Elder CJones: Hard Times and Blessings

“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with failure.”
-Abraham Lincoln

Exchanges with Elder Mendoza

Missions are not easy at all. I would say that it is probably the hardest thing I will ever do. They are good times and bad times. There is success and there is failure. There is an opposition in all things.

I read a letter from my mother many times this week. Along with that letter she had attached a talk given by Dallin H. Oaks many years ago. He related a story of something he had read:

“I walked with my friend, a Quaker, to the newsstand the other night, and he bought a paper, thanking the newsie politely. The newsie didn’t even acknowledge it.

“‘A sullen fellow, isn’t he?’ I commented.

“‘Oh, he’s that way every night,’ shrugged my friend.

“‘Then why do you continue to be so polite to him?’ I asked.

“‘Why not?’ inquired my friend. ‘Why should I let him decide how I’m going to act?’

“As I thought about this incident later, it occurred to me that the important word was ‘act.’ My friend acts toward people; most of us react toward them. He has a sense of inner balance which is lacking in most of us; he knows who he is, what he stands for, how he should behave. He refuses to return incivility for incivility, because then he would no longer be in command of his conduct”

There is one thing that I've always had to work on in my life--how I act. This story has taught me something about my actions. I shouldn't let other people's actions depend on how I act. I need to act, not react. I need to be the one of action.

Relaxing before lunch arrives

Before this world here on the earth, we were Intelligences, as is says in the scriptures. There, we as Intelligences, could act for ourselves and not be acted upon. We are the ones that perform the action. This is what gives us our agency.

Through Agency, we lost 1/3 of our spiritual brothers and sisters because of this law that needed and still needs to be kept. Satan, from the beginning, has wanted to take away our agency and that is exactly what he does when we react to people. When we react, we are letting something else choose how we will express ourselves. The Lord wants us to use choice, our agency, so when we act towards something, as stated above, we are using our agency for good.

This week and for the rest of my life I will be bettering my usage of agency. I am going to choose to act instead of react.

The mission is hard, as I stated before. It's not easy to walk in the sun and humidity everyday.  It's not easy to express and teach the most important message of all time in a different language that I have only been speaking for six months. But I know that the Lord is testing me for two years to see how I will act and not react.

--
With Love from Rio Bravo, Mexico,
Elder Corom Jones

"Our responses will inevitably shape our souls and ultimately determine our status in eternity. Because opposition is divinely decreed for the purpose of helping us to grow, we have the assurance of God that in the long view of eternity it will not be allowed to overcome us if we persevere in faith. We will prevail. Like the mortal life of which they are a part, adversities are temporary. What is permanent is what we become by the way we react to them."  -Elder Dallin H. Oaks

With a 1960 Ford Mustang GT