Elder Noah Toney: Forget yourself and go to work

Good morning :)

P Day

Last week in church one of the sister missionaries was crying in the sacrament meeting. Now I'm not a doctor, nor am I any type of expert in women, but even I knew that something was wrong. So after church the four of us sat down to talk. Oh man, I did not know what I was in for. These sisters were really unhappy. More specifically, one was unhappy, and from that stemmed the rest. I am no going to go into details, but I will tell you what I learned. The one unhappy sister had said many hard things on varied subjects: the ward, her companion, the town, me.

Yes the pizza has 16 slices

So we talked. A lot. We didn't solve anything. I sat back and thought, "I do not know, I just do not know. I need help, Heavenly Father I need help, I need a lot of help. I don´t know what to do." Seeing as we had come to a point of silence where no one wanted to talk, I knelt down and started to pray. And in that little room something happened that I have been waiting for all of my mission. My heart changed. Unfortunately I am unable to express the full significance of that. But from my fist day in the MTC I knew that the biggest barrier that I would have to traverse would be myself. I know why I am here, I always have, and I´ve always wanted to be here, but there has always been a part of me back home as well. Wishing that I was there. I'm not much for being homesick, but doggonit, I love all of you so much and I want you to know it, I want to show it, but I'm a missionary. Everything that is me has to be here in the mission or I will forever have regrets. I don´t want to be home, I want to be here. All of my thoughts are here. I have both feet here in the mission now where as before I had one in Indiana.

Yes we ate it all!

I have always had the fear that if I gave all of myself, I would find that I missed the bar by a long shot, and that I´d end up with nothing. This fear extended into all areas of my life, academics, sports, church, you name it, I gave a half effort. After all, if you always hold something back, you can still say that if you´d given your all, surely you would have succeeded. But since you didn't, it doesn't really matter that you failed, it doesn't hurt so bad, the insufficiency. In that little get together with the sisters, I did absolutely everything I could, and I fell short, but instead of falling, I found that Divine help intervened and saved the day. I found that when we give our all, we have succeeded indeed, and the end result simply does not matter. I got up off my knees and told the sisters that my companion and I were going to wait outside, that now was their chance to fix things if they wanted. We left. An hour later the sisters exited the room, and they did it with smiles on their faces.

San Jose

I am not so afraid of giving my all now. In fact, I´m excited to give it all and see where I end up. I feel different nowadays. Better. My situation has not changed; however, I have, and that makes all the difference.

I love you and I pray for you. Go find out if you can be better. Be molded into a new person. We don't have to be sad or even content, we can be great,

Exultantly,

Elder Noah M. Toney