Baptism Dates and Real Happiness

I have been thinking a lot this week about happiness and the blessings of the gospel.  We met with an investigator this week who we have been working with for a long time.  When we first met with her, she told us that there was no way she could give up tea and no way that she could be baptized because that would mean she would need to give up tea.  We have been working with her for a while, focusing on those things that will build her faith.  This week we had an “ok, let's talk about baptism” lesson.  

It was such a sad conversation because she said that there was no way she could give up tea.  She said she believes that God and Christ exist and that there are things that she can live without but tea is not one of those things.  We talked about eternal joy and eternal happiness, but she said that she didn't believe in this happiness.  It made me so sad to hear her say this.  So often I think we look for happiness and say that we want to be happy but what we forget is that happiness is a byproduct of righteous living – not the reason that we live righteously.  Elder Wirthland said that too often we look for happiness as the end result, but what we should be looking for is to align our will with God’s and as a result joy and happiness come.  God, of course, wants His children to be happy, but He wants us to be happy as a result of becoming better people – not out of momentary pleasure.

We had a great lesson this week with another one of our more long term investigators.  She has been reading, praying, and coming to church for quite a while, but she is still insisting that she isn't feeling anything.  We invited her last week to bring a question to church.  When we followed up the next day, she said that she had wanted to know how to help her rebellious son and that at church in one of the classes she received her answer.  She also said that she received an answer from the Book of Mormon about how to deal with a woman who keeps asking her for money.  These were huge improvements as she is finally recognizing the blessings of keeping the commandments and the direct impact it is making in her life.

Shu-feng is doing wonderfully.  She passed her baptismal interview on Friday.  It was raining like crazy and our district leader lives in this really far away area.  I was very grateful that they biked all the way up here.  Her interview was great.  

Our lessons this week with Shu-feng were great.  We finished up the commandments.  She is good on all of them.  She was kind of concerned about not being able to buy food on Sunday because she and her family always go out to dinner.  She asked if this counted as buying things.  She seemed very concerned when she asked me this.  I wasn't totally sure what to say.  It was one of those moments where I was just trying to listen to the Spirit, and it was just kind of given to me.  I explained that yes it does count as buying things but that is a difficult situation because her family are not members but that it is one of those things that she can pray and ask Heavenly Father what the best thing to do in this situation.  She seemed really comforted by that answer.  I am confident that she will pray and she will receive answers.  She is so cute.