Que pasa mufasa
Well nothing really changed here with transfers as far as my companion
and our assignment, but what did change is that we only have two other
missionaries in our district who weren't in it before.
IF ANYONE HAS ANY GOOD IDEAS FOR FAMILY HOME EVENINGS THAT ARE FUN
PLEASE SEND THEM TO ME THIS WEEK IF YOU CAN.
Spiritual aspect of this email. A teacher asked me to share what my
patriarchal blessing meant for me this Sunday. As I began explaining
it, a scripture came into my head, and the spirit gave me some
thoughts I had never had before. I would love to share a few of them.
In Ether 12:27 it says
27 And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I
give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is
sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they
humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make
weak things become strong unto them.
I believe that the things we read about in our patriarchal blessings
are the blessings we can obtain as we learn to trust in the Savior,
and overcome our weaknesses. As we overcome those weaknesses, we find
our strengths. We fulfill our divine potential and are blessed in that
process with strengths that originated from what we once couldn't do
in our lives. It really does require a lot of humility too. To get
those blessings, we have to recognize the weaknesses we have that
maybe we don't like recognizing. For example, maybe we get offended
easily, or we aren't good at forgiving others. Yet, when we humbly
think about it, we can improve, and with that improvement, we are
blessed. We have a hint of those blessings from our patriachal
blessings.
Another thing I wanted to share from this week is a talk that I have
been reading all week. It's about bearing our trials, and it helped
me, hope it helps you.
Mountains to Climb
By President Henry B. Eyring
If we have faith in Jesus Christ, the hardest as well as the easiest
times in life can be a blessing.
I heard President Spencer W. Kimball, in a session of
conference, ask that God would give him mountains to climb. He said:
“There are great challenges ahead of us, giant opportunities to be
met. I welcome that exciting prospect and feel to say to the Lord,
humbly, ‘Give me this mountain,’ give me these challenges.”
My heart was stirred, knowing, as I did, some of the challenges
and adversity he had already faced. I felt a desire to be more like
him, a valiant servant of God. So one night I prayed for a test to
prove my courage. I can remember it vividly. In the evening I knelt in
my bedroom with a faith that seemed almost to fill my heart to
bursting.
Within a day or two my prayer was answered. The hardest trial of
my life surprised and humbled me. It provided me a twofold lesson.
First, I had clear proof that God heard and answered my prayer of
faith. But second, I began a tutorial that still goes on to learn
about why I felt with such confidence that night that a great blessing
could come from adversity to more than compensate for any cost.
The adversity that hit me in that faraway day now seems tiny
compared to what has come since--to me and to those I love. Many of
you are now passing through physical, mental, and emotional trials
that could cause you to cry out as did one great and faithful servant
of God I knew well. His nurse heard him exclaim from his bed of pain,
“When I have tried all my life to be good, why has this happened to
me?”
You know how the Lord answered that question for the Prophet
Joseph Smith in his prison cell:
“And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of
murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast
into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce
winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the
elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws
of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son,
that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy
good.
“The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?
“Therefore, hold on thy way, and the priesthood shall remain with
thee; for their bounds are set, they cannot pass. Thy days are known,
and thy years shall not be numbered less; therefore, fear not what man
can do, for God shall be with you forever and ever.”
There seems to me no better answer to the question of why trials
come and what we are to do than the words of the Lord Himself, who
passed through trials for us more terrible than we can imagine.
You remember His words when He counseled that we should, out of
faith in Him, repent:
“Therefore I command you to repent--repent, lest I smite you by
the rod of my mouth, and by my wrath, and by my anger, and your
sufferings be sore--how sore you know not, how exquisite you know not,
yea, how hard to bear you know not.
“For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they
might not suffer if they would repent;
“But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I;
“Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to
tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer
both body and spirit--and would that I might not drink the bitter cup,
and shrink--
“Nevertheless, glory be to the Father, and I partook and finished
my preparations unto the children of men.”
You and I have faith that the way to rise through and above trials
is to believe that there is a “balm in Gilead” and that the Lord has
promised, “I will not … forsake thee.” That is what President Thomas
S. Monson has taught us to help us and those we serve in what seem
lonely and overwhelming trials.
But President Monson has also wisely taught that a foundation of
faith in the reality of those promises takes time to build. You may
have seen the need for that foundation, as I have, at the bedside of
someone ready to give up the fight to endure to the end. If the
foundation of faith is not embedded in our hearts, the power to endure
will crumble.
My purpose today is to describe what I know of how we can lay
that unshakable foundation. I do it with great humility for two
reasons. First, what I say could discourage some who are struggling in
the midst of great adversity and feel their foundation of faith is
crumbling. And second, I know that ever-greater tests lie before me
before the end of life. Therefore, the prescription I offer you has
yet to be proven in my own life through enduring to the end.
As a young man I worked with a contractor building footings and
foundations for new houses. In the summer heat it was hard work to
prepare the ground for the form into which we poured the cement for
the footing. There were no machines. We used a pick and a shovel.
Building lasting foundations for buildings was hard work in those
days.
It also required patience. After we poured the footing, we waited
for it to cure. Much as we wanted to keep the jobs moving, we also
waited after the pour of the foundation before we took away the forms.
And even more impressive to a novice builder was what seemed to be
a tedious and time-consuming process to put metal bars carefully
inside the forms to give the finished foundation strength.
In a similar way, the ground must be carefully prepared for our
foundation of faith to withstand the storms that will come into every
life. That solid basis for a foundation of faith is personal
integrity.
Our choosing the right consistently whenever the choice is placed
before us creates the solid ground under our faith. It can begin in
childhood since every soul is born with the free gift of the Spirit of
Christ. With that Spirit we can know when we have done what is right
before God and when we have done wrong in His sight.
