2025(6) Faith Leap - Chapter 12: Eating the Elephant (Bite 1)
2025(6) Faith Leap - Chapter 12: Eating the Elephant (Bite 1)
Highlights
- Our life is currently like the underside of a messy Tapestry. But God has recently shown us the briefest glimpse of the majesty He is creating on the other side - and we are so grateful
- A prompting to stay in Georgia for longer led to an overwhelming list of questions, and miraculous answers
- We are finding purpose in establishing the first Youth program in this part of Georgia - and recognize the ways God has prepared us for this task
- We have found assurance from God in moving our flights home to Bob's birthday, and stand amazed at His loving correction to our mistakes.
Prayer Requests
- We are blessed to have so many investigators at Church each week. (We have 105% attendance! We have yet to meet about 25% of our members on record - because they are unable or are choosing not to attend church right now. This means that investigators make up the difference.) Please pray for our investigators in Georgia: that the Holy Spirit can help all seekers of truth to find it, recognize it, and embrace it with courage; and that doors will be opened to them to see how to do this in the face of opposition.
Details
What is the phrase? - you eat an elephant one bite at a time? SO MUCH has happened since my last blog post, that I feel completely overwhelmed with how to even begin this one. I decided to journal about all the things first - to help me pare down what to share here. But, even then, there is still a crazy amount to share. Hence the "Bite 1" - as I anticipate this is going to need to be divided into at least two posts. I apologize that this will likely lack organization. I've decided I cannot afford to put it off any longer (and risk more happening that needs to be added to the list) while I grapple with how to map it all out for literary beauty. So welcome to my mess :)
Where we left off...the messy side of the Tapestry
When she spoke, Corrie Ten Boom (a WW2 hero that Bob just finished reading about) often recited a poem by Grant Colefax Tullar originally called "The Weaver". In this poem, our perspective of life is related to the chaotic underside of a tapestry, while God's perspective is the magnificent artistry of the topside. As I wrote the previous post, I was feeling pretty lost in the chaos of the underside of my tapestry (and like the loom had collapsed on top of me). But, in crying out to Him, it was miraculous how He lifted it up and flipped it over - for the briefest moment - to show me a little of what He has been orchestrating. It is infinitely more magnificent that this AI generated visual...
The big prompting eluded to in the last post was that God needs us to stay in Georgia for longer. I'm sure you can imagine the barrage of questions that followed: How much longer - are we talking a month? or months? WHY? - we don't even know why we are here. Do we need to stay longer because we are failing to accomplish what we were sent here to do? How do we break this to our children (again, without even being able to help them see the purpose for the extension)? What about my Mom and Grandpa who need our help? What about our stuff in Mom's way? Our pets? What about our summer and fall commitments (Heroic Youth, Commonwealth, etc)? How do we pay for it? (prices triple in June for the tourist season), etc.
A question a day helps you eat the elephant
3 Nephi 19:24 "... they did still continue, without ceasing, to pray unto him; and they did not multiply many words, for it was given unto them what they should pray, and they were filled with desire."
It was in the midst of attempting to eat this elephant, that the idea came for my one-question devotionals (described in the last post). I was paralyzed when I focused on all of the questions at once. And even paralyzed when I thought of picking one question to try to focus on seeking revelation on. But all of the stress and fear was replaced with peace and ableness when I laid all of that burden at the Savior's feet by asking, "What question would you like me to focus on in my study today?" This has become my daily ritual. (I invite you to try it!) It has been miraculous for me. Miraculous because He answers. And miraculous because it eliminates the guess work of "Where should I turn in my scriptures to find the answer I need?" - God knows what is included in Come, Follow Me and what I will be reading next in the Liahona, etc. So He can cater my question to the answers He already knows I'll have in front of me. (And, that doesn't necessarily mean the answers are in the words themselves, but in the ways He can direct my thoughts from there). It is also miraculous in that I feel I have His permission to prioritize the thing He has given me, and let go of all of the other things on the coulda/shoulda/woulda list.
(Bob created this stylized photo a few weeks ago and I felt it fit well here).
One question led to answers upon answers - God is so Good!
