Light and Truth

At the beginning of the year 2013 I was serving as a full-time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in The Bronx of New York City. As most people who serve in the capacity of a full-time missionary soon find out, it can be quite challenging almost all the time. The particular difficulty that my teaching companion and I faced at this time was retaining the religious investigators we found. It seemed as if no matter how much effort we put forth to pray for, stay in contact with, and prepare to teach the people who initially were interested in the restored gospel, it didn't seem to work. Within three weeks after initial contact, most of them would either not respond to phone calls nor texts, tell us they no longer had time to continue investigating, or inform us that they were no longer interested. Of course, this is nothing unusual as a missionary. And fortunately, I had learned at this point how to deal with disappointments like these. At this same time ...

As a young boy, raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by righteous parents who provided a gospel-centered home, I remember coming to a conclusion that certainly reflected my very young mind. This conclusion was that, since I had learned the importance of avoiding addictive substances such as alcohol, smoking, drugs, pornography, and gambling, I would never experience any form of addiction in my life. While I successfully avoided everything I - at that time - thought could become an addiction, I eventually met with disappointment in my later teenage years and early 20's. Through various circumstances and choices that are far too complex for me to recall entirely, I found myself struggling so largely with God's commandment of honesty. While I knew it to be true, this knowledge had not yet grown large enough to translate directly into action. While I knew dishonesty was sin, it seemed as if no matter how oft I repented that I always cycled back around sooner ...

Many years ago I attended Woods Cross High School while living in the city of Bountiful, Utah. As is quite typical for most teenagers, I had many great high school friends together with a few acquaintances who (at least from my then-teenage point of view) rightly earned the title of enemies. When the day of graduation came in the spring of 2011, one of the most relieving aspects of that day was being able to know that I would never see these enemies of mine again. Their offensive presence in my life was finally coming to an end. After attending my first semester at the University of Utah (the U) as an undergraduate student I served two years as a missionary in New York, returning in December 2013. Upon the completion of this full-time mission, having been taught many life-changing lessons by the Lord, I resumed my education in mathematics and physics at the U. Some of these important lessons (detailed in other blog posts linked here) include the importance of  trusting in God's ...

As is quite common in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, some of the most memorable events of my life come from the two years of serving as a full-time missionary. Yes, the time I spent in New York serving the Lord full-time in spreading the restored gospel is among the things I look back on with absolute joy. Near the end I came to learn, as most missionaries do, that these two years were densely packed with important spiritual lessons that the Lord saw absolutely necessary to teach me. Among the many lessons I learned was the high importance of trying to see things from other people's point of view. Serving in New York included countless days of going door to door around the town of Middletown and near West Point, talking with everyone who would answer and asking them if we could share the restored gospel with them. It also included contacting strangers on the streets of The Bronx and Manhattan for many hours straight. Due to the long history of Christianity in th...

Sooner than later, most of us find out that life has overwhelming challenges that are seemingly beyond our capacity to endure. As a young teenager with epilepsy, this was the situation I faced for many years. There were many reasons of why this challenge felt unbearable at times. Among the smallest of these challenges was the mere presence of seizures in my life. While it certainly was not fun to have unpredictable seizures, I was at least unconscious during them and therefore didn't remember them as well as my family members. Challenges of greater magnitude included not being allowed to drive, get a job, or participate in various other activities that could trigger a seizure. Perhaps the greatest challenges I faced, though, were the side-effects of my medication. These side-effects did not involve obvious reactions such as a rash, sneezing, or any feeling that might be considered "medical". Rather, the effect was deep inside my brain; my personality shifted towards pes...

Many years ago, while sitting in a health science class at Woods Cross High School, another student leaned over to me before class and casually asked, "So are you an optimist, perfectionist, or pessimist?". A couple days earlier, we'd been studying these three personality types during that class, talking about what characterizes them. My answer to this student was easy and straightforward: "I am a pessimist". While I wished I could say otherwise, it was nevertheless a fact that I was someone who always focused on what was not going well and the negatives surrounding me. And I was rarely in a state of happiness. With epilepsy influencing every aspect of life, having a scarcity of friends, and needing to deal with all of the homework that continually got piled on me, it seemed to me that my pessimism was completely justified and inescapable. A few years later, I found myself serving as a full-time missionary in Middletown, New York. My full-time teaching compani...

At the beginning of my full-time mission while at the MTC (Missionary Training Center), I nearly got sent home for medical reasons beyond my control. Fortunately, I was not sent home. But I was also not allowed to go out to New York as I had been called to, at least not immediately. This was obviously quite a trial for my faith and hope. (Further details can be found in the two prior blog posts:  1st  ,  2nd  .) Instead of getting sent home, a minor exception was made for me to stay at the MTC and work as an online missionary in the Referral Center. Here I would stay until I got doctoral permission to serve in New York. This was not exactly what I wanted to happen, but by this time I had accepted the fact that my plans of going to New York in January 2012 were not to be. But at least I didn't get sent home completely from serving a mission. While serving in the Referral Center, teaching people via skype and chatting with people who came on to  mormon.org ...