Opportunities Everywhere

Life is full of twists and turns, bumps and bruises, and really hard and really wonderful moments. We all know what difficulties we’re personally experiencing at the moment, but we rarely know what life challenges others might be facing. 

I remember when Marilyn and I lived in St. Petersburg, Russia for three years while we were serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we would often take the subway to get to different parts of the city. It’s a great subway system, by the way, with beautiful subway stations and it moves the population of 6 million people quite efficiently.

The escalator to the subway tracks is long and deep. It would take several minutes to drop over 10 stories below ground level to get to the subway train tracks. As we would descend on the escalator, we would often look into the faces of the thousands of people going the opposite direction who were riding the escalator back up to the surface. We would try to see if we could tell who was happy, sad, having troubles or had the need of help. It was generally difficult to be able to discern who was doing okay and who needed help that day. People often mask their real true feelings when they’re in public.

There was a time when we lived in the Midwest. Our local church congregation was full of, what seemed to me, well educated, prosperous and nearly perfect families. From all appearances, their lives were really well put together, happy and trouble free. Once I told the bishop of our congregation that he was the luckiest bishop in the Church to have such an amazing group of church members. It seemed to me that the congregation almost ran itself and didn’t need a whole lot of help or direction from the bishop. He looked at me and said, “You have no idea of what is really happening here. One day you will.” About 4 months later I became the new bishop of that same congregation. As I looked out at them during a Sunday church service, I realized that I couldn’t see anyone who wasn’t experiencing some kind of hardship or pain in their personal lives. That was a huge learning experience for me.

Sometimes we’re assigned to help others. At church we can be assigned to be someone’s “ministering sister” or “ministering brother”. Other times we just want to reach out and be there for others. They might be in our family, our congregation or just people in general. There are so many needs. There are so many needs left unmet. What can we do if we truly want to help others?

I have a very simple, yet profound suggestion. If we’ll do two things, we will know who needs our help and we’ll quickly learn what help they need from us. Are you ready for the steps? Will you give them a try if you know what to do? I promise that they work and will change your life as much as they impact the people you help. Remember though, you need to do this daily for it to really work.

Here they are.

1) Read the Book of Mormon every day. Read at least something from the Book of Mormon, even if you’re studying the Bible or other scriptures for your regular scripture study.

2) Pray and ask, “Who needs my help today?”

If you honestly do these two things and desire to make a difference in the life of others, you will receive thoughts, ideas and feelings about people you know. Sometimes you’ll have experiences with total strangers, but will realize later that those experiences were a direct answer to your prayer.

Let me give you an example.

Marilyn and I were in England a few weeks ago. I read from the Book of Mormon that morning and prayed to know who needed my help that day. It’s kind of become a habit for me. That evening we went to a very famous place that has a beautiful cliff that you can hike up to. We always try to find a beautiful spot on every trip where we can take a beautiful photo that will be a keepsake memory of our trip. I brought our tripod along to set up a great photo opportunity of the two of us together. So, we hiked up and found our spot for the photo. It was a beautiful spot and it was sunset. I got everything set up and realized that I would have 10 seconds (the camera was set on a timer) to run across nearly 200 feet of rocks and stop just on the edge of the cliff in time for the timer to take our photo. It was super windy and I was feeling like this was a bit crazy to make it to the spot safely in less than 10 seconds. Right at that moment, a man was hiking in the area and walked past where I was trying to take the photo. I asked him if he’d be willing to help us. He agreed that I was overly ambitious in my desires to get to the spot in 10 seconds and said he would gladly take the photo. As he walked up to my camera he said, “Interestingly enough, I own that same camera and I’m a professional photographer.” I was so amazed and happy. I told him were celebrating both our birthdays and our 40^thwedding anniversary. He told me that he was about to reach his one-year wedding anniversary, but that things hadn’t worked out and they were divorcing. He said he had come to this spot to hike and ponder because he didn’t know what to do. 

I shared with Bob (that’s not his name) that God knows and loves each of us perfectly and that He has a plan for each of us. It’s a plan of happiness and it’s filled with purpose. I said that because of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, we also will get second chances in this life and that I was confident that if he would carefully try to follow God’s plan that He would get a beautiful second chance. I promised him that was so. Bob had a hint of a tear in his eye and said, “Now I know why I came to this place today. Thank you.”  Well, Tom took the quintessential photo for our trip that evening. He and I also became friends. He and I continue build a friendship, which includes dialog about God’s Plan of Happiness. There was no coincidence in our meeting that day. We both needed each other.

I am convinced that because I read in the Book of Mormon and prayed and asked who needed my help that day that God sent Bob to come along our path at exactly the right time for both of us.