Soster Blankmeyer: Grateful In Any Circumstances

Thinking back on this past week, it’s kind of difficult to decide what I want to write about. We’ve had a great week full of fun and missionary work here in Asker and there are so many ways I could take this blog post today. I originally planned to just hit the highlights of each day this week but after the spiritual experience that we had last night I would like to focus this entry on the idea of gratitude.

Earlier this past week we decided to visit a member in our ward who is the daughter of an older woman in our ward as well. While we were at the daughter’s house she told us that she would no longer be coming to church and that she would only like visits from her visiting teachers, home teachers, and us (the missionaries). While this was challenging for us to hear, we knew this would be even harder for her mother; so we called and set up an appointment to go and visit her mom on Sunday night.

The week flew by and pretty soon in was time to go and visit this mother whose daughter has decided to go inactive. We prepared a nice and uplifting message to share to try and help this mom during this time of need. Let me tell you, this woman is one of the strongest, most dedicated members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that I have ever me in my entire life. If I could be as faithful as her during my trials in life, I know I’d be able to take on anything. Literally anything and everything in this woman’s house pertains to Jesus Christ and when we showed up to teach her she was in the middle of studying next week’s Sunday school lesson.

This lady is incredible. We started to share our message with her and we just started to discuss how our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are always there for us to build us up and help us in our everyday lives. She then told us of an experience she had in Oslo the other day. She had gone down to Oslo to pick some things up with she saw a young homeless man begging for money. With tears in her eyes she told us how she began to pray for this young man and began to ask our Father in Heaven for forgiveness for thinking that her problems were that much greater than those around her. She told us how she began to be more grateful for all of the things that she did have and all of the things that were going right in her life. This woman really understands the gospel.

Just this morning I was thinking back on this women’s strength and dedication to the gospel and thinking how incredible it was to me that even though this women’s daughter, who means the world to her, has decided to stop coming to church, she’s been able to be grateful for all she does have. I think it was no coincidence that this morning I came across a general conference talk by Dieter F. Uchtdorf, who will be visiting Norway on Sunday entitled, “Grateful In Any Circumstances.” It is a wonderful talk and I would encourage you all to read it this week.

I would invite you all to think of how you can be more grateful this week or better express your gratefulness to your Father in Heaven and those around you as that will be my focus this week as well. Anyways, I just wanted to share an excerpt from the talk with you all. It says, “Everyone’s situation is different, and the details of each life are unique. Nevertheless, I have learned that there is something that would take away the bitterness that may come into our lives. There is one thing we can do to make life sweeter, more joyful, even glorious. We can be grateful. I just love that! If we can just focus on being a little bit more grateful we can have a happier life and who doesn’t want that?

Love,

Søster Blankmeyer