Bowling for the Spirit

The other day I was trying to go to Park City. I was trying to go to Park City because you get paid twice as much for a ride up there. Getting paid twice as much is a good thing. When the people in Park City go to dinner at the restaurants and need a ride and I can profit handsomely.

I made the fatal error of turning on my app in Heber City. I should’ve waited until I got to Park City because that’s where I wanted to go. For whatever reason I turned the app on before I got there. At least that’s what I thought.

It took me to the bowling alley in Heber where I picked up a borderline impaired young man and all of his bowling gear, then headed back to Orem. That’s kind of like one step forward and two steps back. All I could see was wasted gas and I was a little upset. To make things worse he wanted to stop at the State liquor store thus delaying my ability to get to Park City before the dinner rush. I was in serious jeopardy of missing the rush altogether.

I decided I needed to have a better attitude and I prayed for patience while he was in buying his liquor. Then we started talking about life and his experiences. He had lived in Alaska and worked at a hotel and bar there until just recently. Previous to that he had been a sponsored bowler by some company in Brigham City that I’ve never heard of and a professional tour bowler.  

I told him that being in the same car with him may rub some bowling dust off on me and that I might break 100 next time I bowl but I wouldn’t bet on it.  He laughed.

I asked him about Alaska and what that was like, he said he really enjoyed the people he worked for. I asked him about Covid in Alaska and he said that pretty much no one where he was pays any attention to it which wasn’t hard for me to believe.

I got a really strange feeling around this guy. I had a feeling that there was a battle going on and it had to do with the church. I got the impression that he was a member of the church and I was looking for an opening to bring it up. Then he gave me that opening.

He asked me if I liked driving. I told him that this wasn’t my normal job, that it was my Covid job but that I had come to really enjoy meeting people and talking with them. Then I told him that I believed that sometime God would bring me to people or bring them to me and give me the words to say to them through the spirit. He said, really? I said Yep! It seems that God cares about every part of our lives and will use us as his hands if we will be that. I told him a couple of stories from this blog.

Things got really quiet in the backseat and then he said somewhat apprehensively, I am a returned missionary. I served in Romania. I have been home for 4 years. I said, that’s awesome! Tell me some of your experiences with the spirit. He said, I haven’t thought about those in so long, it’s almost like they didn’t happen. Then he told me a couple of his stories and during each story I stopped him and said do you remember how that made you feel, I want to know how you felt. He started to get emotional.

I told him that I served at the MTC while he was there. I asked him who his branch president was, and I knew him. I saw a flash of recognition come over his face and he said, I think I remember you as well. You were always running around during devotionals. I said that would be me.

I told him that part of our problem in life is that we get to a point where we think we can handle things ourselves and we quit relying on God. The thing that makes a great missionary is when he realizes he can in no way do this himself but that God can do it and he relies on God‘s power and God’s abilities and God’s knowledge instead of his own.

I told him that I would always tell MTC missionaries this when they told me that everybody else knew more or everyone else was better or everyone else was more spiritual or everyone else had a better testimony or everyone else spoke Spanish better than they did. I would tell them that that did not disqualify them it made them perfect for the work. I told them that until they hit bottom and started looking to God for their strength, knowledge and success they could no way be his representatives and do his work. As long as they felt like they “had this” you could bet 100% that they didn’t have this. I told him that this is why missionaries struggle in the MTC and in their missions. They have to learn this principle. I asked him how many missionaries he knew that were great missionaries but couldn’t speak the language well. He said a lot of them I told him that those were the missionaries who recognized their inability and turned to God.

I told him that it was no different in his life now. I taught him about Nephi and the bow. How the reason the Lord allowed the bow to break was so that they would turn to him instead of their own ability, knowledge and power. Unless they turn to him there would be no way they can confront the forces arrayed against them whether they be natural or man-made. They couldn’t have built a boat, they couldn’t have floated across the ocean and they couldn’t have found a land that they didn’t know existed with their own earthly knowledge. What they needed to learn to do was turn to God so he broke the bow to enable them to learn this lesson. I said, no judgment here, nothing but love, but it seems to me that your bow has snapped and you’re turning to other methods and knowledge instead of God.

He said that’s exactly what had happened and then it’s amazing how easily it progressed to that point. It has been happening and he hadn’t realized until that very moment. He had never called into question his testimony but then again his testimony had never been questioned. He thought for a minute and then said I need to do better. I asked him how long it had been since he attended church, he said that about a year ago he went to church and then went through Alaska. Since he had returned from Alaska there had been Covid and no church. He clearly use that as an excuse to not only not physically go to church but also take a vacation from the commandments to an extent.

I told him that his ward was meeting now and that he should go. I told him he should go this Sunday and get back. He thought for a while and said “this ride is just what I needed. I needed a peptalk. I needed to remember who I am. I needed to know that God cared. I needed him to send me a lifeline.”

He told me that he was humbled that God remembered him, loved him and had sent him that lifeline. He thanked me and promised me that he would do better. He promised me he would go to church that Sunday.

I guarantee you that perhaps the greatest casualty of Covid will not be measured in medical terms but in spiritual ones. We all need to lift up the people who we see faltering. I was so glad God could send this young man a lift that day.