I love your thoughts on grace and the Atonement. It reminds me of Brad Wilcox's talk titled "His Grace is Sufficient". He also talked about how people think we, as Mormons, are trying to earn heaven. He said something along the lines of, "We're not earning heaven, we're learning heaven." He talks about how if we don't change in this life, we won't even want to live with God in the next. I love that talk and those thoughts on the Atonement.
This week was a pretty good one. It's still been pretty slow lately in terms of finding people who will actually progress, but we try not to get discouraged. Yes, Y. did turn out to be Hispanic, but sadly he's been really busy with work and we haven't been able to meet with him again. We've called him and talked a few times and he still sounds interested, but he's just trying to work around his busy work schedule. We're still working a lot with S. and A. We had interviews with Pres. Cleveland this week and at the end of my interview with him I asked if he had any suggestions as to what we should do in their situation. He asked if we had taught the Law of Chastity yet, and we had talked about it a little, but hadn't taught the lesson. I guess we were just hesitant because we didn't know how to go about it as they are currently breaking the Law of Chastity... I guess it just seemed harsh to us. But he told us that should be our next course of action. We taught them the Law of Chastity, and then that night we got a call from S. and she told us she read through the pamphlet and now she realizes that she needs to obey this commandment. She felt bad for breaking such a serious commandment of God and now they both want to get married. They are planning to get married ASAP, but still have a few road blocks to get over. We'll see if they can make their goal of being baptized on the 31st of this month.
We've been doing a ton of tracting lately and trying to expand our teaching pool. I feel like this is a weird time of year when people are working a ton so it's been a little hard. We were tracting yesterday in an apartment complex and we found ourselves talking to an African-American man named D. At the door he told us he believed in God, but only considered Jesus Christ as a prophet. After a little while, he let us in. We had a pretty lengthy discussion, but in the end he said, "I'm never going back to Christianity." I told him to never close the door completely and to pray about it. He replied saying "Hey you shouldn't close the door either, who knows? I could be right." I then had the blessing of looking into that man's eyes and telling him that I know he's not right. That I know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and our Savior. It is a huge blessing to have a testimony of the Savior and I hope that D. can receive that for himself someday.
So I've started ponderizing every week and I thought I'd share my scripture with you every week.This week, it's Helaman 3:35
"Nevertheless they did fast and pray oft, and did wax stronger and stronger in their humility, and firmer and firmer in the faith of Christ, unto the filling their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the purifying and the sanctification of their hearts, which sanctification cometh because of their yielding their hearts to God."
Yielding our hearts to God is something we all need to work on constantly. It's become a lifelong goal of mine.
I love you Mom! I hope you guys have fun in Mexico! Tell me about all your adventures! I pray for you and miss you dearly. Have a good week! Love you!
Elder Thayne
No comments:
Post a Comment