Dusty Corners, Shoveling Snow and a Christmas Revelation

So, if you can't tell, I think a lot. :) I have a slew of topics I have been pondering for years and years. I've learned that if I keep these questions in the back of my mind, often the answer will jump out at me at the most random times.

Case in point...

I love Christmas as much as most of the world. It is a glorious time. It is a fun time

It seems to be the one time of year enough of us allow ourselves to display enough love to those around us that there is a noticeable difference in the world.

And that is precisely my question about Christmas. Why don't we do that all year long? Why don't we spend as much energy doing good for all others during the other 11 months of the year, as we do during the month of December? Why isn't it more acceptable to be open about our faith in Jesus Christ during the the other 11 months as it is in December?

I've pondered this for years now, maybe even the majority of my life. Mostly because I notice this problem in my own heart and I want it fixed.  Because I grew up in a "needy" family and some nice stuff was done for us at Christmastime, but we needed help all year.  I would find myself wondering if people were helping because they really wanted to or just because it was Christmas. Why just at Christmastime?

So I was cleaning the house the other day and whining to myself about how I clean the same messes every single day. I have corners of my house that I have never cleaned. Not because I am lazy, but because I spend all of my energy cleaning the day-to-day living messes; I never get to the dusty corners.

This funny thought popped into my mind, "Cleaning the house while your children are still little is like shoveling snow while it is still snowing."

It seems pointless to shovel snow while it is still snowing right? It also feels pointless to clean a room, knowing that as soon as you move onto the next room, your children are going to mess up the room you just cleaned. (I will say, however, that I'm grateful to just have children, even if they do mess up the house. Their messes are evidence that they are there.)

I silently chuckled to myself, but then another thought popped into my mind, "What if you never cleaned because you thought it was useless?" My house would be 100 times messier. So, I keep plugging away at cleaning knowing that if I wasn't cleaning at all, my house would be in an unlivable state.

And then it happened. From out of nowhere came the Christmas connection...

"What if we stopped having Christmas?"

Ponder that one for a while. What I came up with, in a very teeny nutshell, is that the world would be in an unlivable state.Think about it.

Yes, maybe we do more good deeds for others in December. Maybe we talk more about Jesus Christ in December. Maybe our hearts are softer and more forgiving and more grateful during the month of December. Maybe we try to do more as a family and love more and make things more special.

But what if we never had a December? It would be like never cleaning the house, or never shoveling the driveway. The world would be in an unlivable state.

Maybe it is no coincidence that we start a new year the week after we celebrate the birth of our Savior. We just spent a month getting our hearts back where they needed to be.

We can start fresh with a renewed resolve to keep our hearts in the right place. And then, as human nature takes its toll throughout the year, Christmas will come again and we will realize it is time to get back to where we had wanted to be the year before and maybe this year, the resolve will last longer than it did before.

So on this Christmas night, after the gifts have been opened, the food has been eaten, the events of the day have come and gone...let us not finish with Christmas. As we pack away our Christmas decorations, let's not pack away our Christmas Spirit.

We can pack away Santa Claus, Jingle Bells and all of the twinkling lights. But let's keep Joy to the World, softer hearts toward those in need, the spirit of giving, fun family activities and believing in angels singing to shepherds. Let's keep the Wise Men and public programs where songs are sung about Jesus with no embarrassment. Let's keep peace on earth good will toward men.

“What is the spirit we feel at Christmastime?” asked Church President Thomas S. Monson in a 2009 Christmas devotional. “It is His spirit — the spirit of Christ."

 Along with his two counselors in the First Presidency, President Thomas S. Monson wrote, “There is no better time than this very Christmas season for all of us to rededicate ourselves to the principles taught by Jesus Christ. It is the time to love the Lord our God with all our heart and our neighbors as ourselves. This joyful season will bring to each of us a measure of happiness that corresponds to the degree in which we have turned our minds, feelings and actions to the spirit of Christmas. … Let [this] be a time of forgetting self and finding time for others. Let it be a time for discarding the meaningless and for stressing true values. Let it be a time of peace because we have found peace in His teachings. We testify of the living reality of our Lord and Savior, even Jesus Christ. He is indeed ‘the way, the truth, and the life’ (John 14:6).”

