08/28/2022 — Sunday
Elder Santos Missionary Journal
Tonight’s dream was indeed a treat. And very fitting with Sunday as well, at least it ended that way, it started as a fantasy survival series where I was in India having to infiltrate enemies headquarters for secret documents that would ensure our survival in an apocalyptic world. Really, I don’t even know what has influenced me for that to come about. But for my mental, emotional, spiritual benefit and redemption, the dream I want to talk about is a much sweeter and important one.
While going to church, or after Sunday meetings, I found myself outside the doors of our church’s chapel. A young mother approached and suddenly called out to me, seemingly a single mother of a youth nearing his 12th birthday, soon to receive the Aaronic Priesthood and become a deacon. She was worried, she explained, about her child, his growth, emotional and above all, spiritual, that would come with this big milestone in his life. She asked me if I could give her child a blessing, of comfort and council, preparatory to the life lessons that would raise her child and guide his spiritual and emotional development.
The child, though, seemed unfazed, unemotional, so I understood and felt that mother’s worries and felt them as my own, as well as the weight of that responsibility. As she finished explaining, another mother walks out through the doors, with her child, barely or recently reaching baptism age of 8-year-old, bearing in his hands an open Book of Mormon. He starts talking to his mother, and with Scripture in hands, he starts explaining why he believed the church was true, referencing to several scriptures, that during my dream, the words felt so clear and obvious to my understanding that after listening to several of the verses, chapters and books the child talked about, I felt a strong, souls stirring confirmation that what that child said was true. I knelt down, nearly in tears, begging him to NEVER stop being who he is, NEVER forgetting his testimony, never giving up on the true everlasting gospel.
The Blessing
Then, at that moment, I knew clearly and distinctively what sort of blessing of comfort and council I needed to give to the other child. As the mother, the adjacent family and many other members came to be present for that moment, me and several others surrounded the kid and were preparing to give him a blessing. But at that moment, the bishop or branch president kept correcting my posture, hand positioning over his head. As I followed the instructions or corrections, and was ready to give the blessing, I felt increasingly distracted and annoyed by the noise of comments, conversations, gossip, and talking behind me. It just bothered me to such an extent that I glared at them; and chastened them, that moment, for that young man in my dream, was important, who was preparing to embark on a journey of responsibility, accountability for his actions, pressure to be a bearer of the priesthood, through good works and bad decisions he would experience and grow exponentially to find his position in the plan of god for himself.
After all that, as I went about to give the blessing, I stuttered because the initial part of the ordinance is calling the young man by his name. After that, I kept on struggling with the next words, and I only found out the reason why later when I woke up! It’s because I didn’t even know who the young man was or what was his name!
Younger or Older Is All The Same
As I woke up and pondered over this experience, I knew where to find my testimony and an answer to a question of mine, that I wasn’t even aware of it myself yet. How was my testimony in my youth, what is my testimony of the lessons I’ve been taught when young, and the things I’ve come to believe from a young age. Usually, in my understanding, I thought that my testimony only matured in my early years of adulthood. I kept wondering where was my faith at when I was young. And I can say for a surety, just as my testimony is matured today, not through perfect knowledge, my testimony back then had been the same, matured not through perfect knowledge, just a desire to believe that those things were true, and through a feeling, inexplicable of clarity in my mind and in my heart that it all just made sense. And I grow and further experience more elaborately over the same teachings from my youth, I achieve the same results from back then. A clear mind, and a grateful heart that I was taught in all this knowledge from a young age, and because years later, now as an adult and missionary, I’m able to confirm the truth taught to my younger self, and that it wasn’t wrong for innocently, and/or somewhat passively believing them. My youth shaped me to be who, and where I am today, and this person, testifies to my younger self that those are all true. And that, brings me peace of mind. Younger or older, the truth remains the same, only, the truth I understood 15 years ago, is understood differently today. But the source of truth had always been the same.
Kindly, Elder Santos;
Service Missionary, Boston Mission.
4 months, 14 days