My birthday of 38 years!

I am 38 years of age.  I have learned lots over the years.  I had a great time celebrating my birthday with friends and family.  I look forward to see what this year will bring me. 

For those who never served a mission as a young adult should still receive our love and friendship.

Missionaries are those who are sent out to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world.  They are young men and women who give up their lives at home to served a full time mission.  Along with that they also give up going to college, pursuing their career, hobbies, vacation, friends, and family.  After serving a mission they are welcomed back home and continue on either finding a career, going to college, or getting married.  The spiritually is improved and have learned a great deal of other ways of learning to live with another person or two 24/7. 

The other side of the coin of this is those who have the opportunity to go out and served the Lord, but for whatever reason they decline the offer and usually shunned for doing so.  They go about their lives as any other young single adult would do.  Continue on their career, hobbies, marriage, etc. to figure out what they want to do. 

I served a mission for 2 years and am forever grateful that I did.  I learned lot from serving my mission and found great missionaries to be my friends for life.  I could have said no I don't want to, but I didn't.  Though along the way I have learned of others who decided not to do for whatever reason.  I would like to say I still love them as a brother or sister of God.  They are still as human as we are.  They will still go to heaven like we will.  They should not be shunned for not going on a mission.  They can't go back in time and decide to serve a mission at a young age.  They still have the opportunity later in their life with a spouse, if they get married, to serve a couple mission.  Yeah its not as good as a young adult mission, but its still serving one.  They will still get the blessings for doing so.  The Lord knows their hearts and desires.  He will not take their agency away just because they decline on not serving a mission. 

Those who don't serve a mission while they were young still deserve our love and respect as neighbors, friends, and as a child of God.  Treat them just as you would treat them as one who did serve a mission. 

Stand up to those who we are afraid of.

There are those type of people that torment us and because of that they have the advantage that they can do whatever they want to scare the wits out of us.  The more that we are afraid of that person the more they will maintain their presence of scaring us.  The only way to be not afraid of them is to stand up to them and show courage that we are not afraid of that person.  Then we have the advantage on our side and for that person now have no more reason to scare us and will leave us alone. 

Take the story David and Goliath.  There was the Israelite army against this big huge giant named Goliath.  He was huge compared to the regular human size.  He would traumatize the Israel army for several days saying mocking God and saying how insignificant we were compared to him.  On the third day of this Goliath asked to send out someone that would be willing to fight him.  The leaders discussed on who to send.  David told them that he would stand up to this Goliath.  They were bit afraid to send out a young boy to do an older gentlemen job.  Though sense no one else was willing to do it, David went out the next day to face Goliath.  They gave him armor to defend himself.  David was too young and not fit to wear the armor and so David took off the armor.  He went up to face Goliath and as soon as David got up there, Goliath laughed in saying that they send this young boy to fight him.  David knew what had to be done.  He had a sling with him and was told by the Lord to get a stone to put inside his sling.  David got a stone to put into his sling and swung it around above his head several times and let the stone go.  The stone left the sling and hit Goliath straight in the forehead.  He fell down backwards, dead as a doornail.   David then went up to the giant and sliced off his head and showed the rest of Goliath's army that the giant was indeed dead.  This scared the giants so much that he fled. 

Now had David or the rest of the Israel army, not faced Goliath or ran away from this big bully, Israel would have been in lot of bad stuff.  Instead someone stood up to this bully and faced him with courage and without fear.  This is the way we need to face the people who scare us.  Not to the extreme that we kill them, but to the point that we are not afraid of them. 

In our community, schools, work places, families, etc.  let us stand up to those who bully us and tell them that we are not afraid of them.  Strength in numbers is better than being the only person being tormented. If you know a friend or a family member that is being tormented help them to stop the bully. 

                            We need to stand up to bullys!