Peace is found at Christmastime and it can be carried with us throughout the year. Even if we each just did one more nice thing next year than we did this year...can you imagine the good we can do? Can you imagine the peace we can bring to this earth if we keep trying and don't give up?



Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. Peace comes from one source...the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ.

I have hopes for the coming year. But even in those hopes, I am aware of my weaknesses and flaws. I will make mistakes. I will have to pick myself up and start all over again and again and probably again and again. But I know this (because I'm learning from experience)...

As the Inn Keeper might have sung in describing how he overcame his decision to not let Joseph and Mary have a room that first Christmas night...

"He never would condem me,

I did that all on my own.

he offers His forgiveness

and ever since then, I've known,

He lets us choose 

each hour of each day

if we'll let Him in to stay.

Let Him in

He forgives. He guides. He listens. He understands. He builds. He saves. He atones. He advocates. He lives. He LOVES.

He's even with you when you are cleaning your house. Maybe I can work harder at getting to some of those dusty corners this year. Maybe. :)

Jesus is the reason for the Christmas season - and the reason why we can have and enjoy every other season as well.

What Shall We Give?

The following movie, as well as the three movies following this post, made me stop and think..."What shall I give?"

I hope they can inspire someone else as well.

Drop the "mas" of the word Christmas and what do we have? Christ - The Spirit of Christ is love. Our lives can be so much more about Him in all that we do every day of the year.

I think we feel differently at Christmas because, as a collective whole, we allow ourselves to be more giving, more forgiving, more caring and more loving at this time of year. Love is a powerful thing. I believe it quite possibly is an actual, tangible power. I believe that if our spiritual eyes were opened, we would be amazed at the healing, uplifting, inspiring, cheering, building, creating, forgiving power of love.

So at Christmastime when so many of us are concentrating on this power, miracles take place. There is strength in numbers. Love is more powerful in numbers. Why did our Savior say so often, "Love one another" ?

What shall we give? Anything that has to do with loving, forgiving, caring or giving. These are all gifts fit for a King - THE King.

Wise Men Still Seek Him

The Spirit of Christmas

Christmas in the Vinyard

A Gift to the World

Click the links below to watch these beautiful and heart touching videos

An Angel Foretells Christ's Birth to Mary

Mary and Elisabeth Rejoice Together

Mary and Joseph Travel to Bethlehem

Shepherds Learn of the Birth of Christ

The Christ Child Is Presented at the Temple

The Wise Men Seek Jesus

The Christmas that Changed My Life

As a full-time missionary, I was assigned to serve in the California Fresno Mission. I was also assigned to learn to speak Lao, in order that I might help the refugees from Laos. These people had fled their communist country during the Vietnam war and waited in refugee camps in Thailand for their chance to make a new life somewhere else. Because there were no other sister missionaries who spoke a Southeast Asian language in the mission, I also had the honor of working with Cambodian, Hmong, Thai and Mien people as well.

 I had no idea what a tremendous blessing it would be to mingle with and learn from these beautiful people, each with their own heart wrenching stories of how they fled from the homes they loved.

I arrived in Fresno, California two weeks before Christmas, December 1993. A lot of missionaries become very homesick at Christmas time. I missed my family, but I wasn't necessarily homesick, maybe more apprehensive and nervous about the exotic language I had just been trying to learn for the past two months in the MTC. I wanted to be obedient and hard working. I wondered if I was up to the task.

Little did I know that arriving at Christmas time would be the perfect beginning of a beautiful 18-month soul-stretching and life changing experience.

The Lao people are Buddhist and do not believe in Jesus Christ. I cannot count how many times I told someone that "No, Jesus Christ is not the American Buddha" or that His native tongue, when he was living on the earth, was not English. I repeatedly taught that He was much much more than just an historical figure. He was truly a new concept for most of them.

