"Let Your Light So Shine" Like an Athlete Talk

​Hello, brothers and sisters. I’m going to talk about "Let your light so shine". This comes from the scripture Matthew 5:16, which reads: "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." You may recall that, two years ago, President Thomas S. Monson had given a talk in General Conference about this, and linked it with another scripture, which is actually one of my favorites: 1 Timothy 4:12. This says, "...be an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity." Both of these make it pretty clear how to let this light shine: by doing service and being an example. But what, exactly, is this light?

For this answer, I decided I actually wanted to try reading a different talk, as well, and found one by Robert D. Hales from back in 2002, called "Out of Darkness Into His Marvelous Light". Here, he explains that the light we should be letting shine is one that "each of us brings ... to the earth, the Light of Christ." We know this by these scriptures in D&C 93:2--"And that I am the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world" and D&C 88:11-13--"And the light which shineth, which giveth you light, is through him who enlighteneth your eyes ... Which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space—The light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things..." I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty incredible to me. This light of Christ is literally from Him and is a piece of everyone and everything. It is what gives us life.

So that’s cool, but let’s go back to how we’re supposed to make the light of Christ within us shine. I think we hear a lot about being an example in church, but it's hard to think of the right way to go about it sometimes. Hopefully, by the end of this, what we're really being asked to do is a little clearer.

However, to do that, I'm going to talk about something totally random: the Olympics.

See, this talk that Hales gave was just a couple months after the Winter Olympics were held in Salt Lake City, so back then, it was the right year and time of year to talk about them, which he did a little bit of at the very beginning. I'll just read that for you: "Throughout the Olympics there have been many expressions of light, such as the Olympic flame; the child of light; and the theme, ‘Light the Fire Within.’ Perhaps the most memorable light was found in the eyes of the competitors themselves. But what moved us most was not the competition or the spectacle. It was the deeper truth these things symbolized—the source of the light within each of us." Okay, I'll be honest, I didn't really know what he was talking about at the beginning because I've pretty much never watched the Olympics, but I had a feeling of where he was going with it. The light within the competitors, the light within all of us--​ "Oh, maybe he'll continue with saying something like we need to exercise our faith like a dedicated athlete practices their sport!" Turns out the Olympics thing ended there... But what he said later still goes along a similar line as my train of thought, so I was getting close.

​Hales really​ continued on with saying this: "Light and darkness cannot occupy the same space at the same time. ... When light is present, darkness is vanquished and must depart. More importantly, darkness cannot conquer light unless the light is diminished or departs.​"​ What this translates to is that the light of Christ and the Holy Ghost, when present, can and will make Satan and all his different influences leave. What this is contingent on, though, is how strong the light is. The way to make darkness depart is to "learn to generate that light each day by believing on Jesus Christ and following His commandments". By doing this, you are also "learn[ing] to claim the protective light of the gospel as your own". On the flip side, Hales also said, “​Unless you are fully engaged in living the gospel—living it with all of your ‘heart, might, mind and strength’—you cannot generate enough spiritual light to push back the darkness.”

Alright, now let's pretend we all love the Olympics, we all love sports, and we don't hate working out. Not just that, let's pretend we're all Olympic athletes for a moment. The sport we've all chosen to work at, whether skiing, swimming, gymnastics, running--is very, very important to us. It is not just our career, but our life. Being a world-class athlete takes a lot of determination and dedication, and you've got to work at that sport daily if you want to compete. There's no "Nah, I'll skip out on practice on the weekends", because you can very quickly lose your progress the moment you take too much of a break. If you do, before long, you'll realize your endurance has dropped, you're forgetting what you're supposed to do next and how to do it, and you've stuck yourself in a rut. If your practice is infrequent, and you are not taking care of yourself, you are not at your prime. Without enough work, you can't be in the Olympics anymore. Without making sure you are doing your very best, always, the light within the competitors' eyes that Hales talked about fades away.

That felt like a thoroughly depressing thing I just made all of you Olympic athletes imagine, but it really does happen, in sports and in our spirituality. When we are feeding and exercising our faith and trying to do our best, we can maintain our testimony and make it stronger. We are making the light within us shine brightest when we live and breathe the gospel and strive to keep the commandments and covenants we have made with the dedication of an Olympic athlete. That also means we can easily dim or even shut off that light when we stop.

