The Fourth Quarter🏈🏆🇯🇵 (Week 77)

What’s up my party people? Hope everyone had a great week. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous around here recently and it’s a pleasure to be out in it doing the Lord’s work and fighting the good fight. The Sakura are beginning to bloom, the weather is getting warmer, and the people are getting friendlier so I can’t complain.

It’s always amazing to see how fast time flies. Especially when you lose yourself in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The past year and a half of my life have been devoted to everyday service and trying to better myself in order to become the effective missionary that the Lord wants me to be. And now, as of last week, we have come to the fourth quarter of this two year adventure of a lifetime. The mission is a very interesting experience in the aspect that it not only entails a complete change in behavior, but, if you do it right, it has the potential to cause a complete change of nature. I feel like I have changed during the course of my mission, but honestly I couldn’t tell you the difference in me now versus me before the mission. I feel like so much has changed that I can’t really remember who I was before the mission, but I hope that the person I am now is a little bit closer to the person that the Lord would have me be.

People often ask me, what is one of the biggest things I have learned on my mission. I think that for a large portion of my mission, I was convinced that the measure of a successful missionary is a missionary that finds investigators, teaches, and baptizes. What I have learned though is that, while those things are the fruits of our labors, a successful missionary is a missionary who obeys with exactness. He is a missionary who seeks to serve with all his heart in every way he can. He is a missionary who does exactly what the Lord asks him to do, when He asks him to do so, no matter the outcome. The Lord knows our weaknesses and knows what we need to experience in order to grow. I am a firm believer that the Lord does not call us to callings that we can fill, He calls us to callings that He knows we can grow into. So no matter what the end result may be, as we trust in the Lord and follow him with exactness, we are able to become more than we ever thought we could be.

Sorry, not a whole lot of experiences from this week. Just some things I have been thinking about recently. But, worry not, this past week has been great and I’m looking forward to the weeks to come. Just remember, the game isn’t over until after the fourth quarter.

Doctrine and Covenants 128:22

Brethren, shall we not go on in so great a cause? Go forward and not backward. Courage, brethren; and on, on to the victory! Let your hearts rejoice, and be exceedingly glad. Let the earth break forth into singing. Let the dead speak forth anthems of eternal praise to the King Immanuel...

-Elder Sadler