Philippines!

My life has been super exciting this week. My call arrived Wednesday afternoon with the mail and I opened it that night amidst friends and several cell phones being used to call family. To my great surprise (and everyone else's, no one even came close to guessing right) I was called to serve in the Philippines Iloilo mission and I will be speaking Tagalog. This happens to be a relatively new mission, which makes everything even more exciting. More than likely, if you are reading this, you have already seen the posts all over facebook or received a text or phone call. So I'm sure you already know, but I figured the blog would be somewhat incomplete without a post on where I'm going.

A few fun random things that happened the night of receiving the call. Shortly after learning where I would go, I looked in my mission packet for the mission map. I discovered that there isn't yet a map for this mission because of how new it is. I realized that knowing where in the Philippines my mission was didn't really matter much because I didn't actually know where the Philippines were. I proceeded to a friends apartment to look at their large map and locate the approximate location of where my mission was. I then became extremely excited about the fact that I get to go somewhere warm! Let's just hope I don't come home to severely sun burnt.

The next day was filled with letting dozens of people know about the call that I hadn't gotten around to telling the day before. I also announced my call in my mission prep class and my sign language class, which was really fun because I signed the announcement (well- most of it, I went ahead and wrote the location on the board). All in all, The experience has been amazing. Although I would have never guessed it and had a million places in mind for where I wanted to go, it feels right. I know that I'm going where I am needed.

The Papers are in!

I am preparing to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I recently finished all the paper work and submitted it to the church. Now, I am waiting for my mission call.

I could be asked to serve almost anywhere in the world, speaking almost any language. I will be gone for 18 months. Everyone tells me it will be the best 18 months of my life so far. All I know is that I'm excited. I've been looking forward to this opportunity for years, and submitting my papers has made it feel more real. This is really happening.

I have set aside this blog for the posting of events that occur while on my mission, but I figure the months leading up to it have a few important events that should also be posted. In a few short weeks I will be posting the location of my mission call and all the crazy feelings that will go along with it. I know I'm looking forward to having stories to tell, I hope you are looking forward to reading them!

Exodus

There are many parallels to the Exodus story of the bible through out the Doctrine and Covenants. Many of these parallels are created due to the events that were occurring. One of these parallels is, of course, the pioneers who crossed the wilderness to the promised land. I have already written a blog on how the end of the trek, the Salt Lake Valley, geographically parallels the end of the journey of the people of Israel, Jerusalem. The parallels start earlier than that though.

In both events, the people were attempting to escape the predicament they were currently in, one being slaves and the other persecuted for their beliefs. As they began the journey, the Lord gave a system of organization. He commanded that companies are organized with captains leading the whole company and sub-captains in charge of smaller groups of hundreds, fifties, and tens. The President of the church and his counselors are in charge of everyone. This provided an easy way for solutions to problems that the president did not need to deal with and made sure that every individual was cared for.

In section 136 of the Doctrine and Covenants, a revelation given to Brigham Young on how to get the saints somewhere they would be safe, the Lord declares "Zion shall be redeemed in mine own due time." In this circumstance, the Lord is referring to the place that has been designated as Zion that the saints have been kicked out of. A similar idea happens in the Exodus story, the Lord declares he will redeem Zion in his own time, but this Zion has a different meaning. He is referring to the people of Zion who, because of their iniquities, are left to wander in the desert.

One of the things I find most interesting are the language parallels. In this section God refers to himself as the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. He uses languages and terms that are more often used in the Old Testament than in any of the other scriptures.

The Crandall Museum

This week, instead of attending class as normal, we attended a tour at the Crandall Printing Museum. The really cool thing about this museum is that it has exact replicas of old printing presses. The guides don't just tell you how the presses were used and made, but we actually got to participate in using the press to print a sheet.

Another interesting thing is how small the museum is, there are only three rooms in the tour. The first room has a Gutenberg printing press in it, set up just like Gutenberg's printing press would have been. The tour guide, dressed in printers garb, explained how the printing press was invented. He explained how Gutenberg had to create unique inks and metals to accomplish what was needed to actually make the press.

