Thanksgiving Thought

            In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I wanted to share a special lesson I learned a little later in my mission. 

In Russia there was a new law that required foreigners to leave the country every three months to renew their visas. When the new visa law first went into effect, we did some exciting traveling trying to find the best balance between less expensive flights and fast visa processing.  We went to Prague, then Germany, and finally went multiple times to South Korea.  When we went to South Korea, we stayed in the temple dormitories and did as much temple work as we could with the time we had. 

 About a year and three months into my mission things were going well.  My first Russian winter was giving way to spring, I was serving a second time with my native companion, Elder Pochyekutov, and it was about time for me to go renew my visa.  At this time I had set a special weeklong goal about prayer.  I set a goal to only offer thanks and pray for others in my prayers (with the exception of praying for the gift of tongues for myself, and praying for things like charity with which you need the Lord’s help).

It was a great experience!  I really felt the Spirit as I tried to be less selfish and focus more other people.  I felt closer to the Lord as I made extra effort to recognize his hand in my life and thank him for the blessings I had received.  In the middle of that week I went to Korea with some of the missionaries with whom I served.  Some how we ended up talking about prayer and one of the other missionaries commented that, “when you pray offering thanks you feel God’s love for you, and when you pray for other people, you feel a part of his love for them.”  That really hit me because it put the lesson that I was learning from my goal into words.

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I wish I had known earlier in my mission the power of focusing on thanks and focusing on others in prayer.