Since it was so close to Christmas, my wonderful trainer had the inspired idea to ease me into the language and teaching by doing an activity which has left a powerful impression on my heart even to this day.  She had ordered several copies of this Nativity picture.

 We took these pictures and went from house to house teaching the story of the Nativity to people who had never heard it before. Many of the people whose houses we entered, had Christmas trees but had no idea the meaning of it all. They just knew it was the American tradition. The Lao children wanted to join in the fun and so their parents obliged - never knowing the significance of that first Christmas morning.

What an experience! The simple story of the birth of Jesus was a revelation to many. I could see the light in people's eyes as they felt the truth and knew it. My heart was touched every single time.

But it only got better from there...my inspired mission president challenged each zone of missionaries to do as much service as possible in the week before Christmas. Of course, teaching discussions was our number one goal, but our zone leader found some great ways for us to do other service that week.

I will share one...

A member of the church in Fresno ran a Christmas tree lot. He told the Elders that we could have any trees which were left over on his lot on Christmas Eve.

Then the Elders found a willing man with a big truck to haul those trees around as we took them to needy families in our wards. As missionaries we didn't have much money, but we had purchased strands of candy canes, tinsel, and present bows for each family to use to decorate their trees.

Even as I am typing this right now, 18 years later, I can still feel the rush of joy that filled our hearts as we entered each unsuspecting home. The children cheered. The mothers cried. Hearts were softened. The love of our Savior was tangible. A group of 20 young men and women forgot about themselves and their longing for home that night. Christmas, and life for that matter,  just couldn't get any better in those moments.

My companion and I went back to one of those homes the next day, Christmas Day. This sweet Lao family consisted of a dad and three young children. We had been teaching them about the Gospel of Jesus Christ since I had arrived in California.

I will always remember what I saw as we entered their apartment. Of course, this family who had never celebrated Christmas before, didn't have a Christmas tree stand. So the tree we had brought them the night before was just leaning in a corner of their very small apartment. On the tree was the strand of candy canes (still in their packages), the present bows, and some colorful yarn. Right in the center of the tree, right where it belonged, was this picture which we had given them a few days earlier...

This family, who's cultural traditions do not teach of Jesus Christ, who had just learned the real "reason for the season", this humble little family with nothing of worldly wealth, understood what Christmas is all about.

In 1 Nephi 11:12, Nephi is shown in vision Mary bearing the baby Jesus in her arms. Then an angel basically asked him if he understood what he saw and what he had been taught. Nephi says,

"And I answered him saying: Yes, it is the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men; wherefore, it is the most desirable above all things. 

"And he [the angel] spake unto me, saying: Yea, and the most joyous to the soul".

Those words describe the feelings I felt during those first two weeks of missionary service. Those words describe what I felt while teaching family after family the true meaning of Christmas. Those words describe how I felt as I left a sweet Lao family's home on Christmas Day having felt an outpouring of our Savior's love in their little apartment.

It was most joyous to my soul!

and I've never been the same.

(If you have a child on a mission, or know a full-time missionary, send them $10 - or more - and tell them to spend it on a needy family in their area. I believe this will curb any homesickness they might be feeling.)


Author's note: When I was 21-years-old, I chose to take a break from college and work to serve an 18 month full-time mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. To learn more about what this means, click on this link Missionary Work. There is much about a full-time mission that can be confusing to those who do not know the facts. I have written this post several times, including facts that those who may not belong to the LDS Church may not understand about missions. I do not want to take for granted that all the nuances of mission life are understood by anyone who may read. BUT all of those little facts made each draft so long that I do not believe anyone would read long enough to get to the good part. So, I have decided to just write my experience from a missionary's point of view. If you have questions please feel free to contact me, or maybe you might know a member of the LDS Church who could help you understand more. To request that missionaries come to your home, follow this link Meet With Missionaries