Children of God

Well, my blog has already failed to live up to its name, Sunday and Monday were crazy and I didn’t get a chance to post anything. Sorry!

Here in Utah, I work with people from all walks of life. I don’t have a good story to go along with this post unfortunately, but I just want to point out something that I wish more people would realize: we are all part of the Human Condition, which also means that we are God’s children. We have all been placed on Earth, eternal beings going through a mortal experience, to learn and grow. Our Heavenly Father has a plan for us in this life, wanting us to experience everything life has to offer in order to prepare us for our future in His kingdom.

We are all God’s children. Think about that phrase for a second. If we are children to a Heavenly Father, by extension we are all brothers and sisters going through the same experiences with the same worries, joys, troubles, and feelings. Whenever we (missionaries) teach someone, we spend a few minutes learning about the person, getting to know them a little better. We find out what they are stressed about and what their beliefs are. We ask them what they like to do in their free time and what they feel about God. Most of all, we ask them what we can do to help them and what they want to know about God and our beliefs surrounding Him. Just by spending a couple minutes with someone and doing nothing but focusing on them and their needs, an entire life story unfolds. Instead of just a random Hispanic man who decided to let us into his house, he becomes Antonio Silva, a single man from Bolivia who has five kids (all girls), works from 7 am to 8 pm at a construction site, really likes the Lakers (he has three signed jerseys), and is struggling to help his girls have everything he never had growing up. He cares so much about his family, but doesn’t know what he can do to help them, especially since his wife died two years ago in a car accident. Antonio Silva may or may not exist, but there is somewhere out there who is in his situation. How would we possibly know the facts about his life, his own reasons for living, without even asking him about his day?

My invitation to everyone today is to talk to someone you don’t know and ask them how their day is going. Ask them about their family and where they work. Share about yourself, your interests, and your own family. It doesn’t have to be someone you don’t know, just someone you don’t know as well as you could. You have the chance to make someone’s day and make a friend at the same time, all you have to do is talk. If there is one thing that I wish I could go back and change before my mission, it would be to talk to all of the people that I sat next to on the bus without exchanging one word, every person who sat alone in the back of a lecture hall, and the neighbor across the street whose house I saw every day when I woke up in the morning. I almost can’t believe that I missed so many opportunities to learn about someone else and maybe help them out with their troubles. Talking to complete strangers isn’t easy, but it is worth it. You never know when a kind word or sincere interest in someone’s life can make all the difference.

Talk to someone. We are all brothers and sisters, shouldn’t we treat each other that way?