A Different Approach to Circumstances

I reread a story this morning that has had a tremendous impact on me.   It's a story Elder David Bednar relates from the journal of Daniel W. Jones titled Forty Years Among the Indians during a BYU Devotional speech he gave on October 23, 2001. 

"Game became so scarce that we could kill nothing.  We ate all the poor meat; one would get hungry eating it.  Finally it was all gone, nothing now but hides were left.  We made a trial of them.  A lot was cooked and eaten without any seasoning and it made the whole company sick.  Many were so turned against the stuff that it made them sick to think of it...
"Things looked dark, for nothing remained but the poor raw hides taken from the starved cattle.  We asked the Lord to direct us what to do.  The brethren did not murmur, but felt to trust in God.  We had cooked the hide, after soaking and scraping the hair off until it was soft and then ate it, glue and all.  This made it rather inclined to stay with us longer than we desired.  Finally I was impressed how to fix the stuff and gave the company advice, telling them how to cook it; for them to scorch and scrape the hair off; this had a tendency to kill and purify the bad taste that scalding gave it.  After scraping, boil one hour in plenty of water, throwing the water away which had extracted all the glue, then wash and scrape the hide thoroughly, washing it in cold water, then boil it to a jelly and let it get cold, and then eat with a little sugar sprinkled on it.  This was considerable trouble, but we had little else to do and it was better than starving."  (p.81)

Daniel Jones goes onto say that they asked the Lord to bless their stomachs and adapt them to this food.  In other words, he did not pray that his circumstances would be changes, but he prayed that he would be strengthened to deal with his circumstances.

There will be numerous times as we build Esperanza that we will wish that we could change certain circumstances but it might be wise for us to learn a lesson from this story of Daniel Jones---and seek to be strengthened to deal with the circumstances rather than murmur because the circumstances aren't what we would desire.