Be Thou an Example of the Believers

This post is going to be me tooting my own horn, so if you don't want to hear it toot, you'd better just skip this one. This will be a large post, because I rarely toot my own horn, and I kind of want to write something like this right now. Believing in God was never hard for me. Believing in Jesus Christ was just as easy for me. Joseph Smith and his story took a little longer to understand, and I believe he did see the Father and the Son. Believing is normally pretty easy... Not necessarily always, but normally.
Oo, I kind of want to write some of the experiences I have had to shape my belief. Like I said, growing up learning of God the Father and his son Jesus Christ, I always seemed to believe in them. When I was 14 or 15 I started questioning my faith, my religion though. I didn't think it was such a big deal. My brother had fallen away from his beliefs around this time, and I was so confused at how he could have gone on a mission yet not believe fully that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was the one and only true church on earth. My faith was shaking and breaking. I then went to a fireside about the prophet, Joseph Smith at the Dayley's house. Here we learned a lot about the physical proof of the Book of Mormon being real, and I was like, "yeah, whatever. Cool. 65 days, that's way fast!" I started thinking back to all of my studying of the Book of Mormon and I thought, "What make me believe in this stuff?" I started to search, and I started to pray lots. After that point I could say, "I believe in this, this has made me happy, and it can make anyone that tries reading and praying about it happy."
When I was 17 my quorum was having a high adventure thing. One day of the trip (the whole thing was amazing, by the way, thanks to Brother Dayley!) we were told just to go out and do whatever we wanted. They asked us to try to keep it spiritual, but if that didn't happen, it didn't happen. Well it did happen for me. I remember just picking up where I had left off, in Alma 50s. Reading all about the war. Reading all about the Stripling Warriors, and I wondered to myself, would I have been that brave? Would I have stood up to that most numerous host of enemies? I thought long and hard about that (I also may have fallen asleep), but the conclusion I came to was "HECK YES"! We are facing that numerous host right now, and we will win! God's side will always win!
That story continued to be a huge testimony builder for me the next year when I went to EFY. It made me want to be one so much!

Anyways, back to the one liner. Throughout high school I feel like people looked at me like a Peter Priesthood. I feel like I embraced the role and kind of liked it. Don't get me wrong, I had lot of faults and problems, but I feel like I overcame most of them... At least pretty well for a high school kid. Anyways, my freshman year I was sitting in the basketball bus, playing a little Pokemon probably. When a kid, we'll name him Clint, came up to me and asked if I wanted to hear a song. I told him if it was crude, no, but if not then, sure. He put the earphones on my head, and he turned on the song... "My friends got a girlfriend and he hates that..."  I hurriedly took the earphones, while lots of snickering from the back of the bus went on. I told Clint thanks for being a jerk, and I went on to playing my video games. I never liked swearing, and I don't think anyone has heard me swear, ever (Not to say I haven't though, regretfully).
From then on I hope my teammates respected me for not ever swearing (I'm not sure they did or not, but they didn't make me listen to crap music anymore, plus they were all LDS too so I was always kind of confused at that). Sometimes some of them would make fun of me not wanting to do some of the things they were doing, but they got over it quickly, and I didn't really care I was getting made fun of. It just became customary to me.

Be Thou an Example of the Believers


My senior year, I was a big shot, not really, but if I was anyone else but me I would have been. I was a second year starter on the football team, I was the sixth man on our basketball team (and pretty consistent at that), I was on the Math team, I was in the top choir, the cutest girl in the school and I were best friends (in most people's eyes, dating, but it wasn't so in ours), I went to state in Track even with a bummed ankle (my potential was shot by me hurting my ankle during basketball, and I became kind of bitter about it, but it was mostly in my head and no one really heard about it), I had already been accepted to BYU, and I had my mission call to Frankfurt, Germany. Big shot :D. 90% of my high school was LDS, why would they need me to be an example of the believers. I still tried to be, and I felt I did a decent job at it. Again, I had my faults, but I tried my best. I kept working on my weaknesses, and I became a good person.
One Sunday I was sitting in Sacrament Meeting. A sophomore was our youth speaker, let's name him Jordan. Jordan got up to speak, and I believe his topic was similar to the title of this post. He started telling a story. He started telling a story about me... I had never had a story about me. Ever! I remember being shocked. Why would he ever tell this story? I was just a teenager, standing up to players on my team.
Jordan was on my football team. He said he had taken notice of me and how I never swore, nor had I taken up picking on the younger kids. With this Jordan said he was very appreciative of my example. I was very emotional. I couldn't believe someone noticed me trying to be nice.
When I was on my mission or afterwards... I don't remember if I was there or not, but this young man's younger brother told the same story. I will never swear in front of someone because two young men's lives were changed from it. I hope to be a better example of the believers, especially when I go out into the real world where it's not 90% Mormon around me.
I warned you it'd be a little narcissistic... I'll try to be a little humbler from now on.