I remember as a young thirteen year old “man,” I was a member of the Washington State National Guard. You may ask, “How were you a member of the National Guard? Doesn’t a person have to be 17 in order to become a National Guardsman?” The answer, of course, is yes, but I was not a member of the church, I was not a boy scout, and I lied. I lied to become a member, and I also convinced my mother to lie in order to sign the papers that would make me a national guardsman. That doesn’t sound very much like a character building story. That part of the story was not, but as I attended the weekly drills, and as I trained with the guard during summer camp, I believe I did learn some character building exercises. I remember the training during the two week summer camp at Fort Lewis, Washington. It was the same training that a person gets when they are regular army and begin with their basic training. That is, for eight weeks, ours was only two weeks every summer. We did calisthenics, we marched, we fired our rifles. We went on forced marches; we had drills, inspections, and we went through gas warfare training. I was given no quarter, no breaks; no-one did anything for me—it was too hard to do their own. At first I struggled, but I was a tough kid, a survivor, and I did everything everyone else did and just as well or better. Why? Because I wanted to prove to myself that I was able to. I was the youngest, I was the smallest, but I was not a weakling nor one to give up when things got tough. Three years later, I was honorably discharged after three years of duty as a national guardsman with the rank of corporal. Was I a better person after completing that training in the national guard? I know I was, and I was glad that I had done it. But even now when I think of lying like that—it makes me cringe and feel a little repentant. I struggled, and so I like to read stories about people and things they do that causes them to struggle. The following story is about a sunflower that had to struggle to survive, and I suppose you might even compare my struggle as a guardsman to that little sunflower. Only if you wanted to.
The story: “My wife, daughter, and I moved into our home nine years ago, and we spent a lot of time and energy in the yard to get it looking like it does today. The front of the house has a wall along the sidewalk; the rocks appear to be just thrown up onto the dirt as if someone were in a hurry to finish. We did the best we could with what we had to work with and called this area our “rock garden.” Whenever we had leftover flowers or plants, Denise or I would stick them out front, just to bring some color to the area. I still do all of my own yard work, even the dreaded weed- pulling. Last summer I had reached the end of the rock garden and found a tiny little plant that I could not immediately identify. I knew I didn’t plant it, and Denise claimed that she didn’t either. We decided to let it continue growing until we could figure out what it was. Weeks passed, and as I made my way back to the mystery plant, it appeared to be a sunflower. It was spindly looking with a tall skinny stalk and only one head on it. I decided to baby it along and weed around it. As I pulled rocks from the area to get to the weeds, I noticed something unusual. The sunflower had not started where I saw the stalk begin. It actually had begun under a big rock and grown under and around it to reach the sun. That’s when I realized that if a tiny little sunflower didn’t let a big rock stand in its way of developing, we too have the capability of doing the same thing. Once our environment begins to see that we believe in ourselves, like that little sunflower, we can attain the same nourishment and nurturing as well. First, we need to believe in ourselves knowing we have the capabilities in achieving our desires. Like the sunflower, it knew it had the capability to overcome its obstacle because it trusted in the Universal Truth and had faith it would succeed. Stand tall like the Sunflower and be proud of who and what you are and the environment will begin to support you. You will find a way to go under or around your big obstacle in order to reach your desired goal.” That story was written by Tony Masiello
When a young lady missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was asked what the average conversion rate was, she said about one in one thousand. That person said, “Isn’t that awfully discouraging?” The reply was “It is character building.” There are a lot of character building experiences that we can have as we struggle through life.