For some reason, it's a lot more difficult to openly share my faith in my everyday life with people I know and love than it was as a missionary, when people looked at my name tag instead of into my eyes. Maybe social media as a missionary tool was created primarily for people in my generation like me, who shy away from more confrontational forms of sharing belief.
The truth, though, is that my faith informs not just how I spend my Sundays, but how I live my life. I think that's what Elder Bednar was talking about in his talk: the way members can share their testimonies in day-to-day interactions, more and more of which are occurring online.
I think it becomes easier to share a testimony with a non-member when it stems from an accessible experience, rather than a Mormon-specific (or even religion-specific) experience such as a church meeting. For instance, I was recently reminded that in times of uncertainty, we can trust that the Lord has a plan that will be for our good. I had recently gotten engaged and the immediate future of our newly-born family was completely (and continually) up-in-the-air. We expected the company that my now-husband was training with to give him a full-time job. When that fell through, he applied with a good deal of confidence for another location. Again, what seemed to be a guaranteed position suddenly disappeared. Although frustrating, these disappointments gave us the opportunity and the motivation that we needed to begin to explore new options: further education for my husband. We found a graduate program for him in Texas and began the application process (for him) and the transfer process (for me). We flew down to visit our respective schools and put a down payment on an apartment. Although a less than ideal solution to our problem, we decided to take a leap of faith.
The day that we left our Texas trip, my husband got a phone call from the company that he had trained with. They offered him a position in a better location than any of the others we had considered. We weren't willing to give up on the idea of him getting a masters', but he found an even better program here.
I think it's easy to blame God when things aren't going well, and easy to overlook God when He sorts those things out. But by keeping our eyes open and by acting in faith, we can be confident in His guidance, His purposes, and His plan.
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