I am amazed at the number of things we can do to help the sick. I chose to go with donating blood today. I'm blessed to be at a University filled with students who believe in God and strive to serve their fellow man. Today there were two blood drives on campus and both were very busy. I had to wait two hours to donate but finally got my turn. At the blood drive there were a couple guys with signs who were gathering photos to do a short video about the LDS Church's campaign and so I let them take my picture and asked them to take one on my phone as well.
I haven't donated blood in a long time because I thought that if I was going to let them take fluid from my body I might as well get paid for it and I started selling plasma. Today however I dug deep inside of me and decided that I could live just fine without that little bit of supplemental income. I'm glad I did because even though I had to wait two hours, there was a great spirit in the room as everyone selflessly served their fellow man. My sacrifice was not without rewards though! I got a nice can of apple juice and a bag of mini-Oreo's. Yum!
To show my gratitude for my Father in Heaven and to worship him, I did what I do every Sunday and I attended Church. Today was the first Sunday of the month which for Latter Day Saints means that the first hour of church is dedicated to sharing testimonies. Anyone can share and so to increase my worship of the Father I decided to share my testimony of the Gospel and the greatest gift he ever gave us, His son Jesus Christ.
However, I wanted to do something more than my weekly worship routine. My decision to go above and beyond began on Friday. I know that my church does not have a monopoly on good and so I decided to try and find the good in other faiths. I attended an event called "Meet the Muslims" at the Utah Islamic Center in Sandy, Utah. It was an amazing event and I learned so much about their faith, but what struck me most was their dedication to their personal relationship with God. They pray five times a day and truly believe that they can have direct communication with Allah and that is something that I would like to apply in my life.
I also reflected on my experiences with the Seventh Day Adventist faith which I learned a lot about during the spring of 2015. What I love most about that faith is their focus on music. I think hymns are a powerful way to worship God and they have a hymn book that consists of nearly 1000 hymns. It was an amazing example to me of worship through song and I hope that I can be more thoughtful during the hymns I sing at church.
I also had the amazing opportunity to call my dear friend Lizya. We talked about a lot of things but I wanted to hear her ways of worshiping God and I loved her answers. First she said that she finds time to spend with people with whom she can discuss matters of God, for example her mother. Then she said that to remember the creator, she likes to create. She worships God through her painting and art. I thought that was an amazingly profound answer and I hope to apply that principle in my life.
Lastly I opened it up to the Facebook community. I asked my friends to share with me how they worship God and I got a lot of amazing responses. Some include:
-Pray
-Study the scriptures
-Serve others
-Adopt a positive loving view towards God and not a feeling of fear
-Respect and admire our Heavenly Mother
-Share our testimony of Him and of the Gospel
-Count our blessings
-Make Him a priority in how we spend our time
Thank you so much to all those who helped me grow today. It was an awesome experience to try and go above and beyond my usual Sabbath worship and I hope to apply the things I learned today in my future worship practices.
I know that God has given me more than I can ever comprehend. It's impossible to repay Him, but just like a Christmas present for our parents, or a phone call expressing our love will never pay for all the food they bought us and all the money they spent on us, those things are appreciated by our parents and our efforts to worship God are appreciated by the perfect parent. We CAN serve Him, even if it will never come close to what He does and has done for us.
I hope we all seek to grow closer to our Father in Heaven.
Today for my service I subscribed with the "Be my eyes" app. It isn't available yet for android so my subscription means that I will be notified as soon as it is. I also shared the app on Facebook to encourage my friends with Apple phones to download it now! It's an awesome app that literally lets you help people see.
I also am so blessed to have the ability to be financially able to make some donations to charity. I signed up for a recurring donation for a year with Charity Vision. The program is 12/25 which is the date of Christmas so for Christmas they want as many people as possible to sign up for 12 months donating $25 a month. Why $25? Because a $25 donation is enough to perform 1 cataract surgery. They perform thousands of vision restoring surgeries in dozens of underdeveloped countries. I was able to attend a presentation at BYU by this charity and they are the real deal.
Today was exciting for me because I thought that any service would be metaphorical. Christ literally restored sight to the blind but I can't do anything that literal. I was wrong though. We literally can help restore sight to the blind. What an amazing time we live in.
I love our Savior and feel so honored to follow His example.
Today I was able to serve first by finding an old video of my Great Grandma Pearson talking about her love for her children and giving some great wisdom. A few pearls of wisdom she taught is the importance of hard work. She said that as long as we can take care of ourselves we ought to. She also talked about the blessing of sight. She was losing hers and said that we need to appreciate the beautiful things of the world. Lastly she shared her feelings that the most important thing we can do in life is gain knowledge because we can't take any material things with us into the next life, only gain knowledge. I was able to share this video with family and it was a blessing to honor her memory.
Secondly, I had the opportunity to skype with my parents! This is a particularly special blessing because my dad recently suffered a heart attack. It was very scary news but I was blessed that when I learned about it they already knew that everything would be okay. He is at home and resting and it was so great to talk to him and my mom. They are such wonderful parents who have been so supportive of me in everything I do and I'm so blessed to have been born into their family. I took a couple screen shots of our skype call, but none of them came out right so I have to use a picture where my mom's eyes are closed... Sorry mom! Haha
Today was the beginning of the #LIGHTtheWORLD campaign and it was a great day. I didn't do anything spectacular or over the top but I took the time to call a few really good friends that I haven't talked to as much as I would like and it was fun to catch up and let them know I care about them.
Also my ward (wards are Mormon congregations) organized a service auction where we offer services and then members of the ward bid on the services with canned food. It was an exciting evening and we had so much canned food it will be a great contribution to the food shelter. There were some great services offered as well! Everything from a nice talk about life over Frozen Yogurt to Violin lessons to a week of dish washing. It was a fun event where we were able to offer service to each other while serving those who are in need of food.
As finals approach I have felt a lot of stress but today as I strived to think of others a lot of the stress melted away. It's not gone! I still have my tests to prepare for, but taking some time to not think about yourself is maybe the best thing you can do for yourself. So if you're a generous person, go out and serve, and if your a selfish person, go out and serve. I promise that both groups will end up happy.
Tomorrow is December 1st and the LDS Church's #LIGHTtheWORLD campaign begins with an international day of service. Every day from December 1st-December 25th the Church has laid out a characteristic of our Savior that we can emulate and we are given specific examples of how we can serve. I will be documenting my journey with the 25 days of service through this blog not with the intention to brag about what I'm doing, but with the hope that it might motivate others to serve as well.
I found this video with no ties to the Church's campaign, but with the same spirit and I wanted to share it, because Campbell is one of the most Christlike people I have heard of and his story is inspiring.
I hope we can all find ways to get involved and to spread the light of Christ throughout the world.
1 Corinthians 13:13
"And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."
