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This year my dear mother was in Utah for mothers day, so I just gave her a call. However, I did watch the above mentioned movie with my brother and his family. First let's get the imperfections out of the way. I came into the movie about five minutes late. My nephew was making noise and turning off the TV the whole time (which turned an hour and a half movie into a three hour ordeal). It was one of those movies made by church members (but not by the church) so the acting wasn't the best at times. That said, it was based on true events, and there were some tear jerking moments. Instead of trying to sum up what I found inspiring about the film and thereby running the risk of spoilers, here is this trailer for you to watch:
(Edit: Can't figure out how to embed or link. Copy the link yourself)
I highly recommend it. It's good to pause and learn about what our predecessors have suffered for us to have what we have. It's good to try and realize every once and a while just how sheltered, spoiled, and selfish we really are. It's good to have one of those experiences that gives you a spiritual boost, causing you to pledge to be more grateful and more Christlike (until you get back into the mundane routine of every day life and fall back into the same crap again, usually after just a couple of hours).
So, as I mused in the middle of said spiritual high, I decided to do something different for Mother's day. I had already called my real mom, and also left her a card to take with her before she left (of course I should have done more). This time I wanted to let some other mothers in my life know that they were appreciated when they stepped in and used their motherly instincts to take care of me when I was away from my family. I speak of course, of the mothers I had during my mission. There were 4 or 5 of them. The mission president's wife (of course) a couple members, and a couple of investigators. These women, through simple acts such as buying my companion and me pillows after finding out that there were none in our apartment,or yelling at me to put sunscreen on when they saw I had been scorched, showed me they cared about me in the way a mother cares for her son. It was all but a substitute, and it meant so much to me at the time.
I decided to contact the ones that I could right at the moment, through Facebook, and wish them a happy mother's day. Looking back, again, I should have done more. Perhaps I'll contact them again and share what brought that on. However, I would like to share with you the experience that inspired this blog post. One of the mothers doesn't have a facebook, so I contacted her daughter instead. I asked her to please tell her mother I wished her a happy mother's day, she was one of my mothers on the mission, it meant a lot to me, yadda yadda yadda. Within one minute she got back to me, and said she had shown her mother my message. I then had a conversation through Facebook with the mother, through my little iPad.
It was a very special experience, but not just because of the conversation itself. I realized that where once men had to leave their families to travel half way across the world to spread the gospel for three years, where once thousands of saints had to walk through snow, ice, heat, constantly being threatened by wolves, mobs, constantly worrying about killings, beatings, rapes, constantly dying, constantly getting sick...(gasp!)...where once this was a reality, I can now instantly talk to my mission friends that are 4,300 miles away, through a little box. Wow! We really are spoiled. I'm not saying it's a bad thing that we have so much stuff. We just need to realize where that stuff comes from, and use that stuff for a good purpose. Every blessing we have, we have because someone before us was willing to suffer. Next time we want to complain about the broken air conditioner, our slow internet, or how the media hates Mormons, let's remember those Saints who walked across snow pretty much barefoot. Or those early Christians who were deaf from having nails kicked into their eardrums for not denying the Christ. Or those soldiers who had their legs amputated in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Or even people in the military now who are living in the crappiest conditions you can think of, fighting off not only the enemy, but also flesh eating spiders and lots of other crap. Or how about we make a constant effort to remember the drops of blood Christ sweat so we could all be comforted and have a chance for forgiveness?
OK, this first post is becoming much more long winded than planned, and I realize I was kind of all over the place. I hope it all came together, and I hope you don't take it as a guilt trip. I made a point to say "we," because I'm just as much of a spoiled complainer as the next guy, and I need to do better. I just wanted to share my mother's day experience that made me realize that no matter how bad things seem, there has always been someone who has had it much much worse than me, and from whose suffering I am the beneficiary.
Good night, and happy belated Mother's Day!
