June 20, 2016

Change is never easy. Whether it's recovering from stomach viruses cooped up in your missionary apartment, moving pianos from house to house, harvesting way too much hay for a single man to grow, or picking up two week's worth of Great Dane dog landmines, changing one scene to another is hardly ever easy. It would be nice if the outcome were always better than the beginning scene, but that's not always the case. Sometimes members drop a piano's weight entirely on you off a truck because they think the Lord's Anointing includes super-hero strength and you pull what feels like every muscle in your back. Occasionally walking away from what was supposed to be a good change for someone else leaves you in worse physical shape than you were before.

Yet in these circumstances of service in humid heat and torrential thunder storms, a spiritual growth develops with every drop of sweat and every impaled hay straw. There is an incredible relationship between losing oneself in the quest to help another and finding yourself down the road. "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever loseth his life for my sake shall find it." (Matt. 16:25)

I wish I could look back in perfect remembrance on the accumulated service I have given to people along this journey so far and see a well-placed description on how it has improved my life with the Savior. However, I think that would take away from the point. Losing our own lives in the journey onward to heaven is paved with stone after stone of challenges and potential charitable moments. Our decision in our finite view of things is to place our feet where they need to be to lift another up off the road to Jericho. There are constantly people and situations around us with unlimited opportunities to spark smiles on strangers' and friends' faces alike. This is the life-long process of a charitable life, and the ultimate way to walk as the Savior Himself walked. It truly is an honor to be on a mission where every day is presented for a full deliverance of myself in the quest to find Him whom I live to follow.

xoxo

Elder Burgess