An example of how this has worked for me: I thought that the biggest priority on my list of questions was "How long do you need us to stay?" So many other questions hinged on this one answer, so that is where I would have chosen to focus. But, when I asked, "What question should I be asking in my study today?", this was not the question He directed to be asking. Instead, I felt to ask, "Do we need to step down as Adult Mentor Mentors in Heroic Youth?" My studies then led to reference after reference wherein was the message "Be steadfast and immovable" - and I knew God was answering "No" to this question. And, by answering the question He gave me, He also answered the question I'd wanted to ask - because, if we need to keep our post as HY Committee Members, it means we need to return for the events in early summer. And, with this question, He also answered my questions about our purpose here, and how to help my children be okay with having to stay longer:
For the Strength of Youth in Western Georgia
One of the things that make our stay in Georgia so hard for the kids is that they miss playing with friends. I have mentioned before that making friends is difficult here because of the language barrier. There aren't any children in our "neighborhood" who speak English. In speaking with the parents of the one other family in the branch, and the one investigator family we had, their story was the same - their children are lonely and need friends. So Richard and I decided that we are going to start hosting these families at our house for a few hours once a week - especially to help the two families connect so that they have friendships when we leave. But what do we do with them? We don't have a lot of "stuff", the weather is often too rainy and windy to be outside much, and they are going to get tired of the same card games every week. We decided that, even though it is not officially sponsored by the Branch, we will follow The Church's Child and Youth goal setting program - inviting the youth to set goals and come up with simple activities that allow the group to support them in those goals. As none of the other families have ever experienced a youth program, we decided we will model what it looks like for them for the first few weeks, and then transition into mentoring them on how to do it - with a goal that, by the time we leave, the youth are running it themselves.
And suddenly we realized that this is one of the purposes for God sending us on a mini-mission to Georgia! Our question, "Why us?": because our experiences mentoring in Heroic Youth, Richard as Bishop working with the youth, Bob's experience building a Deacon's quorum with his unique spiritual gift of friendship, have prepared us to know how to build a youth program from the ground up. (Seriously, I have never seen a tighter-knit group of boys than our Deacon's Quorum under Bob's leadership. They became best friends who hung out all the time outside of church, they excluded no one - if you were deacon age in the ward, you were their friend. And Bob fostered a "Yes, and..." attitude among them. There were no dumb ideas. They loved every activity because they came with the expectation that they would love it, even if they might feel a little silly, because it wasn't something they were good at. They were willing to allow themselves and each other to be beginners. I am so grateful that Bob is beginning to see that he also has a purpose/mission here. 💖)
And here is what is extra crazy amazing: in the time that it has taken to get the ball rolling on these activities, the missionaries have found more investigator families (if you build it, they will come - because God will send them!)! We haven't even had our first activity (tomorrow will be the first), and He has more than doubled our numbers! 🤯
Valentines for Nikolai
Here is another, more simple example: earlier this week, when I asked what question I should ask, the question that came was "What should I do for Nikolai?" Nikolai is an elderly, self-proclaimed grump, who only speaks Russian. Because of the great needs of many others in the Branch, I haven't thought much about him. But, I have had enough success with my experiment thus far that I decided not to question the question. And as I studied, I had an idea: After seeing the generous gifts from members to my cute missionary nieces, and bemoaning that I have never thought to do something like that, I decided that, for one of our first youth activities, we will make Valentines for the missionaries in the branch. As I studied with the question about Nikolai, I felt I should have the youth make a Valentine for him as well - and also invite the youth to be prayerful about anyone else they feel inspired to give to. So that is what I plan to do. I don't know that I will ever know if Nikolai is significantly impacted by the hand-crafted note and bubbles we will leave on his doorstep, but that is okay. I'll do it because, as Elder Bednar says, "if you are good, then every good thought that you have is inspired by the Holy Ghost...So quit worrying about it." 😊
New Return Date
By now, you may be asking is "When are you coming home?" The answer is a story in and of itself. Feeling we have permission to continue in Heroic Youth, we looked at the calendar to determine when we need to be back for our first in-person event. We then looked for tickets to return earlier that week (to give us time to recover from jet-lag). The only tickets we could find that were anywhere near affordable happen to be on Bob's birthday. (If you are looking to travel, you should know: May=off-season/affordable; June=White Christmas Wow. Delta was going to charge us $1600 more than we already paid, per ticket! Our cheapest option was to cancel our non-refundable flights for Etickets and fly home on a different airline. So now we get/have to go on another trip before they expire in December...) Bob is doing his very best to muster a good attitude about travel on his birthday - choosing to focus on the fact that 1) His birthday will last for 34 hours and 2) he will get what he wants more than anything else: his feet will be back on Utah soil.
