Semana 23

Dear Elder Lutze,

Another crazy week at work. I taught in Simulation three days straight. This week is also going to be busy! I went ice skating with the youth on Tuesday and took Cami out for her birthday on Thursday. Friday I want to the temple and visited with Mollie. She’s slowly improving. Tonight we had a family dinner for Natalie and Cami’s birthdays. 

I’ve been in Esther this week. I love this story!

From the story of Esther 

Esther 4:14

We don't know how important the things we do and say will be for a long time. It is so important to pray for guidance each day so we are prepared to be an instrument in His hands.

"You can't impact something you don't touch. The world marches on and to have input in the direction it goes you have to join the parade. You've got to work with the instruments you're given. If you wait for the perfect time most often it ends up you waited too long. Sometimes God puts a new path under your feet not because you think you're ready to walk it but because he knows that's the way you need to go. " Lisa Wingate

Esther 10:3

Mordecai’s (Esther’s cousin who raised her) situation is parallel in some ways to that in which modern followers of Jesus finds themselves. For Mordecai, Babylon was a physical reality. He was forced to function in the midst of an alien society. Today, Babylon, or the world, is a spiritual reality. The standards of the modern world are increasingly alien to the values held by the disciples of the Savior. The challenge is to keep the values intact and yet find ways, as did Mordecai, to be of service both to society and to Christ. Mordecai could not have done what he did if he had compromised his standards. Because he had prepared himself and was willing to become involved, he eventually became the chief minister of the king.

“The Lord in the Doctrine and Covenants tells us to be anxiously engaged in good causes. This suggests we can’t respond to all causes. We must be selective in the things we seek to do in terms of community and civic chores. But it also suggests we ought to devote a measure of our time and talent to do these things, for they do count on the scales of action as God sees it.

“The world is full of fads. The world is full of the marches of lemmings to the sea. The world is full of causes that lead into conceptual cul-de-sacs. Our task, therefore, is to be wise in the selection of good causes, using the scriptures and the modern prophets as our guide.

“Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in her book Gift from the Sea, says: ‘My life cannot implement in action all the demands of all the people to whom my heart responds.’ You will care for more things than you will be able to do things about. Wise selection of causes is one of the highest forms of the use of free agency that there is, and, really, one of the ways God tests our basic wisdom and our capacity to love.” (Neal A. Maxwell, speech delivered at Catalina Young Adult Conference, 23 Oct. 1972.)

I love you and you are definitely using your free agency wisely! Keep working hard!

 Mom