Something that stood out to me was a story that was told in the last conference I was at in Beira but it still hit me pretty hard. It's the story of the large rock, where the master asks a man to push a huge rock every day from morning until night and then he leaves. The man accepts and starts diligently to push the rock with everything he has for days. Day after day he pushed and nothing happened, the rock never even moved. But he kept on pushing, then one day another man came to him and pointed out that he seemingly was wasting his time doing nothing. The man pushing the rock started to think and began to doubt what he was doing, "the task is not possible, if I only push a couple hours every day it won't make a difference" and so he started to slowly slack off. Soon the master returned and asked how the job was going. The man started to explain his doubt and his new found laziness towards a seemingly impossible task. Then the master explained to the man that he never asked the man to move the rock. The task was simply to give all of his effort pushing the rock, and such efforts had transformed the man's body. The master asked the man to look at his hands and arms. Then his legs. The man realized that he had become much much stronger than he was before. His muscles had seemingly transformed. Then the master said "The job was to push the rock, I always knew you wouldn't be able to move it but that wasn't the point. I wasn't so worried with where the rock went as much as I was with who you would become. If I want to move a rock, I'll do it myself."
This story has brought a lot of understanding about our purpose on earth. Our task is simple, read our scriptures, pray and be as the savior is who is in heaven, perfect.... wow a seemingly impossible task. Often times people will point to our lives and speak of money, fame, accomplishments, or popularity. They point to the rock and say, you haven't done a thing! This tactic of the devil has been used over and over again for years and years cleverly drawing our attention away from the things that have changed, like our patience, our love, our service, our devotion, our families and spouses. We are changing, pushing against the impossible day after day becoming what the master intended all along. I loved it. So that was conference.
Then we had an opportunity to go on a road trip with president to buy some clothes for him that he couldn't find in any other stores near by so we got to go with him and we had a fun time. Me and Elder Stevens and Elder Flitton and Cordy went with President and everything went super well. We had a run in with the police that was pretty scary hahaha because they were telling me and Elder Cordy that we didn't have our documents when we had just renewed them so we didn't have physical copies but everything is alright!
Then last night president called us late and asked us to come over at 19. We asked why and he told us to bring some flour.... hahaha great answer. So we brought the flour and got to his house and found out that he wanted us to translate for him as a man from the United states would be face timing to ask for his daughters hand in marriage! Hahaha it was super cool to be able to meet him and translate for a moment like that. Luckily he accepted and gave his blessing so... phew hahaa but it really was a cool opportunity. Then we ate cake, hence the flour hahaha.
And that was the week! Life is too good and im excited for the transfers coming up and the mission tour from Elder Sitati here in a little.
-Elder Thornton
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