create your own happiness!

Bev

There's this elder in our mission, he's one of my zone leaders actually- and he came into our district meeting and as he taught us, he brought out this big yellow plastic circle, and a smile was cut out of it. It was so cool! Except for the fact that he hangs it on his wall so that when he wakes up he sees it... And I don't know about ya'll, but if I was to see a big smiley face when I woke up, I might throw something at it. So for the past couple of weeks I've been focusing on how to have energy in the morning and how to be happy in the morning. During the lesson that he taught he kept saying in the bold way too excited way that he does, "You want to look like THIS! If you don't look like THIS, that's not good, you want THIS." It reminded me of that talk by the apostle who was counseling on what to do if we find that what we're doing is not in align with what Christ would do, he says, "STOP IT." I don't think I appreciated the power of this statement. To just, simply, stop. We have the power and ability, we have our agency! I meet so many people that say, "that's just the way I am, I just can't." or "if I don't smoke, then I get mad, and there's nothing I can do about it." When we admit to being powerless when it comes to our agency, then we give that power to Satan, and to be acted upon. When we admit that we have choice, are accountable, but as to the body- are weak, then through Christ we become all powerful.

I love this scripture in Philippians 3:20-21

20. For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the ^aSaviour, the Lord Jesus Christ:

21. Who shall ^achange our ^bvile body, ^cthat it may be fashioned like unto his glorious ^dbody, according to the working whereby he is able even to ^esubdue all things unto himself.

So here we learn about the Resurrection. But also about the character of God. We are not like God, who can subdue all things unto himself. One day we will be like Him, but when we die- we will be the same person as we were when we were alive. The change needs to happen now, while we're in this life of probation or testing, to become like God. We can do so by exercising our agency (ability to choose right or wrong).

We get calls from our zone leaders and they say, "Your chin up?" Yup, my chin is up! I was reading my brother's letter from Russia. I thought our branch was small! And similar to his exciting experience where a ton of people showed up for church, we also had not only five investigators come to church, but they brought relatives and members, and what usually was 40 was probably around 60! From what usually is five people in gospel principles (including the missionaries) was like 15! Like I learned in zone conference recently, "You got to, accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative and don't bother with mister inbetween!"

There is joy in life, that's why we're here. This week has been good.

Hard, but without the hard, there would be no good. How else would you measure happy if there was no sad? So even in the moments of sad, I think of how blessed I am for being able to feel things like sadness. Even our Savior felt sadness- especially in the garden of gethsemane.

Keep ya chin up! =) <-- You want THIS!

Let yourself believe that you can choose, I promise you'll be a lot more happy. (:

Love,

Sister Duncan