


And then before I shoot my head off, I transfer them to my dispatcher - the manager guy- because he speaks loaf-of-bread-in-foreigner's-mouth language.

Not to be harsh or anything, I love people from foreign countries.  If anyone should be welcoming and loving to these people, it's the girl who lived in Mexico for 12 years of her life.  But so help me if I have another person yell at me for not understanding their horrible accent I am going to build giant stone walls around this country myself with enforced Rosetta Stone English kits nailed all around them.  I am glad to take the time to listen to you and try to figure out what you're saying but if you yell at me, my patience/respect for you/swearing restraint goes down exponentially.


Anyway.


So while I'm dealing with that crap, I try to to distract myself with movies or shows to watch or even books to read!  Gasp!  I know Mom!!  You should be so proud!!  But the problem is that there is very little time in between calls.  I think the longest time I've had in between calls was probably 5 minutes and it wasn't even really worth it because I spent the whole time trying to see if my phone was broken because that never happens.  Ok...that might be an exaggeration but that's certainly how it feels.  So yeah.  It'll take me about the whole 8 hours to get through a whole movie.  No wonder my perception of movies lately has been that they are really slow and that they just drag...


Ok so that's probably enough about my stupid job.  It makes me irritated just thinking about it and I don't want to pass that along to you unsuspecting readers and I'm officially off my shift now so I want to go out into the world.


But I'll leave you with a video I came across lately and have shown it to many people around me because I find it hilarious.  So enjoy.  Or don't.  Whatever.  I find it hilarious.


Don't judge me.

Right on.

I Feel like Play Dough

So I was having a talk with my roommates today and all of the sudden we got on deep topics and my brain was sufficiently tired by the end of the conversation.  We ended up talking about who we are, what we are like and who influences us.  It is an interesting thing to ask yourself.  What are you like?  Who has influenced you most in your life?  We were talking about how we are either too emotional or not emotional enough or how we are driven by some things and have no motivation for other things.  Why is that?  We came to the conclusion that by observing and interacting with others we are constantly being influenced and molded by others.

I've thought about this.  I feel like sometimes I'm not emotional enough and I wish I were more extreme sometimes.  I sometimes feel like I'm too neutral and don't react enough to things.  Granted, I really like that about myself sometimes, but it gets boring after a while.  We were talking about how we were as teenagers and I said that I never got into really big arguments with my parents or anything.  In fact, I don't think I've ever really yelled at anyone since I was really young and annoying.  I have never reallTey fought with anyone, never punched anyone in the face, never had that extreme experience.  What made me like that?  Why was I not the emotional teenager who was rebellious and fought with her parents a lot?  I got along great with my parents!  (Not regretting that at all, I love it.  I'm just wondering why).

So I'm interested!  Tell me if you so desire!  What are you like and who do you think has influenced you most in your life?  Who has molded you into the unique piece of play dough that you are today?

Right on.

Taylor Swift and I are buddies

I got a guitar for Christmas and I've been practicing.  This still has a lot of improvement left and I sort of forget the lyrics sometimes because I wasn't looking at them, but this is how it is so far.
I'm awesome...is basically what this post is about.

Oh yeah and I said "hope you enjoyed it" before it got cut off.  Just FYI.

Enjoy!

Right on.

Another Temporary Burst...

Hello the grand total of 2 followers and 42 page viewers!  Yup. I checked.

I am starting my blog up again!  I know I always get a burst about this time of year for some reason and it doesn't last very long but I'm going to try to make it last.  So...yeah.

Welcome!  I have a new design for my blog.  Before it was all red with my mexico flag picture on it but I decided to change things up a it.  I wanted it to look more...professional?  I don't know. Anyways.  So this is my blog.  The Viva Mexico is due to the fact that I lived in Mexico for 12 years of my life so I grew up there and it's basically my home, for any viewers who don't know me.  I'm a little creeped out, but I guess I can give you that information and still be safe...I hope.  Also I laugh at pretty much anything so if you're creating a tv ad and you want to know if the general public will think it's funny, don't ask me because I'm a little more generous than people in the world.  They're just more boring.  That's what I tell myself anyway.

Speaking of funny tv ads, I am severely disappointed in the Super Bowl commercials this year.  There were probably 2 or 3 that I thought were funny (I know.  It's surprising.) but the rest were just like regular boring commercials!  Doritos got it down with 2 of them and then the kid darth vader was just adorable.  But the rest did not even bring out a chuckle.  Ok, maybe a little but it wasn't as good as some of the others.

On that note, I feel like this has gotten a little random so I'm going to end with a random bit.

Have you heard?  Huh.  I thought that everyone has heard that...

Right on.