"There are no coincidences. We are placed in each other's lives for a reason"
--- Elder Ronald A. Rasband (Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; 1951 - Present)
To believe in an omniscient God is to believe that God has a plan. He sees the end from the beginning. Sure, perhaps it can be argued that some things don't have meaning to them or don't make a big difference in the grand scheme of things, but some of them do, and God knows them just the same. He is aware of us. He loves us and wants us to be happy and make it back to His presence. Our circumstances are not a metric of God's love for us. He loves the poor and the rich alike. The way he shows His love comes more often than not through small and simple things like acts of kindness and tender mercies. I testify that God knows you and me and is actively interested and involved in our lives, through the big things and the small things alike.
**NOTE: If you wish to get in contact with missionaries of the Church to learn more, you can do so at https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/requests/missionary-visit
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BRIANDA
It was a typical cloudless summer day in Reynosa. The sun was high in the one o’clock sky of the canícula. Elder Scott and I had just walked away after trying to teach a man who claimed to be some kind of "bishop" or “prophet” (evidently one of the countless frauds; See "Falsehoods and Sign-Seeking") who was not only off his rocker but was extremely rude to us and took immense pleasure in mocking and arguing with us (See "Turn the Other Cheek"). Our entire morning had been unsuccessful and now we were in for a long dusty walk to lunch that would take another hour or so in the scorching sun to reach. My mind was racing as it so often did as I wondered what we needed to change to get better results and find the honest in heart. I was drained spiritually and physically.
Our spirits are low as we’re walking across this canal bridge. Suddenly, we hear someone call out from behind, “Elders!”. We turn around and we see this girl, probably close to our age, still, some distance away, racing as fast as she could up the dirt incline onto the bridge to stop us. We don’t recognize her but figured that she recognized us, the obvious indication being “Elders!”. We wait for her and as she catches her breath. She asks what church we go to. We tell her that we're missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. She asks us where it was. We assure her that it wasn’t too far away, but because hardly anybody used exact addresses in Mexico, we indicate the general direction it was in, towards the Soriana grocery store, which was probably the best landmark we could have come up with. Sure enough, she knew where it was.
She said that her name was Brianda and that she and her mom had been baptized into the Church a few years earlier in another part of Mexico but that they had gone inactive and wanted to start coming to church again! That's something that doesn't happen every day.
Sure enough, as often as her circumstances allowed, she started attending church again and we started visiting her and teaching her the gospel again, answering questions she had and introducing her to things she had either forgotten or hadn't learned the first time. It was a miracle! And it couldn’t have come at a better time when we needed a boost in morale the most. It was an exact 180 from our experience with the contentious man.
As we walked on to our lunch appointment after our first encounter with Brianda, I was reminded how mindful God was of us, two sweaty young Americans far from home who just wanted to help people come to the gospel, and how quickly our prayers seemed to be answered after we first went through a trial of our faith (Ether 12:6). But then it became clearer that God wasn’t just mindful of us but was just as mindful of Brianda. Like most people, she confided that she was going through tough times in her life and was looking for that happiness that the gospel brought her years earlier. God kept us with that contentious man long enough that we happened to be walking down the street just as Brianda was. Had we left any earlier or any later, I don't think we would have ever met Brianda. I don’t believe that that was coincidental. As a wise animated tortoise once said, "There are no accidents".
It is my testimony that God knows what is best for us and answers our prayers in His time. I have experienced thousands of trying times where I cannot immediately see light at the end of the tunnel but sweeter is the payoff after we have endured the bitter. Faith in Jesus Christ is trusting in Him, even when things don't seem to immediately go the way you expected or wanted.
Our trials are opportunities to make us stronger. They're a part of our purpose in mortality. I don't know all the reasons behind why God does what He does, but I know that He loves us. In my experience, I have often found that what appears to us to be undesirable hardships in the moment is an opportunity to grow closer to one another and with God. That's one of the blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ, one of the blessings of religion --- to knit us together and with God (See "One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism"). With the gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives, we need never feel alone.
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