VISION

I read someone’s thought about the essence of vision:  Advance confidently in the direction of your dreams and endeavor to live the life you have imagined.  The future is not just some place you’re going to, but is a place you are creating, and the paths to it are not found, they are made. 

The Vision is to recognize and follow the Spirit.  Elder Baum does a better job of trusting the process than I do.

Several months ago, we started a mid-week Gospel study class with 1-2 people.  This week, we had nine young people there and one of the female soldiers even brought an investigator  (after a great lesson on member missionary work by the Elders).

I’ve been making progress with how I manage annoyances.  I have been calmly and patiently taking care of things as they come up.  By that I mean, if I start to be abrupt or sarcastic or belligerent, I call myself on it.  I stop it right then and there.  Interestingly, things are annoying me less and less.   

Even my husband noticed.  For example, he was giving me a suggestion about how to park in the driveway.  Ordinarily I would have ignored him or been offended.  This time, I admitted that I had forgotten and I was too tired to re-park.  He shared some tips and I noticed myself being genuinely interested. 

I'm starting to feel strangely liberated at times.

A young sister in our mission called asking for my help.  She was in a full blown panic.  Through guided imagery, I had her do the same meditation I’ve been testing.  It took 5 min.  She was pleasantly surprised at how quickly she regained her composure.

The last serendipity was that Elder Baum and I actually set our first missionary goal without any difference of opinion!  Diversity is said to yield better goals, but in our case, diversity also led to resistance, disunity, and inertia.  We actually acted on our goal together and had an unusually good FHE with a less active/part member family (meaning strong Spirit present, a lot of participation including Dad helping son in a loving patient way, Mom good-naturedly praying twice at husband's request, daughter teasing and then spontaneously repairing with her brother, mom allowing a story from the Book of Mormon, and them telling  us they loved us when we left)!