Our Lives Should be one Continual Advancement.

I was just looking at the picture of Christ's visit to the Americas, where some are standing on steps in the front. A child to his right-front. And most are standing in the background.

I often think about how wonderful it would have been to have been there for that visit. It isn't that I want to leave this time and go back to live then instead. But what an experience. How could anything in life second this?

When I was young (4-years-old) I went to a missionary revival meeting (having been brought up a Protestant). I determined to become a missionary for the rest of my life. Upon joining the church at 15 I had to be content with a 2 year mission. So when I went on my mission this was the ultimate life experience to me. But I soon began to feel strange in that all my life I had this large future ambition. Suddenly my future was empty of such a heavy divine purpose. The Holy Ghost said to me that my mission was God preparing me for marriage and other things. And that what he had ahead was greater than what I was then doing. This required a bit of adjustment of thinking.

When we were going home from our missions we all gave the traditional last testimony at the mission home. I remember saying that if at the end of my life I felt that my mission was the greatest spiritual experience of my life that would suggest that the rest of my life thereafter was a failure, as we should grow spiritually.

I have since had times that have exceeded my mission for spiritual growth. But I think we spend a lot of our lives waiting for something to happen: Christ's visit to the Americas re-enacted. Perhaps not quite so increadible, but we are waiting none the less. It is us who must lay the ground for the great things to happen. We have to learn to keep thinking big. And remember the statement "faith proceeds the miracle".