Repentance post...

As many of you all have been reminding me so far, it's been a couple days since my last blog post. I was thinking about that and realized that I'm coming up on 1.5 months of having a stale blog. Kinda sad, but true nevertheless. Anyways, this is my post of repentance.
So a couple days ago Elder Hobson and I were knocking on doors in a neighborhood. We came up to this guy named Jerry who was working in his garage. Right as we were about to start talking to him his dog walks out from behind a table. Now when a missionary encounters a dog there are generally only a few different outcomes:
1) The dog is friendly and we get to learn a lot about it from it's owner.
2) The dog gets ticked off and starts growling, at which point we just back away slowly and try not to make any sudden movements.
3) The dog gets really ticked off and starts chasing us. Not much you can do at that point besides run and hope that either a chain you didn't notice holds the dog back, or the owner tells the dog to heel.
Well as soon as I saw the dog I prepared myself to respond according to those procedures. However something unprecedented occurred--the dog did absolutely nothing. A split second later I realized why. See if you can figure it out yourself from the picture.


Where are his eyes? Well I'm sure Bruno (the dog) could smell us, but he was definitely not looking at us at first. He did 2 complete circuits of the garage before he noticed us and left patrol duty to check us out. At that point he was looking right at us, but then Bruno's owner, who was right next to him, went to pet him and he jumped from surprise. I thought, "Wow it would be hard to only see what's right in front of you!"

Well you'll all be surprised to know that this thought made me remember of a couple scriptures! First off a scripture from the Book of Mormon:
Mosiah 11:29
This part of the Book of Mormon is about a prophet named Abinadi and a wicked group of people under the rule of a king named Noah (no relation to the Old Testament prophet).
Abinadi is directed by the Lord to command the people of king Noah to repent for the evils that were taking place among them. Well generally speaking people don't like to be told they need to repent. The people were so angry with Abinadi and his words that they bound him and took him to king Noah. This scripture describes their attitude.
29 "Now the eyes of the people were blinded; therefore they hardened their hearts against the words of Abinadi, and they sought from that time forward to take him. And king Noah hardened his heart against the word of the Lord, and he did not repent of his evil doings."
Were they literally blind? No I suppose at least most of them had fully functioning eyes. But they did have hearts that were 'hardened,' or in other words they were not humble enough to listen to the word of God. All the people could see was the shallow things and the pleasures right in front of them. In a spiritual sense they were all blind, especially king Noah who, "did commit whoredoms and all manner of wickedness...and he laid a tax of one fifth part of all they possessed...to support himself, and his wives and his concubines." The blind leading the blind!!
Now we contrast this to a scripture from the Bible:
Luke 4:18
This verse is Christ reading a prophecy about himself from a book written by the prophet Esaias.
18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised"
Jesus Christ brought sight back to the eyes of many people during his ministry. That was one of His trademark miracles. However I feel like there is meaning to the phrase 'recovering the sight of the blind' beyond that of the physical miracle. The scripture says that Christ was anointed to preach the gospel, and so He did. In doing so he opened the eyes of His followers. He showed them things as they really are and told them about things as the really would be in the future. His teachings helped them to find greater peace in this life and to prepare for eternal happiness in the life to come. By opening their eyes to the miracles of God and the blessings of obedience, Christ was able to put lost souls back on the path that leads to our Heavenly Father.
I am grateful for the perspective I've gained from knowing and living the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm thankful for the love He showed to us in the way He lived His life and in the reason He gave it up. I promise all who read this that by following Christ and letting Him open your eyes, you will find the greatest form of peace and security that exists.

I know how to make God laugh. Tell Him you have plans.

The other day I was visiting a friend who said something pretty interesting. She quoted her friend saying:
"I know how to make God laugh. Tell Him you have plans."
First of all I had to laugh. That is so ridiculously true. How many times have we made any kind of plans in our lives that turn out exactly the way we expected? Maybe it's only me, but things usually just don't pan out the way I expect them to.
There are lots of perfectly innocent reasons for not fulfilling our plans. Maybe a new opportunity comes up that looks a bit better. Perhaps we change our mind or just lose interest in our goal. Sometimes we hear an experience or get some advice that points us in another direction. These and other similar events happen frequently and are generally easy to handle because we are still 'in control'.
However, sometimes our plans get derailed by forces beyond our control. Could be bad health, unemployment, divorce, a death, war, a natural disaster, getting cheated or stolen from, etc. Chances are you or someone very near to you has experienced one of these life changing events. One might say, "Why? I planned to do so much with my life! I had so much potential! Was I doing something wrong? What did I do to deserve this? If God loves me why would He let this happen??"
When life gets hard, it's easy to get caught in this pattern on thinking. This mindset comes when we get so focused on the disruptions in our personal plans that we lose sight of the greatest of all plans: God's plan. President Spencer W. Kimball, one of God's modern day prophets, gave a great talk that has really stuck with me. In it he says:
"If we looked at mortality as the whole of existence, then pain, sorrow, failure, and short life would be calamity. But if we look upon life as an eternal thing stretching far into the premortal past and on into the eternal post-death future, then all happenings may be put in proper perspective."
That is the idea!!!!
President Kimball goes on to say, "Are we not exposed to temptations to test our strength, sickness that we might learn patience, death that we might be immortalized and glorified?"
My friends, bad things can, do, and will happen. This life is not easy. We can't see the future. We can and should try and plan for it, but we must always remember that our Heavenly Father is in control.
So does God laugh when we make plans? Who am I to say. BUT I know that if we trust that our Father has a plan for our eternal happiness, then we can always face our future, whatever it may be, with "a perfect brightness of hope." (2 Nephi 31:20)