We were feeling pretty badly about the way our travel plans worked out for Bob, and wanted to make sure it was the right thing to move forward on this new plan. We have begged Heavenly Father to please help us hear Him correctly - so that we don't have to unnecessarily subject our children to any future extensions of our trip. We were also worried about how this change in plans would affect CJ and my Mom. Listen to these miracles!:
- Turns out my Mom was actually super stressed about coming in April. April is one of her busiest months - especially because of her political involvement in the Legislative session (that puts a lot of her business responsibilities on hold) and in the Caucus system. She is relieved that her trip to Georgia can be delayed to a better time for her.
- There were several school things that CJ was going to have to miss in order to join us for the final weeks of our trip in April/May. (Several of those things were not even on my radar when we made all of these plans. Any other homeschool moms out there who completely forget that the public school system doesn't get out for summer until the end of May?!? 🙋🏻♀️) Now everything will be nearly wrapped up before he comes - so he won't have any makeup school work to do while he is here. And, looking at Heroic Youth commitments for the role he is hoping to have, he will only have to miss one event - and it is the easiest one for him to miss. 🎊
- One morning, for my question of the day, I felt impressed to ask, "Why Bob's birthday?" and my study in Come, Follow Me linked to Jesus Christ is the Strength of Parenting (any other parent feel they need to review this talk weekly? 🙋🏻♀️) As I read, I felt Heavenly Father's love for Bob - and that one reason we are returning on his birthday is as a love note/birthday gift to him from his Father in Heaven. It is His way of telling Bob, "I know this was a hard thing I asked of you. I know you didn't want to do it. I am proud of you for choosing to have a good attitude about it anyway. I love you."
- May is the best time of year to visit Georgia. We've just been hoping that the weather would warm up sufficiently by end of April to allow us to enjoy some summer activities for the last part of our trip. Now we know we will!
- With the good weather, we are are hopeful that we will now be able to plan a Branch youth campout as a last Hurrah before we return home.
- This is evidence of a Father who knows how to lovingly correct His children and work with our mistakes. The truth of the matter is, moving our return date to June is not an extension at all. We knew in the beginning that we were supposed to stay for 6 months:
If you've been following my blog, you know all about us shifting our trip to 5 months, because I did that whole post about the symbolism of the number 5. I am tempted to go back and edit that part out. But, I am not going to - for a few reasons. First, people make mistakes, we misunderstand, misinterpret, make incorrect assumptions, and more. I am reminding myself that it is okay to show others my humanness. Second, it is an important for me to remember and understand this part of my story: the revelation about the number 5 was not wrong! It is a scary thing to invite our children to seek their own revelation on big decisions. The entire time they are praying for an answer, you are pleading that Heavenly Father will speak to them, they they will hear correctly, that you will have the confirmation and courage to honor their revelation - especially if it is not what you wanted or expected. That is where Richard was when CJ shared the direction he'd received - he was asking for confirmation of his own/help honoring that revelation. The consecutive scripture stories about 5 people traveling together actually were God's confirmation to have CJ stay home. And then we, erroneously, also chose to apply that revelation to the length of our stay. CJ's test date, and a desire for he and Mom to be able to come for enough time to make the trip worth it, motivated us to justify our original date. If we had taken the time to consider that we could accomplish both of those things by staying slightly longer than 6 months, we likely would have realized we had the wrong return date. But, at the time, 6 months already felt like a nearly impossible sacrifice. A single day longer wasn't something we were ready to consider.
Knowing all of these things, I believe God said, "They believe 5 months is what I'm asking. That is fine. I can work with that. We will get them to Georgia, let them get their feet wet and find some rhythm, and then we can adjust the timeline and help them understand what they weren't ready for before." In this error, God showed me the truth of his word in 2 Nephi 31:3 "for after this manner doth the Lord God work among the children of men. For the Lord God giveth light unto the understanding; for he speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding." This additional understanding does not negate the Grace He was promising in the symbolism of the number 5. It simply means that He is adding to it the symbolism of the number 6 (which, fittingly, is the imperfection of man - for which, His Grace is sufficient. 💖)
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