Cool Quote of the Week

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
Dr.Viktor E Frankl Holocaust Survivor

This week was a week of deciding, and that decision goes hand in hand with this awesome quote. 

About two weeks ago things got really hard! We were finding little (visual) success and up until a couple days ago I was really sick of people being rude and acting the way they were acting. We had troubles meeting with all of our investigators, and honestly it was just really hard! The old moody pre-mission elder Schmalz started surfacing (oh no!). Needless to say, I was just getting a little grumpy! I definitely was not smiling, (it was more of a very faked not genuine smile) but then in personal study I found these three scriptures!

  2nd Corinthians 6-8

But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.

Every man according as he puposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: For God loveth a cheerful giver.

And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye always have sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.

I decided that if this scripture says that God loves a cheerful giver, I am always going to be a cheerful giver, even when people are rude and it seems like we are making no progress at all, and right after I made this decision, we were directed to a man named Singh. We were about to call it a night when an idea popped into my head to go try to see a woman named Veronica, so elder Garner and I walked across Itsehoe to talk to her. We got to where she lives and she wasn't home, so we started to head back home. On the way from her house we passed a pizza place called "Itzehoer Pizza King" and we both remembered that we had a contact that worked there so we went inside to ask if he was there, AND he was!

As previously stated his name is Singh. He has a lot of questions that are very hard to answer, but the way that he asks them I can't help but smile! We had an awesome talk and we had found out that he had just gotten home from a 4 week trip to India just two hours prior to us meeting with him, and as we were leaving he said 'I like talking to you guys because you are happy and you understand me!

Boom! Holy cow! How cool is that? In personal study the scriptures pretty much told me to be happy and then because of smiling and being happy (and mostly the Holy Ghost) we found someone who actually wants to meet with us and he has awesome questions!

Yeah, so that was awesome! And to top it all off, I got to Skype with my family on Sunday which was awesome! Nothing better to do on Mother’s Day than to see my beautiful mom on a 32 inch computer screen :) I love you mom!

Okay, but seriously, if you are having a hard time or even if you are having an okay time, you can choose to be happy and you will see the difference! Notice that the scripture also says we still have to go SOW and REAP? We can't just sit around smiling and expect our troubles and our labors to magically disappear, but I know that when we CHEERFULLY do what we need to do we will be blessed and it is just so much more fun to smile and have a god time! :)

Thank you so much for your love and support and I hope you had a great week!

Love, Elder Gavin Schmalz