A couple of months ago, I felt quite isolated from the gospel of Jesus Christ through my own neglect of studying it. I recorded a video message in this blog post, detailing how I felt swamped down by the world.
Around a month later, I followed up with another video message where I spoke of my efforts to start anew and gain more balance in my life by including more heavily, spiritual things.
Today, seemingly out of nowhere, I had the desire to listen to some General Conference talks using my earphones while vacuuming the house. Sounds a bit weird, right? Well, it does to me. I have never done that before!
For Mormons, General Conference represents the mind of the Lord as revealed through the medium of the Spirit via apostles and other general authorities of the church. It is an event everyone is eager to be a part of.
And I have spent years and years listening to talks given in such meetings, all of them very good and uplifting, but none seeming to be personal to me, as we are told can happen in some instances.
After all, I am just an average Mormon.
I have no spectacular problems in the church or in my life.
I have no pressing and immediate concerns, no desperation to find an answer to something that is bothering the hell out of me.
And then while I was vacuuming the house, I listened to Elder Neil L. Andersen talk about "Overcoming the World." Considering my little journey of the last two months in trying to balance the things of the world with more spiritual things, this arrived in my ears and heart as a personal message to me. He may as well have began, "Dear Mr. Horne..." I forgot that he was speaking to an entire hall full of people, that it had been broadcast around the world on the internet to church meetinghouses everywhere.
For the 15 minutes I vacuumed and listened, Elder Andersen was talking to me. Finally, a speech that meant something to me, that called out to my struggle, that echoed my circumstance. And right on time!
This speech has become a little treasure to me, an added help in my continuing journey of striving to get a better balance into my life, in straining to want to hunger and thirst after the teachings of the Saviour Jesus Christ, of making that a more prominent part of my life again.
