Inspiration

October 14, 2015

Hey,

This week we had the opportunity to hear from Elder Arnold of the Seventy. He came to our mission and held an all day conference on Friday. He went hard in the paint. He shared a ton of crazy stuff that I wish I could include in the email, but if I was to do that, I would lose all desire to email, and on top of that y'all would stop reading this because the words he spoke don't have as much significance to you as it does to me. It's all good, I will just include a snippet. 

Most of the stuff Elder Arnold talked about can be related to real life as well as mission life. One thing that impressed me was that he talked about how the quorum of the 12 apostles goal is to,"Make everybody else look good." The way he talked about the way that the general authorities interact made me think how the whole world would obviously be better if everybody acted like them. They build each other up. They don't get jealous of each other if one of them does something good, they praise each other. 

For example, during general conference they all knew that their comrade, Thomas S. Monson's health was struggling. When he got up at the pulpit to speak his blood pressure dropped. They started to see the Prophet look weak. Elder Arnold talked about how all the general authorities were holding hands up on the stand praying fervently for Thomas S. Monson to make it. That's how we should be. Too many people are selfish and don't give a darn about others. They are looking for personal gain. Just because someone does something good doesn't mean that you did something bad. Compliment errybody. Uplift errybody. 

Heavenly Father inspired us to eat pizza this week haha. But really. On Tuesday we had an appointment cancel, our backup plan fell through as well. Upon weighing our options, and our stomachs we decided that we needed food. Out of all places we both decided Dominoes would be good. Out of all the NY style pizza places around that we could have gone to we chose to go to a chain. Dominoes. We didn't even care though, we just wanted some pizza. When we were in Dominoes one of the workers walked in and said,"Hello Elders!" Turns out he is a less active member that is super cool! We got his info and he had moved and got a different number since he updated his record so there was no way that missionaries could have looked him up. God placed us precisely in the place that he needed us to be. #PizzaForTheWin   

The best part of all of it, was that he mentioned that he and is wife were hoping to fly out to Utah and get sealed in the temple... He was under the impression that the only way he could get sealed was if he made a trek out to Utah. When we told him that he could get sealed at the temple in Manhattan his eyes bulged out of his head and he got super excited. He said,"I need to go home and talk to my wife about this tonight!" God works in mysterious ways, sometimes that involves eating food. Something similar to this happened when we found a less active family at Baskin Robbins. We thought our taste buds were influencing us but it turns out that it was really the Holy Spirit. God is real. 

I have never loved the work so much. You might think that because I have been out on the mission a little while or because I've been in the same area for days that my passion would start to die out for the work.. Don't get me wrong, I've definitely had my hard times, the times where the routine of everything becomes mundane. I feel like I've been able to get out of that by remembering who I am and why I am here. 

People say,"Forget yourself and go to work." But you can't forget yourself and go to work if you never knew who you are and why you are there in the first place. My reasons for going on a mission are different than my reasons for staying on a mission, but remembering both helps me to keep excited about the work. It's all about the hype. Work without hype and excitement is boring and hard. No matter if you are on a mission or back at home trying to live life, remember to keep the passion for it by remembering your purpose. 

Elder Tyler J Johanson

Sorry for the lack of pictures recently, I haven't really been on my picture hustle. I will up it.