Notice, though, that people still aim for being part of the Olympics, despite the challenge that puts on their body, their skills, and their self-discipline. Why would they do that? Because they love what they do. Going through all the training an athlete of any caliber does, but especially theirs, requires a lot of love for the sport and participating in it. Being a spiritual athlete is a lot like that--praying, reading the scriptures, keeping the commandments, and overall worshiping God is meant to be how we show Him we love Him, and that we love showing Him we love Him. We don’t mind that it can be difficult to do what He asks of us because our love triumphs over giving up. Serving others and showing them how to love God and show that love, too, is worth a lot to people who have very bright lights.

​

I think that is the real key to understanding how you can be an example and let your light shine. It’s not that you're trying to look like a good person. Rather, you're doing things that show your love for God and that make you happy, and you're ​not ​afraid to let other people see that.

I remember at FSY last summer that Elder Salinas, an Area Seventy, had told us something that really stuck with me- if you want to be as happy as you were while on your mission, or going to a church camp, or whatever, then those things that you did so much of back then, reading scriptures and praying and serving, keep doing that. I find it true that realizing what habits make your day a little better and let the Spirit stick to you a little stronger, are what make you happy, and you're consistently happier when you do those things than when you stop, no matter what's going on in life. So, just like an athlete would hopefully practice their hearts out enough to show their light because they love their sport and it makes them happy, we should practice keeping ​the commandments and praying and strengthening our testimony wholeheartedly because we love Him and His gospel and we are happier when we do these things. We'll really let our light shine then.

I've known a couple spiritual athletes who shined their light bright to me. Like my mom- she wanted to baptize within days of meeting the missionaries when she was 19, and has held strong to the gospel since then. She later served a mission, wanting to go even though she was the breadmaker in her home, and even though she was essentially engaged to my dad. Luckily, he was willing to wait for her to finish the 18 months before getting hitched. She and my dad also strived to teach my sister and I the gospel and follow the prophets' mandates, like reading scriptures as a family and keeping the Sabbath day holy and keeping food storage. She already has so much faith and trust, but still strives to maintain it and grow.

I also had a Baptist friend in high school who was an example to me. She was fun and hilarious, and she strived to uplift rather than hurt people, and I was amazed when I saw her sit down at the lunch table, pull out her packed food, then do a silent prayer, right there in the cafeteria. She didn't feel embarrassed or try to hide that she was praying. I mean, that was back in Alabama, where people like to be more flashy about being Christians than Mormons typically like to be, so I guess that didn't throw other people off much, but I never had the guts to do that- I never even thought to do a prayer before lunch while at school. I really appreciated and respected her for that, and decided to follow her example. I became more determined to do prayers more often throughout the day, even in places where usually we'd say we shouldn't. I still do that because she showed me it's okay, and I’m glad she did.

I’d like to end with just saying that the light of Christ is real and letting it shine by truly loving Heavenly Father and His Son and letting your actions speak for that, you can really reach your potential to not just be happy yourself, but inspire others to do what makes them happy, too. It’ll also make it so much easier to fight off the darkness when you are firm in practicing and living the gospel like an athlete. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

(October 22, 2017)

Trying to Be Brave, Hanging with Middle Schoolers

Hello world!

For once, I thought I might actually get my diary done in a timely manner... then 5 weeks passed by. That's the worst I've done ever. I'm sad to say that's probably not gonna change in a long time.

A lot of the noteworthy things that happened this first week was meeting people, which is a great accomplishment for an introvert like me. First new person was on Tuesday- I was reading by the room for the Bio SI (supplemental instruction, given by TAs to help people review and understand anything they hadn't understood in the actual class; I already knew everything in these first couple chapters, but I went anyway in case there was something I'd missed after all), and another girl came by looking for the room, and we ended up chatting. Chrystal (I don't know yet how her name's spelled, so I feel less bad about using it) and I continued until we realized it was almost time for the SI to start and there was no one else waiting by the door too... and that's how we figured out we were waiting by the wrong door. So, ironically, it was a very similar situation to how I met Jacky in the last post. (I found out the next day that we not only shared the same biology class, but the same chemistry class too!)

