Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Passion trumps fear


First day at the mtc.
I learned a little this weekend. I thought I would share, but in order to do it we need to take a little journey through time. So lets jump in a time machine and go! We are going back almost 2 years ago..Remember this…. Glossophobia… It was my last time to speak in church pre.mission. I got up front and completely froze.. No thoughts were in my brain, therefore no words where leaving the mouth. I ended up only speaking for maybe 2 minutes probly less and was completely embarrassed. At the time I blamed this disaster on my fear of public speaking…
My MTC district
Now lets jump ahead a couple months.. I am in the MTC  and we are having a learning activity with our whole zone. There is where one teacher teachings all of us something and then we practice it. Well this particular day we learned about how we need to teach the gospel with excitement and with passion! For the practice we all had to think of something we LOVED, our most favorite thing in the whole world then we had to talk about it with our partner. Now the point was that when we spoke about this thing we loved we automatically had more energy in our tone, in our face, we didn’t have to think about what we wanted to say or how to say it. We needed to make the gospel and teaching the gospel our passion so that we could teach it with energy and excitement.
Now lets jump ahead a year and a half. Im home. Im speaking in my home ward. See missionaries always have to speak right before they leave like a goodbye, then again when they get home, a welcoming. Well this talk was about 187.6% different from the first. At first I was nervous, but as I stood up in front of everyone and started talking every single one of my nerves vanished, the butterflies in my stomach flew away, I wasn’t thinking about how people were looking at me, or my face getting red, or even worried about what I would say. (although I was thinking about how to say certain words in English instead of Spanish), All I could feel was a love for this Gospel that I have, a love for my Older Brother and Savior, Jesus Christ, a love for Chile and the people I met there, and an excitement to share it with everyone! This time around I wasn’t hoping that the time would fast quickly, but I could have stood up there all day talking.

Just my favorite picture of all time
I had the opportunity Sunday to give a 2nd talk at my Dads church. Which I fully embraced, Im down for any excuse to talk about Chile, my mission, and this Gospel. But on the drive home, I thought back to that terrible talk almost 2 years ago, and the change that happened to me, then I thought about Hermano Richards and his mtc lesson about passion, and then I realized. That was the change. It wasn’t necessarily that I became more comfortable talking in front of people, or that I gained confidence, although that is a part of it, but more while on the mission I truly developed not only a love, but a PASSION for the Gospel, and for the church. It really became a part of me,. I came to realize that without Christ I am nothing, that with Him I can make it through anything, that this Gospel gives us the ability to change and become more like Him and one day live with Him again, and that now in this life we need to be following His commandments and following Him, which will bring us happiness.
I never had that feeling of love for the church before, it was just always just kidna a thing I did always, and that one day at the mtc learning about sharing with passion I wasn’t sure if I would ever get there. Pretty sure that passion is my favorite souvenir that I brought home from Chile, and probly the most eternal rewarding too.
So maybe I don’t quite have a fear of public speaking….well I have a class come fall so I guess we shall see.

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