Serving Others

With all of the terrorist attacks, wars, corrupt governments, and everything else that is going on in the world, it is hard to stay positive and not want to give up on humanity.  Where you have to change your focus to is to all of the service and good things that humanity is doing for each other.  

Something that we covered in our lesson this week was that of service.  Not just any service, but doing the Lord's service. In The Book of Mormon, there was a king named Benjamin that was the ultimate example of service.  He spent his days not only being their king, but a man that worked along side his people and served them.  He wants us, though, to remember who we are really serving when we serve each other.  He is quoted in the book of Mosiah chapter 2 verses 16-17 saying: 
"16  Behold, I say unto you that because I said unto you that I had spent my days in your service, I do not desire to boast, for I have only been in the service of God.
17  And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God."  

As one that has been through some hard times, I know that there are people out there that are truly God's angels here on Earth.  Me, my husband, and my children were living in Houston, TX at the time that Hurricane Ike had hit.  We were far enough inland that we didn't have to evacuate, but we still didn't know what we were going to face.  We decided not to evacuate and to stick it out.  It was a good thing that we stayed.  Our roof started leaking early on and were able to deal with some of the water that was coming in, but not all of it.  Because of the water that had come in, we ended up with some interior damage.  We also had a huge pine tree in our front yard that, thankfully, fell the opposite way of our home.  There were many, many people that got hit a lot worse than we did, but we were still poor college students that really didn't have the means to make up the difference of what the insurance didn't cover.

After that horrible event, I saw what humanity could really do, how good people really were.  Our neighborhood came together and had huge block parties so, that we could all share the food that was going to go bad since all of our power was out.  Our neighbors got to work and cut up our 30 ft. pine tree that was laying in our front yard.  Members of our church took turns fixing each others roofs, yards, dry wall, carpets, and all of the damage that occurred to our homes.  Charity was being shown all over Houston and I could feel the Lord's love.  

It was not a fun thing to go through and I wish that we wouldn't have had to deal with all of the headaches that followed.  I am glad that I was there though because I got to see, first hand, that there is good in the world.  We all bore each others burdens the days and months that followed that hurricane. There was no rich and poor, black or white, or any other divisions, there was just the pure love of Christ being shown.  The main thing that I got to see, first hand, there in Houston, TX was service.