Wednesday, I went to a talk/lecture by a scientist. Turns out this college is his alma mater, but now he works at Harvard, which says quite a bit about his credibility. He had some interesting stuff to say, so of course I took notes on the things that stood out to me. Afterward, I kinda wanted to ask him something, since he was here, but I just didn't quite know what. Nonetheless, I somehow got myself to join the line that had formed of people who wanted to talk to him, and ruminated on what question(s) I could ask. Meanwhile, one of the faculty who had attended started talking to me and the guy in front of me, who turned out to also be a freshman, and the faculty guy said he was really happy and impressed that we had attended, and asked about our interests and such. We soon made it to the front of the line, and the other freshman asked the scientist, "How do you know what you really want to study?" which was actually very close to one of the two questions I had come up with myself, so I just snuck into the conversation to hear the answer. He told us it was A-OK that we didn't quite know the specific field we want yet, and it was actually probably for the better since that meant we'd need to explore while here, and encouraged us to take a variety of classes and try to get in on research early. I then asked my own second question, based on remembering how he had told us about being in undergrad research himself: "Was it hard for you to talk to your professors to do that kind of thing?" because I really wanted to try to do something like that myself- probably next semester or next year, since as of now I'm still not really all that knowledgeable and useful for a lab or whatever- but had a hard time imagining myself actually doing it... How the heck do you do that?

He agreed that it was very hard, but he needed to be brave, remember that all the faculty are there to help the students succeed/achieve their goals, and just ask, and encouraged me to do the same. He'd pointed out I was able to get myself to talk to him, but that really did take quite a bit of courage for me, and I'd already started to feel exhausted by making myself be brave a lot lately, and knew this definitely wasn't the end of that feeling. Admittedly, I had the suspicion that's all he'd come up with advice-wise on the subject, but then he did two things I never expected- one, he challenged me to speak to one of the main faculty for biology, one of the major people he himself worked with as an undergrad here, and said he'd give me $5 if I did so. (Yeah, it sounded so bizarre to me, too.) Second, he pulled out one of his business cards and handed it to me- he didn't do that for anyone else, as far as I know- and told me to be unafraid to call him if there was anything he could do for me. Considering I was- well, still am- just a little freshman, and he lived on the other end of the country, yet decided he would want to hear from me (and give me $5) was... I dunno how to describe it. I remained a little suspended in disbelief the rest of the night, to be honest. I am kinda hoping I can take him up on both offers sometime in the future, though, and so have put up his business card and things he said on my bedroom door so I have that reminder. Since I was already doing that, I also finally put up my FMA and The Lego Movie posters, and formed Al's blood seal with red Bendaroos, a feat I am very much proud of. (P.S.- I've chatted with the fellow freshman, Nicholas, a couple times since then, since we tend to catch each other at Bio SIs.)

I met a couple more girls at that week's Anime Club (and found a fellow Fiction Writing classmate there, as well; I'd had the feeling since the first day of class that I'd like hanging out with her), and later went to a service club's opening social for a bit. I'm pretty sure I've already mentioned how I was hoping to get involved in service while in college, and this was the first step. This club, which I guess I'll call Tutoring Club, is where we can volunteer to tutor at K-12 schools after classes. I was nervous to try to do it, seeing as I haven't really had much experience with something like that, but I still wanted to try, so I got brave- look at that, had to do it again- and signed up for the middle school. Unfortunately, it really didn't work for any days but Tuesday because of the times of some of my classes... but I figured it was better than just not going at all.

I've gone every Tuesday since then, and I'm happy I did. I haven't really gotten to do much actual tutoring, actually, but I've been doing my best to help, and I've also been hanging out for the second half of Boys & Girls Club after the normal homework help time is over. As of yet, I still wonder if I'm acting more like an adult (AKA someone useful) or just like one of the kids, but I'm pretty sure I definitely haven't got the "adult" part down yet. I feel guilty about that, but the girls who work there apparently still like me, and I feel like I'm warming up a little at a time to the kids and how to talk to them. Something hilarious that happened the first couple times, actually, is that everyone thought I was just one of the middle-schoolers! (One kid there, after hearing the revelation that I was 18, actually went as far as to say, "No offense, but you look like you're nine.") Ah, how refreshing it is for people to still do that. (I recounted that to a couple different people, like roommates and my new lab group, and they all thought I was offended, even though I was laughing while telling them. They also tried saying stuff like, "Well, at least they said you look like an 8th grader and not a 6th..." I guess that's true, but do you not see the delight on my face? I'm used to this, and I love this, and I think it's the funniest thing ever.)