Those choices, hundreds in most days, prepare the solid ground on
which our edifice of faith is built. The metal framework around which
the substance of our faith is poured is the gospel of Jesus Christ,
with all its covenants, ordinances, and principles.
One of the keys to an enduring faith is to judge correctly the
curing time required. That is why I was unwise to pray so soon in my
life for higher mountains to climb and greater tests.
That curing does not come automatically through the passage of
time, but it does take time. Getting older does not do it alone. It is
serving God and others persistently with full heart and soul that
turns testimony of truth into unbreakable spiritual strength.
Now, I wish to encourage those who are in the midst of hard
trials, who feel their faith may be fading under the onslaught of
troubles. Trouble itself can be your way to strengthen and finally
gain unshakable faith. Moroni, the son of Mormon in the Book of
Mormon, told us how that blessing could come to pass. He teaches the
simple and sweet truth that acting on even a twig of faith allows God
to grow it:
“And now, I, Moroni, would speak somewhat concerning these things;
I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for
and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye
receive no witness until after the trial of your faith.
“For it was by faith that Christ showed himself unto our fathers,
after he had risen from the dead; and he showed not himself unto them
until after they had faith in him; wherefore, it must needs be that
some had faith in him, for he showed himself not unto the world.
“But because of the faith of men he has shown himself unto the
world, and glorified the name of the Father, and prepared a way that
thereby others might be partakers of the heavenly gift, that they
might hope for those things which they have not seen.
“Wherefore, ye may also have hope, and be partakers of the gift,
if ye will but have faith.”
That particle of faith most precious and which you should protect
and use to whatever extent you can is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Moroni taught the power of that faith this way: “And neither at any
time hath any wrought miracles until after their faith; wherefore they
first believed in the Son of God.”
I have visited with a woman who received the miracle of sufficient
strength to endure unimaginable losses with just the simple capacity
to repeat endlessly the words “I know that my Redeemer lives.” That
faith and those words of testimony were still there in the mist that
obscured but did not erase memories of her childhood.
I was stunned to learn that another woman had forgiven a person
who had wronged her for years. I was surprised and asked her why she
had chosen to forgive and forget so many years of spiteful abuse.
She said quietly, “It was the hardest thing I have ever done, but
I just knew I had to do it. So I did.” Her faith that the Savior would
forgive her if she forgave others prepared her with a feeling of peace
and hope as she faced death just months after she had forgiven her
unrepentant adversary.
She asked me, “When I get there, how will it be in heaven?”
And I said, “I know just from what I have seen of your capacity to
exercise faith and to forgive that it will be a wonderful homecoming
for you.”
I have another encouragement to those who now wonder if their
faith in Jesus Christ will be sufficient for them to endure well to
the end. I was blessed to have known others of you who are listening
now when you were younger, vibrant, gifted beyond most of those around
you, yet you chose to do what the Savior would have done. Out of your
abundance you found ways to help and care for those you might have
ignored or looked down upon from your place in life.
When hard trials come, the faith to endure them well will be
there, built as you may now notice but may have not at the time that
you acted on the pure love of Christ, serving and forgiving others as
the Savior would have done. You built a foundation of faith from
loving as the Savior loved and serving for Him. Your faith in Him led
to acts of charity that will bring you hope.
It is never too late to strengthen the foundation of faith. There
is always time. With faith in the Savior, you can repent and plead for
forgiveness. There is someone you can forgive. There is someone you
can thank. There is someone you can serve and lift. You can do it
wherever you are and however alone and deserted you may feel.
I cannot promise an end to your adversity in this life. I cannot
assure you that your trials will seem to you to be only for a moment.
One of the characteristics of trials in life is that they seem to make
clocks slow down and then appear almost to stop.
There are reasons for that. Knowing those reasons may not give
much comfort, but it can give you a feeling of patience. Those reasons
come from this one fact: in Their perfect love for you, Heavenly
Father and the Savior want you fitted to be with Them to live in
families forever. Only those washed perfectly clean through the
Atonement of Jesus Christ can be there.
My mother fought cancer for nearly 10 years. Treatments and
surgeries and finally confinement to her bed were some of her trials.
I remember my father saying as he watched her take her last
breath, “A little girl has gone home to rest.”
One of the speakers at her funeral was President Spencer W.
Kimball. Among the tributes he paid, I remember one that went
something like this: “Some of you may have thought that Mildred
suffered so long and so much because of something she had done wrong
that required the trials.” He then said, “No, it was that God just
wanted her to be polished a little more.” I remember at the time
thinking, “If a woman that good needed that much polishing, what is
ahead for me?”
If we have faith in Jesus Christ, the hardest as well as the
easiest times in life can be a blessing. In all conditions, we can
choose the right with the guidance of the Spirit. We have the gospel
of Jesus Christ to shape and guide our lives if we choose it. And with
prophets revealing to us our place in the plan of salvation, we can
live with perfect hope and a feeling of peace. We never need to feel
that we are alone or unloved in the Lord’s service because we never
are. We can feel the love of God. The Savior has promised angels on
our left and our right to bear us up. And He always keeps His word.
I testify that God the Father lives and that His Beloved Son is
our Redeemer. The Holy Ghost has confirmed truth in this conference
and will again as you seek it, as you listen, and as you later study
the messages of the Lord’s authorized servants, who are here.
President Thomas S. Monson is the Lord’s prophet to the entire world.
The Lord watches over you. God the Father lives. His Beloved Son,
Jesus Christ, is our Redeemer. His love is unfailing. I so testify in
the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Have a great week
Elder Baron
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