Turn Towards One Another

Recently I have been considering how incredibly important it is to have a marriage where you are both committed to the things that matter most. A marriage where you both place value in the same things, or at least truly understand the value of something to the other partner. This involves a lot of communication. I think it also involves being humble and seeking to be understanding and compassionate towards your partner. Once again, I think that this is easier done if you are focusing your life on the Atonement of Jesus Christ. When you and your spouse, as individuals and as a couple are trying to be more Christlike, and trying to build faith, then you can increase your humility and lovingness in your relationship. With these feelings there is a greater ability to communicate and understand one another. 

True Love

Today is Valentine's Day and that seems like an appropriate day to make a post about marriage and true love. 

Marriage is situation which requires the companions to be selfless and giving in order for there to be harmony and peace. Marriage is work. It requires the very best of us. In order to have harmony and peace in our marriage, we must put the needs and desires of our spouse before our own. If they are doing the same thing for us, then we will be in harmony. 

Sometimes in marriage, we feel that our spouse is not doing their part or putting our needs first. This does occasionally happen on both sides as we grow as humans. That is why we must have a marriage which is also centered in Christ. As we center our lives and our marriages on Christ, we grow together, and repent and change for the better. As we draw nearer unto Christ, we draw nearer to one another, and become more selfless in our marriage. 

These aspects, create true love. True charity. This leads us to harmony and peace in our marriage. 

Marriage is Essential to Heavenly Father’s Plan

Throughout the world it is hard to ignore Satan’s acute and blatant attacks on the family. It is being attacked in every conceivable way, from the breaking down of gender and gender roles, to the breaking down of traditional marriage between a man and a woman.

Those in the world that still believe in God and that he has a feeling about these things, have started to create for themselves a god that is all about tolerance and love, ignoring the fact that the one true God himself says, “For I the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance;” (Doctrine and Covenants 1:39). No matter how the world tries to distort the truth, it is still truth. No matter how the world tries to make good look evil and evil look good, God knows better. No matter the methods of Satan to deceive and lead astray, wickedness never will be happiness, and the philosophy that “he will justify in committing a little sin...if it so be that we are guilty, God will beat us with a few stripes, and at last we shall be saved in the kingdom of God” (2 Ne 28:8) will NEVER be true.

When it comes to our views on marriage and the family, we must keep an eternal perspective. Marriage is essential to salvation in God’s eternal kingdom. It is not something defined by human minds, but it is quite literally ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is a way to sanctify God’s children. It is also the ideal setting for the bringing up and rearing children. Elder David A. Bednar says, “A home with a loving and loyal husband and wife is the supreme setting in which children can be reared in love and righteousness and in which the spiritual and physical needs of children can be met. Just as the unique characteristics of both males and females contribute to the completeness of a marriage relationship, so those same characteristics are vital to the rearing, nurturing, and teaching of children. ‘Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity.’ (The Family: A Proclamation to the World)” (Marriage is Essential to His Eternal Plan). This idea is often neglected when thinking of marriage. The world thinks of marriage only in selfish, and self fulfilling terms, never considering the effect on the children of society. This is simply wrong. We MUST consider these innocent charges, placed in our care. We must care for them more than ourselves. 

We live in a world where the emphasis is on self and autonomy. This is completely contrary to the doctrines of the kingdom and what God requires of us. He commands us to, “putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord” (Mosiah 3:19). God wants us to live selflessly, to serve others, and to follow the example of Jesus Christ in all things. Jesus Christ was the perfect example of humility and long suffering, he was the perfect example of selflessness, even in the midst of His own suffering, He first thought of others. The Father also lives this way, as we learn when He teaches us that his, “work and glory is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). A completely selfless work for an all powerful God. If we are to inherit all He has, and become like Him, then we need to begin living NOW, as he does. By casting off the natural man, and not giving into the enticing of the adversary which appeal to our natural man, and by consuming our lives and marriages with the service and concern of others. This lifestyle will ultimately bring the most happiness, not autonomy and the pursuit of self fulfilling, and devilish ideals.

