It's Gonna Be a Glorious Day

The harder I work, the luckier I get. Furthermore, I would rather be lucky then good. These are both quotes from Samuel Goldwyn and Doyle Brunson respectively, and both emphasize a particular intangible factor that just cant be accounted for in life and in anything we pursue.

Whether you believe in good or bad luck superstitions, there is no denying that random chance sometimes comes into play. I've been told this is the case and have tried to live my life by these two quotes for as long as I can remember because of the mindset it inspires me to have. Though I never really had much need to test out this theory, i've found that having a good work ethic brings unforeseen and sometimes completely unconnected advantages.

On this mission i'm serving though, it’s really been put to the test. Sometimes the choice comes up to continue to work hard even though there is nothing going on, or to just kind of let time slip away from you. One particular night, Elder Dye and I were walking through what appeared to be a torrential downpour. We joked that it was raining cats and dogs and whatever other barnyard animals you could think of! With nowhere to go and all plans fallen through for the night, we had been walking to some people that were closer to the apartment and who had shown slight interest towards the gospel before, but sadly had no luck.

They Need To Make Bigger Umbrellas

The clock seemed stuck at 7:23pm and we were drenched and likely putting our health at risk on that cold and wet night. We had a choice. We asked ourselves, "Should we risk getting sick and possibly hurting the work later in the week by staying out with nothing going on, or should we be obedient and diligent and keep pressing forward?"

I’m happy to say that after letting our jackets take 10 minutes in the dryer and changing our socks, we decided to go back out. Before going though, we offered a prayer that we might find someone who we could give a Book of Mormon to. Elder Dye is a man of great faith. I never appreciated him nearly as much as I should have during my first transfer, but he taught me many lessons about being led by the spirit and the business of miracles. Through his faith and our diligence, we received a miracle of knowing where to walk to catch someone outside who would take a Book of Mormon.

We walked the neighborhood he felt we needed to go, and there we found a man who was letting his dog outside. The timing was perfect... three minutes either way and we would have missed him. He took a copy of the Book of Mormon, and though I wasn't in Murfreesboro long enough to know what became of him, I know that that particular copy was meant to be in that home for some point down the road.

Even Storms Have A Silver Lining

Now i’m not saying that the gospel is all about luck. I’m saying that the more work and effort we put into things, both spiritual and temporal, the more often we will find things go our way. Consistent effort leads to results. Diligence brings forth blessings.

I think of it as if we were digging for buried treasure... you can get discouraged as you dig ten feet down, fifteen feet down, even twenty feet deep in the earth as you go without finding anything. But what if the treasure was at twenty-five feet? If you give up before you get that far, you're never going to get the prize at the end of it all and strike gold! The Gospel is the same way sometimes. I know that as we continually work hard and have faith to be dilligent that we can find the "treasure" waiting for us in ALL aspects of our lives.