Overheard from a missionary:

Our families are worth the world to us.
We are worth the world to God.

He is in my home teaching a new convert. She was baptized last Saturday. She has spent the last couple of days mostly over at our house.

She tells the missionaries that she likes it here because of the bustle.

What she calls bustle I call toil. Diaper changing, finding lost stuff, instruction, giving judgments, reproving betimes, showing an increase of love.

The missionaries call it the presence of the Holy Ghost.

I see that they are right.

I often tell missionaries that I like going out with them because of the extra measure of the Holy Ghost they have with them. I covet those tender feelings. They nod politely but look unconvinced. Where is this extra measure, when its just them going about their ordinary business and having their ordinary experiences? They do not see it because they are used to it. I see more clearly than they do.

Our friend the recent convert saw our home more clearly than I do. A good home with love and order is a little Penshurst, where the Spirit itself is one of the many visitors.

If our friend spent most of her free time at our house for longer, she would settle in, develop her little dislikes and demands, and experience it the way we do. But in a way she understands us better now than she would then.

The truest view of waters is on the surface, where the ripples still show what lies beneath, where the sun flashes on the water, and where you get the first taste and feel of the coolness as you dive.

The joy of the eternities in large part consists of bringing back that first freshness vividly and eternally to mind.