Disciples of the Lord are Defenders of Marriage

So my major in school is Marriage and Family Therapy. As I have studied this topic I have found the statistics and case studies and just overall information fascinating. I loved everything that I have learned.
This semester I am taking a class that focuses specifically on marriage and everything socially and politically associated with that. For this class, I am required to keep this blog. I think that will be quite interesting since I am a person that has very strong feelings on marriage, and believe fully in The Family: A Proclamation to the World, released by the prophet and apostles of my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I believe that marriage is ordained of God. I believe it was created and instituted by him as the best way to carry out His Plan of Salvation. I don't think marriage is a social or political concept that can mean whatever you want, and be displayed and recognized in whatever way the world feels is correct. In our world today, this is a very unpopular and persecuted opinion to have. But that doesn't scare me. God is greater than the world. He gave us our life, and He gave us this earth, and He gave us everything we hold dear. With all these blessing He also gave us commandments and guidelines and when we make choices contrary to these, it displeases God, and there are consequences and punishments.
Marriage is for the family. Marriage is ordained of God because it is the perfect way in which to bring children into the world and to raise them. Marriage between a man and a woman. This is the way, and anything else is contrary to nature and contrary to God. To really believe in God, and understand Him and his ways, is to understand this. There is no way around it. You cannot profess faith in God, and a desire to live His way and be His disciple and then disregard His very specific feelings on marriage and family.
To be a disciple of God is to be a defender of marriage. Anything else is hypocrisy.
So with this blog, I intend to be a defender of marriage as God has defined it. 

The Refiner's Fire - May 11th, 2015

Dearest Family and Friends,

Well for starters I want to thank all of you for all your love and support over these past 18months. It has meant the world to me to have such supportive and loving people in my life and as I have been gone I have really come to cherish the relationships I have with each of you. I look forward to seeing all of you soon :)

Well there aren't really words to sum up the last 18months of serving the Lord. It has been amazing and hard and happy and heartbreaking, and basically the best thing I have ever been involved in. I loved it. But I feel at peace about going home. I have grown deeper faith than I knew I could. I look back to the beginning of my mission and there was so much I didn't know. It was belief, now it is knowledge. I know that the Book of Mormon is true. I know that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God. I know this is the true church of God. I know that He has a divine purpose for me and He will help me if I just trust him and get out of my own way. I have learned how to trust deeper and how to follow the spirit more courageously. I love the gospel of Jesus Christ. So simple and yet so all encompassing. I love studying the gospel. The more I learn, the more I hunger and thirst after knowledge. I don't think there are really adequate ways to describe the changes in me, but I know that The Lord sees them, and I know they only happened because of Him. I have come to love and appreciate my Savior so much, for all He has done for me, and for His tenderness and mercy towards me. I'm grateful He allowed me, so weak, to serve Him. It has changed my life.

I love my Savior, Jesus Christ. What I want with all my heart is to return and be with my Father in Heaven. I want to be a defender of truth and righteousness all the days of my life. I have come to feel the enabling and ennobling power of the Atonement Jesus Christ in profound ways as I have been carried through the most trying of times. My experience with the atonement has filled me with such love for my Savior, and for my brothers and sisters that I have been able to serve with. I have met so many amazing people that have become a part of my family. I come to love them so much. They fill a part of my heart I didn't know existed until I came on a mission.

There is just so much. I have loved this. I look forward to being able to share my experiences with all of you soon :)

"For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.
I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith:"
2 Timothy 4:6-7

❤️Hermana Simmons

Hold to Rod - April 27th, 2015

Dearest Familia,

I decided this week I better email very first so that I have time to say all the things I have been neglecting to say. So sorry! Today our zone is going to lunch with President Fenn and then we are goi to have a Q&A with him. In case you were wondering President Fenn is a gospel scholar, I mean come on, his father in law was Bruce R. McConkie. So we're all pretty excited about it. I'm not sure if I told you this before, but I like to know everything. Haha I love learning, the whole process, the questions and study and then revelation. I think about things deeply and I like to find answers. So today is going to be awesome, because I have a whole list of questions I have been waiting to ask President Fenn, pretty much my whole mission. Haha