I'll mention the girls that work there (not volunteer) now, since I think I'll be talking more about them in the future. The first is in charge of the homework help, and I met her on my very first day. I think I'll call her Mak. She's planning to become an LA teacher, so I'm hoping we can help each other out with our English-related assignments every once in a while. She's really nice and chill, and was actually willing to take me home after everything (and to Smith's, once, when I admitted I needed a couple things, like quarters for the clothes washers and dryers in my apartment complex). The second is in charge of Boys & Girls Club activities, if I got that right, and... okay, I'm sorry, but I don't quite remember her name. I don't know why, but barely anyone refers to her by name at the school, and it's killing me. (Now that I think about it, it's probably because all the kids refer to all the adults as "Teacher".) She brought me home a couple times, too, and we even spent some time together last Tuesday going to her dog-sitting job and getting a couple free veggies at this thing they were doing at the college. Something we talked about during that time was the nonprofit organization she said she was planning to start up with a friend this December to help people who live in refugee camps in Greece (because she'd volunteered there a couple summers ago and was disgusted by the conditions). I'm gonna call her Frourá (according to Google Translate, the Greek word for "guard", since I was kinda thinking along the lines of how she wants to guard the refugees from further trauma, abuse, etc. when they just escaped from such a terrible situation). There's also the school principal, and the woman who is in charge of after-school activities in general, but I haven't really talked to them as much.

Since I've pretty much unloaded everything about Tutor Tuesdays thus far, I'll just finish with a couple other memories from them that stood out to me. One is that, a little before my second time boarding the bus to go to the middle school, my mom sent a text that they just felt a big earthquake, but everyone was fine. (As you may recall, she'd gone down to Mexico for the month to take care of her mom.) She called me when Mak was bringing me home the second time to assure me a little more that, yes, they were okay, though the text had been enough to assuage me. I knew earthquakes were relatively common in Mexico, so I hadn't been all that worried, though I imagined it was kinda scary at first for her and Abuelita, since she'd said it was strong. I'd had a reality check later, though, when I saw my sister post on Facebook about the earthquake and how she'd been really shaky for the rest of the day upon hearing about it, and it turns out that earthquake really was bad. Bad. The worst in years, and people died in it. Then there was the second quake, which my mom and Abuelita felt, too, and I'm so grateful that they and everyone else in my family were far enough away from the center of both to not be in real danger, because things would be so different now if they hadn't been. They could've died in the earthquake (oh my gosh, and it was the anniversary of the earthquake in the 80's my mom told me about, and I'm wondering why she and everyone else had to go through these), or at least been severely injured, like so many other people in all the natural disasters that happened over this month. Seriously, giant hurricanes and earthquakes and forest fires one after the other, boom boom boom, and it felt a little like the Earth was falling apart while I was over here just trying to figure out how to do college. Unfortunately, the string of bad stuff just keeps going, and I don't know what to do about it besides pray and donate a bit of money to the Church's humanitarian fund.

Last Tuesday, the middle school's book fair was going on, and (for once, since I'd never bothered at my own schools, from what I remember) I decided to buy something there. Though I was interested by a lot of books there (and took pics of those), the only one I was willing to sacrifice my wallet to was Wonder by RJ Palacio, the only book there I've already read. I raved about it a good long while in 11th grade (and got me to love "Space Oddity" by David Bowie), and I was so sure I could never not love that book. It was about $18, much like the other books (dangnabbit, why'd everything have to be a hard-cover, guys?!), but as long as I still love Auggie to bits, I'm pretty sure it's an $18 pretty well-spent. While hanging out with the kids later, Frourá had set up a painting project, and a couple of the girls ended up using remaining acrylic paint to doodle on their arms and other kids' faces, and I ended up joining them, too... Oops. I promise I tried to avoid the temptation, especially considering how I was wearing a whole lotta black and FMA for October 3rd (which I'm totally going to talk about later, trust me), but it was too strong for me.

I also painted a couple blue dots under Frourá's eyes and a blue arrow on her forehead (because Aang for the win).

(Side-note: Seeing these middle-schoolers with their dark humor and sass are reminding me that I was a whole lot like them at that age... Not as extroverted, obviously, but it's embarrassing to realize that even I was subject to the eccentricities of a 13-year-old mind. I can't decide if I should show them some of the stuff I used to watch when I was in middle school, since they'd surely like them as well, but I also feel like I shouldn't encourage that kind of thing at the same time? Ugh.)

I have sooo much more to say, but I'm gonna be going to ward prayer in a bit and just wanna get this post out because I don't want to put off putting anything up any longer. I'm gonna work on telling about all these past few weeks a little at a time, and hopefully I can eventually catch up and stop doing this to myself.