Hello Family & Friends,
How are all of you! I miss you :)
Well this has been a pretty great week. I love my new companion. I mean of course I miss Hermana Jacobson, but I also love my new companion. She just has something about her that makes me love being a missionary. So many times this week I have found myself thinking, ah I love being a missionary, or today is a good day to be a missionary. I can't really explain it. But I love being a missionary. I love being able to share my love of God and His Beloved Son Jesus Christ, with other people, I love being able to share my testimony with others. I love being able to study the doctrines of His kingdom so much. I love how much I am changing and growing. Honestly being a missionary is the best thing. I mean it is hard, and this week we walked miles in the snow, but I love it. I just have been so happy all week. It is great.
Honestly, can I just take a second to express how much I love Our Savior. I mean I have always loved him, but it is personal now, real. I understand a little better than I have understood in the past. My heart has just been filled with so much love for my Savior and my Father in Heaven, and his children. It is an incredible feeling. I am full of so much gratitude so much of the time, as I realize the opportunity I have to be an instrument in His hand and as I realize how much it is blessing my life, and as I have come to realize my own nothingness. It just fills me with so much desire to go and find His children that don't know Him, have never kneeled down and prayed to him. Have never felt the overwhelming love I feel when I pray to Him.
I guess I should have started with that. This week I have been trying really hard to pray more fervently and with more faith. It has made all the difference. I start my prayers by asking for the guidance of the spirit and then I try really hard to rely on the spirit and say the things that come to me mind. It has allowed me to better express the feelings of my heart, and has really become a significantly more edifying experience. I would encourage you all to try it. Pray is a revelatory experience, or it should be. The time we take to talk to our God, our Father, should be precious and meaningful, it shouldn't be something we just do because we have been taught to pray. Make your prayers more meaningful, remember who you have the honor to talk to and your life will change, the windows of Heaven will be opened with the blessings you need, and your relationship with God will grow.
I just wish I could adequately express the feelings I have. This is real people, this is eternal salvation. This isn't a joke. This is literally make or break. We were sent here to walk by faith. To make covenants, and to be obedient so we could live with our Eternal Father again for eternity. This is the most important thing in life, no. It is the ONLY important thing in this life. It is literally the whole reason we are here, and if you aren't progressing towards that end goal, by making necessary covenants like baptism, and being obedient to the commandments He has given us, then let me be frank and say, you are failing. If that was hard to hear then I guess you have some repenting to do. But take courage, there is still hope. His merciful hands are always extended towards you. He is always waiting for you to turn your hearts to Him more fully. He does not expect perfection, He expects progression.
Anyway, sorry haha,
This has been a pretty good week too. We got one of our investigators on date for February 22nd. He is awesome. We found him knocking doors two weeks ago. His name is David, and he came to church before we even taught him. He is just so prepared. Sometimes we are in a lesson with him, and I just think to myself am I the missionary or is he? Our first actual lesson with him he said, why haven't you asked me to be baptized yet? I want to get baptized as soon as I can. So we made him a calendar with everything he had to do to be baptized. And so far everything has gone smoothly. So let's all pray it stays that way. He is just definitely the elect, one time we went to his house, and he opens his door, and he tells us, I wasn't going to open my door, and then I just figured why not....the elect open their door and answer their phones. He is awesome. We were just walking and I felt like we needed to knock on this door, and David was behind it. He has such a strong belief in the bible, and as President Fenn always says, you can't honestly in your heart believe in the bible and not believe in the Book of Mormon. They go together, they support each other. If you haven't read the Book of Mormon, give it a try you will see what I'm talking about. If you have, well read it again :) but I can see this in him. He just loves the Book of Mormon because he truly understands the bible, and vice versa. Yesterday in our lesson he was telling us how he had studied this his whole life in the bible, but reading about it in the Book of Mormon just made it click, and he grasped it, like he never had before. That is the power of the Book of Mormon.
This is the testimony in me. Through the Book of Mormon we come to know our Savior, not just know about him. Through the Book of Mormon we have the fullness of the gospel. The parts that were lost of changed about the bible are made clear in the Book of Mormon. And when we read it, we feel a power come into our lives that has never before been there. The Book of Mormon is the word of God. It is the keystone of this religion. If the Book of Mormon is true, then Joseph Smith was a prophet, and this is His restored church upon the earth, and if the book isn't true, well then our religion has nothing to stand on. But it is true. I know this, this spirit of The Lord has testified of this too me, and Joseph Smith was a prophet of The Lord, and we do not worship him, but we revere him because he, "has done more, save Jesus Christ only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it...he has brought forth the Book of Mormon, which he translated by the gift and power of God..." (Doctrine and
Covenants 135). I know Joseph Smith was a prophet of The Lord. I know the Book of Mormon is true. I know this is the only, true church on the face of the earth, the only church that has the authority to administer baptism and other saving ordinances in the name of Jesus Christ. I would like to invite you all to find out for yourselves to 'experiment upon my words' as Alma says, "Now, as I said concerning faith--that it was not a perfect knowledge--even so it is with my words. Ye cannot know of their surety at first, unto perfection, any more than faith is a perfect knowledge. But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words." (Alma 32:26-27).
I love you all. I am so grateful for the big circle of supporters I have. You are the best. I am praying for you. Your prayers are appreciated, especially for David. Fight the good fight.
Con Amor,
Hermana Johanna Simmons
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