Now as the ladder of life has been strung,
You might think a sweep's on the bottom most rung.
Though I spend me time in the ashes and smoke,
In this whole wide world there's no happier a bloke.
Thank you Burt, from Mary Poppins, for perfectly explaining mission life.
A lot of people seem to think missions are all work and no play. I must
admit when I was little, I would just admire their diligence from a distance,
and then thank God that I could play around all day.
True, missions are hard. We do work, every day. We study our scriptures, I
attempt Japanese, we hop on our bikes and GO. Every day. There's no holiday, no
exceptions, we work every single day. But "in this whole wide world there's no
happier a" shimai.
I honestly love what we do. Yeah it is hard work, but it's fun too!
Sometimes we just have to look past the "ashes and smoke", or "snow and rain" if
you're a missionary in Komatsu. When we do, we can truly see the happy things in
life.
For example...
We were walking through the park after a very long day of visiting people.
Most of them have left the church, but we thought we would try to reach out to
them anyways. Pretty much every single person wasn't home. We had started out
the day right at 10AM, and by the time we finished, it was around 5PM. I was
exhausted, and I felt like my legs could not hold me up anymore after all the
cycling we had done. We decided to go to the park to try and talk to some
people. At the park, I saw a woman sitting by herself, and I felt a whisper
saying 'go sit next to her and talk about the weather'. She was all alone,
typing on her phone, and she looked somewhat cross, so I ignored the idea. But
once more as we looked around at all the people in the park, I was told again to
'go sit next to her and talk about the weather'. So I did! I went and sat next
to her and made some comment about the weather. She looked up from her phone and
commented and then went back to her task. 'try again'. I made a comment about
the weather lately, and this time she put down her phone and said a couple more
sentences. She then asked where I was from, and when I responded America, she
started talking in English! Our conversation then turned from our hometowns to
our english class, to being a missionary, to teaching the gospel. The next thing
I knew she asked us where our church is, what our phone number is, and if we
wanted to visit a museum with her sometime.
That was a miracle. I smiled the whole way home, and I felt somewhat dumb,
because the only word that I could say was 'wow'.
In this whole wide mission, there's no happier a shimai.
