Elder Thurber's Missionary Blog: 6/1/2015 Personal Study on an Airplane

June 1, 2015

Personal Study on an Airplane

People, Close and Far,

I think Satan's main weapon in missionary work is the false idea (notion, assumption, reason, excuse, postulation, etc) that we are too busy. Last week, I had the opportunity to attend new missionary follow-up meeting, zone conference in Palawan, bring an elder up to the area office, and go on splits--twice, one with an elder coming back to the mission from a year and a half ago, and another, named Cameron, who has a job and served in the Philippines and just wanted to work with us while he had time.

Outside of our apartment Thursday Morning before going to Zone Conference

I've recognized there's always time. Wednesday was a roller coaster in Palawan, so I really only had time to plan during the plane ride over. Afterwords, I talked to a man who is from San Diego California, and referred him to missionaries over there.

I thought we didn't have time to make our flight back to the mainland after zone conference, because there were some interviews President Ostler had to do. We decided to leave early and were panicking when we arrived at the airport, because the elders who had gone before us texted that they had closed the check-in gate. True enough, they had closed it when we were going through security. I ran over and put my luggage on the scale and showed my license ID, stalling the trip long enough for everybody to get through security and leave on time. Then, the Ostlers showed up with smiles on their faces; they had gotten in a trike and somehow made it to the airport in half the time it took us. We were all able to board the airplane 2 minutes before the door closed. What inspired me most was how calm the Ostlers were. The two took selfies before they got on the plane, seemingly oblivious to the close call that had taken place.

While doing personal study on the plane, I thought to myself, hoooowwww do they do that? Perhaps some of it was just experience with being in airports, but there's more. I think there's the truth that we actually need to follow him. Mainly, I think they succeeded because they trust in the Lord, and know they're on the Lord's errand. It was a valuable lesson that they didn't know they were teaching me. They're on the Lord's time, so they rely on him.