November 28, 2022

From Ben - Breaking the Tide

There's this wild cycle the Lord takes me on

It's not very original, and we all go through it. 

It's based around the promise in Ether 12:27, that if we come unto the Lord He will show unto us our weakness. 

The Spirit will encourage the thoughts, actions, words and choices that need to change, or need refinement - 

usually because I start feeling dull, discouraged, or unmotivated. 

Then two choices are presented. 

1) I try to solve it myself, through more planning, more pondering, and will-power, or, 

2) I recognize the chance to change with humility and faith in Jesus Christ. 

With a shocking statistical majority, I nearly always go the first route, which quickly adds a few more pounds of discouragement and unnecessary challenge to the daily adventure. 

Soon, after realizing again that I have neglected the necessary faith in humility in Christ, and feel the colour of life tone greyer and greyer, I will pray and seek for the help I needed in the beginning. 

THEN, I start figuring it out. THEN, I start feeling confident. 

Then, the Lord has another line to teach me, another precept, and will suggest the next subject of repentance. 

Then, the cycle repeats. 

So, sometimes, I'll think "Gol' darn it, I thought I just had this figured out. I just got confident and powerful again, but it seems I can't solve it" 

But it's not that I haven't figured it out, it's just that the Lord is suggesting the next step and thing I need to learn. 

The solution forever remains to "wax stronger and stonger in [my] humility, and firmer and firmer in [my] faith in Christ" and NOT to get down, discouraged, or comfortable. 

It's to always love learning. 

To love failing in the pursuit of triumph. 

To love repentance in the journey towards things Celestial. 

Thats the principle at least 

I'm figuring it out, and the Lord is patient. 

We had the awesome opportunity to go help this champion old lady with her soup kitchen at a Legion. 

Elder Surdu and I show up and are introduced to our our squadron of Elderly Ladies. 

Gabby, the gold leader who was 86. She was the great cook. 

Then, Lucy, Cherinne, Lin, and Lenita, Elder Surdu and I were on the field. 

I played customer service and carried out the meals and attempted to entertain the folks who came to eat. 

Elder Surdu embraced the raisin hands and did dishes for two hours straight. 

It was such a joy to work with these older ladies. 

So much wisdom and stories in their bright eyes and wrinkled face. 

Such kindness, refined through years of motherhood and opportunity. 

It was a blast and they gifted us some pies and potatoes 

We left happier and more enthusiastic men. 

They shared a bit of their diamond souls with us, and it was a gift hard to match. 

Wednesday was Zone Conference. 

Skadoosh. It was powerful. 

We went again over the Doctrine of Baptism and the Gift of the Holy Ghost. 

There is no greater gift we can ever offer someone then encouraging them to willingly choose to begin their covanent relationship with God. 

That through the ordinance of baptism and to receive the Holy Ghost. 

There is no greater gift. 

If we had in our pocket a billion dollars, and felt to give every person we saw on the street one million of that billion. 

With what excitement and joy would we offer it? 

How excited would we be to share and to lift. 

For the poor, for the struggling. 

It would be a gift of fantastical quality. A gift of fairytales and dreams. 

A million dollars. Unimaginable and beyond our middle-class minds. 

But, what if that gift wasn't even close to the gift we could already offer? 

Purity. Cleansing. Companionship. Truth. Eternity. The Powers of Heaven. 

We can offer that to people 

Every day. 

I understand the comparison and analogy isn't perfect, but it's also not that far off the mark. 

The next step is to actually believe that we can offer someone the greatest gift. 

To know that, we need to honor our own covanents. 

We have to know what gift we already possess. 

"Satan is attacking the family on many fronts, and too many families are being destroyed by his efforts" (PmG pg. 3)

Too many families are being destroyed. 

We need to stop this tide. 

We need to wield the powers of heaven we posses through covanents and faith in Christ and bring people to what is good. What is true. 

We need to be kind. We need to bear burdens. We need to lift heavy hands. 

We need to role up our sleeves, wield the power of the Holy Priesthood, and bless our brothers and sisters. 

The authority of God is back on the earth. 

Prophets and Apostles have been called. 

The Heavens are open. 

We are children of the Almighty God. 

And Jesus Christ is still healing, supporting, binding, and saving any who decide to accept that gift. 

What a beautiful reality, eh? 

I can get pretty serious and somber sometimes, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ really is an amazing thing. 

It's joyful, it's optimistic, it's fun. 

God will empower us to do better and be better. And it's a glorious process. 

Zone Conference was good 

It's getting kind of chilly 

But, this winter, I'm not going to complain about it once. 

Love you all!! 

Have a great week!

- Elder Smith

Benjamin Smith

1) Osmows with my friends. The Elders of the Subdury Zone. 

2) The great soup squadron

3) Elder Surdu sneaks these pictures of the members of the Ice Castle without us knowing. 

This is one of those times. 

4) Exchanges with an Elder who possess the gift of optimism. 

5) Not sure how my head warped like this, but this is the potato masher we had to use. 

6-7) a reminder of what the Ice Castle looks like on the outside. 

Starring Elder Conrad. 

From Dad - It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Dear Ben,

This week we are starting to see glimmerings of Christmas appearing.

Decorations - Mom and the girls are determined to make it look like Christmas. I will admit it creates a nice environment.

Elfster - This year for our secret Santa, Steph found an online tool to facilitate random picks and lets us do it in a distributed way. We all RSVP to this site called "Elfster" and it sends us all who we have for secret Santa. We're modernizing!

Devon Christmas in the park -  A couple of days ago we got a notice from the ward that the town of Devon was having a hard time getting enough volunteers for the event at the Lions Park. I originally dismissed it, but your Mom thought it would be a good way to get into the Christmas spirit. It was a longer day for the girls, but it felt good to serve. Mom and Mia served in the kitchen and Abby and I were on the ice slide. The kids were rambunctious but it was all fun except the frozen toes. 

Musical Theatre practice continues to dominate the thoughts and time of the girls. By the time they get home around 8:30 pm, they're pretty worn out and it takes lots of will power to work on homework. Sometimes we all just end up on the couch. Some pretty good conversations have resulted, though!

Abby and Mia are navigating school relationships including cute boys and heart break management. I'm proud of them for how they keep their standards and invite others to respect them.

We had a fun Sunday with everyone coming over. Josh and Madison seem more in love every time we see them. Caught them in the act dancing in the corner:

Mom and I have started a new  system/goal. Over 30 years of marriage, couple prayers have been somewhat sporadic and when we sat down and talked about it recently, we looked for the root cause. Turns out we often feel like we're just repeating what we said a few minutes before in family prayer and don't feel like having a repetitious prayer. So we decided that we would try to pray once a day together either morning or night, but before starting the prayer, we would take time to talk about our most pressing concerns or goals and we would focus that couple's prayer on one or two specific and important things. We've done it twice and it has been a powerful experience both from allowing us to focus on one thing together and as well as helping unify us. I'm so grateful for your Mom and the chance to re-invent our relationship in new and powerful ways. Listening to a recent Jordan Peterson podcast, we learned a quote that stated essentially that we will probably fall in love at least 5x in our lives, and if we're lucky it will be with the same person!

Check out Mom's fancy earrings (we called them posture earrings because you'd have to sit up perfectly straight to not rip them out of your ears!)

Love you lots, Ben.

Dad.