...If God had commanded me to do all things I could do them. If he should command me that I should say unto this water, be thou earth, it should be earth; and if I should say it, it would be done. And now, if the Lord has such great power, and has wrought so many miracles among the children of men, how is it that he cannot instruct me...?

1 Nephi 17:50-51

I sometimes wonder about how much the Lord is doing in our lives that we don't even see. Today I went to a mandatory orientation meeting for my new job, and I sat next to a young lady who swore she had met me before (although in talking to her, it seems impossible that we were ever even in the same state at the same time before today). I soon found out that she is a former member of the Church, and she learned that I recently returned from serving a mission. Funny thing is, over the last few years she says that she's run into missionaries everywhere, including the years she was living in Europe. And today a returned missionary was sitting next to her, something that probably wouldn't have happened except I was late arriving and that was the last available seat. To me, it seems obvious that the Lord is trying to give her every opportunity to return home -- I just hope that she realizes that someday soon.

The three-read of the Book of Mormon scriptures didn't go exactly as planned, and I've decided instead to reserve such intensive studies for lesson and talk preparations, or when I'm trying to learn a particular principle of the Gospel. Otherwise, my focus now is simply to improve the quality of my studies and really develop my love for the Lord while I'm doing it. I'm not entirely sure what to do, but I don't think it's just a matter of note-taking or how many times I read a passage. There's something I'm missing...

About this week's scripture: once again, I find myself at that point where I'm not sure what I'm doing in life, but I know that I'm not utilizing the Lord as much as He would like me to. So often I forget (you may have noticed this is a common theme for me lately) that absolutely anything is possible, but only if it's according to the Lord's will and done the way he wants. Nephi's story of building a ship is such a great illustration of that principle at work. Commanded by the Lord to do something he had never done before, his only question was to ask where he should go to get tools. Then, throughout the entire process, he "did go into the mount oft, and...did pray unto the Lord" (1 Nephi 18:3), thus receiving continued instructions.

Once before, I felt impressed that I needed to follow a similar pattern. Simply learn the Lord's will, commit to do it, then go into the mount (the temple) often, to learn how to continue.

Maybe that's the solution to my earlier problem.

Until next time,

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