The next room was dedicated to the Declaration of Independance. The room had a slightly more modern press, though it was essentially the same. The guide in this room described how the printing press helped the American Revolution occur.

The last room was designed to look just like the place that the Book of Mormon was printed in. The tour guide explained the miraculous series of events that allowed so many copies of the Book of Mormon to be printed at the same time. The location of the restoration, the completion of the Erie canal, and the newer steel printing press all came together at just the right time and place for the printing of one of the most important books in my life. I just think it's pretty cool.

Joseph's Teachings

This week's blog prompt asked us to explain why some of Joseph Smith's teachings became scripture. After thinking about this for a while, I realized that I don't really know. After thinking about it for quite a while longer I determined I definitely don't know, but I do have several ideas. Please keep in mind that these are only my ideas.

The majority of the Doctrine and Covenants are revelations from God given to Joseph that have been written down. However, near the end of the Doctrine and Covenants, many of the sections are letters or teachings of the Prophet. This change instigates two questions in me. The first is the one relating to the prompt, why were Joseph's teachings turned into scripture. The second question I have is why do there seem to be fewer revelations at this point. Fortunately for me, the second question was answered in class this week. The first question, if it was answered, I either didn't notice or didn't understand.

Anyways, here are my interpretations of the answers. The main reason that the number of revelations decreased was because all the big questions that needed answering had been answered. The saints didn't need specific instruction anymore. The reason I think that the teachings of Joseph Smith were placed into the scriptures is because of how universal the topics he was teaching are. He took answers found in revelations earlier in the Doctrine and Covenants and expounded upon them so that the saints could understand them better. Since these teachings help so many people and explain such important topics, it makes sense for these teachings to be published so that all the saints could see them.

Reflections

For this weeks prompt, we were asked to reflect on our examination of pages 381 and 639-649 of the Joseph Smith Papers. As unusual as it may seem, I took a lot more interest in page 381 than in the large section of pages we were supposed to read. Pages 639-649 were rather interesting, just not attention grabbing. At least not for me. These pages had the minutes from a meeting in which the high counsel of the church was organized. I understand the importance behind this meeting, but it had a very political feeling to it, and I have difficulty thinking through things politically.

Page 381 had a very different style. The part that we were supposed to be examining was the statement at the top of the page stating that the High Counsel had been organized that day. This is interesting because it wasn't until nearly 300 pages later that they places the information from that meeting into the revelation books. The rest of the page is what really stuck out to me though. It was one of those doom's day sort of revelations where it talks about the civil war that would soon break out and the famine and natural disasters that would occur before Christ came again. Maybe it's just my depressed attitude lately, or maybe it's because of all the stuff going on in the world as earthquakes destroy cities, but for some reason this portion of the page that I wasn't supposed to be focusing on really hit me. The revelation ends with "Wherefore, stand ye in holy places and be not moved until the day of the Lord come; for behold, it cometh quickly." The way the revelation ends just hit me really hard. It talks of death and destruction and fear, but it ends with a simple message of how to deal with all of it.

Museum of Art

For class this past week, instead of having a normal class period the class took a tour of one of the exhibits at the schools Museum or Art. We toured the exhibit Types and Intimations, which is filled with works that depict Christ and the Atonement in some way. We also attended this exhibit last semester. I happened to write a very long blog post then on what was, at the time, my favorite painting in the exhibit. I'm not sure if it is still my favorite or not. I still really like the painting and it still means a lot to me, but my life since then has developed in ways I didn't expect.

If you would like to read a long post on my experiences at the exhibit last time, it was published November of 2009, feel free to read it. This post is going to be a bit different though. Unlike most prompts, this one had no word limit. So it's going to be much shorter than the other posts. For once, I don't really want to tell the world want I think, because I stopped thinking and finally let myself respond to the work through feeling.

My eyes were opened, I recognized vital truths in life that I've always known but have a tendency to forget. Everyone suffers, we all have hard lives. Most people spend all day trying just to make it through. However, if we stop and give just a bit of time to something else, to someone else, we are giving more than our time. To make that small sacrifice and to give up something for another person means that we are giving ourselves fully to Christ. We are showing him that we love him in the only way we can, by doing what He asks us.