Description
Stories in this episode: Laric breezes through sleep deprivation games on the Netflix show "Awake," but the final results leave him wondering if God cares about what matters most to him; A lost set of scriptures devastates Mark, but how they come back to him years later is nothing short of a miracle; David struggles to adjust to his mission in the Philippines until losing a contact lens in the mud helps him gain a new perspective.
SHOWNOTES:
This episode is sponsored by Gospel Day by Day
Check out pictures of Laric, Mark, and David at ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel. you can also see a picture of the heart necklace and KaRyn's bangs!
TRANSCRIPT:
KaRyn 0:03
Welcome to This Is The Gospel, an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host KaRyn Lay. If you were to ask my husband Justin, what my biggest quirk is, he will easily tell you that it's the fact that I lose everything all the time. Our morning routine inevitably includes him calling my phone three or four times to help me find where I've stashed it in the 30 minutes between waking up and getting dressed. It shouldn't be that hard. Our house is not big by any stretch of the imagination. And still, I lose my phone daily. I find it under a pile of clothing or in the pantry on the shelf next to a jar of pickles. Don't worry, I don't eat pickles for breakfast– usually. Sometimes it's right in the pocket of the pants that I'm literally wearing. Losing things is just part of who I am, in fact, is such a part of me that after two years of living in Korea, I finished out my time in the Seoul military branch by giving a talk in which I cataloged all the things I'd lost while living there. Mostly things I left on buses or in taxis: a computer, an iPod, a hard drive with every poem I'd ever written on it. Books, glasses, a couple of wallets, at least two journals, countless pens, pencils, bobby pins, and papers and most devastatingly my well-worn mission scriptures. Usually, I lose small things, but sometimes every once in a while I lose very big things.
When I was in college, I borrowed a friend's truck so I could haul something around the streets of Philadelphia and I honestly can't remember what, but I planned to return it to him in the morning. So as a poor college student, I opted to park it on the street where it wasn't going to cost me anything. And if you've ever been to Philly, then you know that parking in that city is a hot mess, a nightmare with loads and loads of special zones and one-way streets and half cock signage that doesn't actually tell you where you can and can't park. So I did my best to read the signs and after driving in circles, I finally parallel parked on a side street near the corner that seemed safe-ish, and I called it a night. When I woke up in the morning and headed back to that same spot to take the truck to my friend's apartment, it wasn't where I left it. I mean, it wasn't where I thought I left it. I walked around six city blocks convinced that I just couldn't remember where I'd parked. But after the final go-round, it became absolutely clear that the truck just wasn't there anymore. I had lost a truck. So I girded up my loins, I found a payphone and I called my friend to confess. I mean, it really wasn't outside the scope of reality that I could lose something like this. I lost things all the time. So through tears, I explained that I didn't know where his truck was, at which point to my deep surprise, my friend started to laugh. He then made his own confession. He had hopped on his bike and written through the streets near where he thought I might have parked it, located his truck and used his spare set of keys to take it back to his apartment. I will never forget the panic that I felt of believing that I'd lost something of someone else's. And th