A little over a year ago I sold my old laptop on Ebay to a gentleman (and by gentleman I mean a good for nothing con artist) from South Africa. Shortly after I paid the exorbitant international shipping fee I realized that the confirmation email I received from PayPal was false and that I had just been scammed out of a partially working Dell Inspiron laptop and 60 hard earned dollars. I immediately began researching ways to rectify my situation. In less than 24 hours I had called Ebay, attempted to track my package through the BYU shipping office AND the campus accounting office, emailed the US customs and border control department, the US embassy in South Africa, the South African customs and border control department, and local government officials and mail service providers in South Africa, and called the United States Postal Service package recovery hotline. I was frustrated with myself for being naive enough to be scammed and was even more frustrated at the lack of voice I had. I was trying everything within my power to recover my property while fighting the urge to become a victims of internet fraud vigilante. I would have given my younger brother's left arm to just recover the shipping fees I paid. I hated the laptop I was selling and was honestly indifferent about that; I just wanted to be able to buy groceries that week. Some punk in Nelson Mandela's homeland was reaping the benefit of my string cheese, flour tortilla, and Nutella money!
My hatred for bureaucratic red tape was heightened as a consequence of this debacle and I vowed to take down fraudulent Ebay accounts for good when I found myself in a position of governmental power one day. I often wondered aloud why I didn't have a direct line to the UN. What good is the UN anyway if they can't help a normal global citizen out? How often do humans demand to speak to a supervisor or someone in charge when something goes wrong? All of the time. But even then you're only likely to get a lower level teenage manager or the shift lead at your local Target. You're never going to get to talk to the CEO about a problem you're facing or in my case, the leader of a country.
There is one situation in which you can communicate with the man at the top of a corporate hierarchy though; prayer. Heavenly Father is the ultimate CEO, government official, family patriarch, and general leader of literally everything. Why should I care that President Obama wouldn't answer my phone calls about my stolen property about to exit the US border when I was praying to someone much higher in the food chain than him? I can assure you that there aren't any angelic interns that listen to our prayers and then forward the important ones onto Heavenly Father. He takes his own calls and offers every customer assistance. I have seen the blessings of prayer in many different ways throughout my life. One of which being the return of my computer quite a few months after I originally shipped it. I have also felt the gratification of the supreme creator intently listening to every word I udder in gratitude, sorrow, frustration, and joy. He never puts me on hold. He never hires someone with a thick accent to talk me through solutions. And he never discounts my opinions, fears, and stories as irrelevant. He nods along, interjects, and fulfills his side of the bargain. "Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened." (3rd Nephi 14: 7-8)
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