After five and a half months of working in a relatively slow area of the mission, at least numbers wise, it has been pretty easy to get a little discouraged. When it’s 95 degrees outside with 90 percent humidity, it’s easy to think of all of the other areas in the mission that I could be in that have nicer climates and that baptize all the time. I was listening to a BYU devotional from President Eyring this week that helped me change and refocus my perspective. He tells the story of his dad helping with a ward assignment to weed a church onion field and having to drag himself along the ground due to pain from bone cancer. At the end of the painful day of labor under the blazing sun, someone realized that he had been pulling weeds that had already been sprayed with weed killer, meaning that all of his effort had gone to waste. President Eyring later asked his dad why he wasn’t more upset about it. His dad’s response: “I wasn’t there for the weeds. I was there for the Savior.” That hit me like a 2×4 to the face. Yes, my purpose as a missionary is help people get baptized, but I didn’t come on a mission to baptize people. I came on a mission because I love the Lord and He asked me to serve a mission. It doesn’t matter how many weeds I pull, or how many people I baptize. It only matters that I am doing what the Lord asked me to do, giving my full effort and my full self, dragging myself along the hot, dusty, and humid roads of Tartagal in the beating sun, doing the best I can to bring souls to the Lord.
I’m grateful for the opportunity that I am having to focus my life on Christ. I know that He loves each and every one of you!
Elder Hansen
