Rose Bush of Life

In 2003 I boarded a plane in the Salt Lake City Airport in which I would catch a connecting flight in Atlanta then off to Sao Paulo Brazil. There I would spend the next two years learning Portuguese and teaching people of Christ for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. For two years I would spend bunking with a Brazilian that spoke only Portuguese.

As I was in a town called Bage that I arrived in, I met a missionary from Fortaleza, Brazil that I would spend the next 3 months with in my newly arrived shit hole. He was a little guy, about 5' 3" or 5' 4". He had a big egg shaped head and the humor of a comedian. We spent the first few days at home as it was a huge thunder storm and we were re-opening an area. Elder Nunez was his name. We had been sent there together known as the clown (Nunez) and the trouble maker (me).

In Bage the Stake President had been excommunicated the week before for getting the 19 year old neighbor pregnant and having stolen 50,000 Reais (Brazilian money equivalent to about $25,000 American Dollars) from the church. The ward I was sent to had about 4 active members in it. No members really welcomed us into the house as many had turned their back on the Church due to the recent events that had taken place in the town of about 100,000 people in about the same square mileage as the Ogden Valley.

So there we were, four days into our new adventure and Elder Nunez taught me one of the greatest lessons I would ever learn in life. He says to me "Elder Lindsay, It's been said our mission is like a garden of roses. Before we left we could look ahead and see all of the beautiful roses blooming ahead of us. During the two years we're here it feels like every damn thorn in that garden is poking us. Then after the two years we look back and all we can see is a beautiful bed of roses. Our mission is a lot like life. Full of different beds of roses and only when we stop to look around from above can we see the beauty of the roses."

The B Side To The Truth is there will always seem to be thorns in our life, yet in reality we are surrounded by a beautiful adventure and life is a beautiful bed of Roses. We just have to look from above.

Colton - discover your true'ness'