Monday, November 14, 2011

Begin and Begin.


Dear Mom,
I'll try to start to avoid cliche phrases at the beginning of my emails now and just get to the point. As a last: it's been a great week.

Elder Jolley's word for this week: "clinis" - clean. A combination of Tagalog and English at it's best. Malinis, Tagalog, and clean, English, combined to make "clinis." There you have it.

Every week seems to have a theme of lessons to be learned. This week, I've studied a lot about what President Sperry shared with us at our last zone interviews, last, last Friday. He actually shared with us about two economic theories (which made my stomach turn remembering economics at BYU): the "Theory of Diminishing Returns" and "Theory of Increasing Returns." The theories state that, with time, pleasure either decreases or increases with frequency. It's necessary to have a funny aside first.

When president shared the first theory with us, he told a story. And then he started over and told it again. And then he told it again. We thought he had lost it. But then he explained to us how it related to enjoyment level decreasing with the amount of times we heard the story. And then we discussed the opposite - an instance that enjoyment would increase with the amount of times we experienced it. So president asked for examples, and inspired, Elder Posadas, just to my right side, raised his hand and gave his answer: 

Drugs.

Can you only imagine? We sat in silence for the longest 30 seconds I can remember. I turned and looked at Elder Posadas with his squinted eye face that had "I probably shouldn't have said that" written all over it. And then... the room erupted in laughter! President so overtaken by the answer that he had to grab a chair and sit down to laugh, it was great. As for what Elder Posadas was thinking... well, I guess you kind of just need to know Elder Posadas to get his sense of humor haha.

 Alright back to the topic.

I considered the Theory of Diminishing returns this week, and how sometimes, we set up ourselves to live in that theory. This week, we worked even harder than our hardest, and for some reason, I just still didn't feel satisfied. There needed to be more - it wasn't good enough. The work needed to be perfect, and it seemed like nothing I could do was enough. I felt like a failure. It seemed like the more we worked, the more I set myself up to feel like a discouraged, and my enjoyment of the work went down, because I just felt like I couldn't do anything right. Regardless of any good I had done, it was out shadowed by whatever good I hadn't done or bad that I did do. A hard way to live. It didn't take me too long to realize this, and I realized I needed to change.

I thought a lot about my email last week, and realized with Thanksgiving coming up (in the States anyway), I needed to start living the season, and living in Thanksgiving daily. Doing that, changed nearly everything.

As humans, our minds have a great capacity to notice the unusual, but at the same time, the opposite is true. It seems that the more we see things everyday, the more we see them less and less. We lose appreciate for the simple beauties that the world and this life have to offer. The saddest part, is sometimes, we even look over the people we love. We overlook the good. We overlook the miracles we see everyday. But those who live in Thanksgiving daily open their eyes. They let themselves live the Theory of Increasing Returns by enjoying the things they experience everyday by living an attitude of gratitude. When I started to think about this, my view changed drastically. It helped me to see all the good that seemed to hide behind the bad. Yet somehow, I missed it.

I learned this week, that life is a lot like shampooing in the Philippines: lather, rinse, repeat. I find myself repeating at least twice everyday, because usually the first time doesn't lather up really well and get my hair clean. It's a lot like life. I made Elder Posadas a picture last week, that I'll have to take a picture of for you, that's a phrase in an exclamation point that says:

Begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin and begin again. Never give up.

When we live in Thanksgiving daily, we realize that we must begin and continue to begin until things get better. We can never give up. Being thankful helps us see God's hand in our lives in it's details, and realizing those blessings can only motivate eyes to stop looking at the bad and take the present to work for a better future. Thinking about this, I've learned to appreciate more than I have. Things like getting teary-eyed watching two young men that we found, taught, baptized, and now seeing receive the priesthood - or even in appreciating being able to teach "cross-dressers" and feeling the Spirit still testify that we are all brothers and sisters, as Preach My Gospel says, and that everyone needs the Gospel.

Life just tastes better when you're thankful.

Love,
Elder Corpuz

P.S. I got to play volleyball today! Elder Mika got some pretty good pictures of me attempting to teach (like I'm some kind of expert) Elder Posadas a proper approach. Afterwards, went with some members of the zone to get some stuff done at the mall. A nice way to relax and begin the week.












I also was so blessed to go on exchanges with Elder Macas this week and see many people I've grown to love in their area. If you can remember awhile back, when I talked about me being an "Am-Boy" and the old lady saying that she felt like I was hugging her with a song a sang, this is her, and the family that also thanked Father for giving them a "new friend" in their prayer.




Thought you might appreciate this one Mommy.
You can figure out what's wrong with this picture.