So we will start with all the things I barely covered last week. Last week was a really interesting week. It seems that Satan intends to fight me to the very end. I guess I should have seen that one coming. So I'm not really sure how it started but his dark cloud just snuck up on me and started raining down doubts and concerns and distractions and fears, and insecurities. My mind became a very disorganized and unfocused place. I felt like I was getting lost and being surrounded by mists of darkness. Maybe this sounds dramatic, but it was pretty much exactly how I felt. I just felt a little lost for awhile and I worried about being able to finish strong. Well I'd like to say it all just magically went a few days later and all is well, but that's not exactly how it happened. I learned something important about holding to the rod. In Lehi's vision there is an iron rod, it represents the word of God and in my opinion fervent prayer, basically it represents our connection to God. Well here is this rod, and people are holding onto it, making there way to the tree that represents the love of God, when suddenly this mist of darkness comes. It didn't come because they were doing anything wrong, but simply as an attack from the adversary, and something to try their faith. Well most people let go of the rod, and with that lost their way. But there were those who held on, in fact they held on more tightly and fought the distractions and the fear and kept their eyes focused on the little ray of light they could kind of see glimmering through the mist. Well I kind of felt like one of those people. I just tried to hold on. To study and pray more fervently and wait for more light, wait for guidance and strength from Heavenly Father. And gradually it came. I realized, mist doesn't just disappear. It's not that way in real life. But it lifts gradually and then you see the light and know that it's all going to be okay. That's kind of where I am at right now. The mist is lifting and I am seeing more clearly. I have learned to "hush my fears" and have fought to refocus my mind and not allow distractions. I want to serve with all my heart and all my mind all the way to the very end. So I have been praying fervently for help from Heavenly Father to resist distractions, and temptation, and have been learning the principle of "taking up your cross daily" and maybe sometimes hourly, because "the spirit is willing but the flesh indeed in weak". But that all being said, don't worry, I'm feeling much better now. I have a new sense of determination and strength from my Father in Heaven. :) I love him.

So also this last Sunday was awesome :) first off, Edward was baptized!! Yay!! He was 30 minutes late to his baptism. Cool. Haha but that is the life of a Hispanic, time is just in your head. But it was a really cool baptism and I was so happy to be apart of it. I love that boy. He is going to be such a strength to his family because he wants so badly to be good. I'm probably going to have to bring these little boys to visit when it comes time for their missions, so I can make sure they get on their missions!! But the coolest thing was that about halfway during the baptism (which took place before church in Sunday) I looked down the hallway and saw this less active family we teach pretty irregularly. It was one of the few times in my life when I literally could not believe what my eyes were telling me they were seeing. But this family came, and they stayed for church.

So a little background in this family, the mom and dad, and one of their 5 kids were baptized over a year ago, probably close to a year and a half ago. Well after their baptism they never came back to church. Ever. They basically avoided the missionaries and there was no progression from them at all, no commitment. Well just recently in December, they reached out to the church for help and then began to let the missionaries in. But even then, I have been in this area since January and I can probably count on 1 hand the number of times I have been in their home, and when we do get in their home it feels like we are trying to convince a wall to come back to church. So it has been really difficult. Well I don't give up on less actives. It's just my policy. They're already part of the fold and you don't have the option of giving up on them, I covenanted not to let them slip through the cracks. So on Saturday we were planning to go visit them and my companion was frustrated, she didn't understand why we even kept trying to help them. So I explained my policy and then I told her we needed to figure out what Heavenly Father wanted us to do and stop getting on the way. Well we had a really revelatory study for them after that, that completely changed Hermana Diaz' perspective and we went and taught them. It was just the mom and we invited her to church and she said she would be there! Well I don't want to be of little faith, but facing the brutal reality of the situation it wasn't likely they were going to be there. BUT THEY CAME! :) it was so cool. Also on Saturday we did serve for this other less active that hasn't been to church in years, but who recently allowed her now 18yr old daughter to be baptized, we invited her to church and she came too!! There was just so many miracles. :D

I love Sundays. They have come to be my favorite day of the week. Not because everyone comes to church, or really anything except that it is the day I get to partake of the sacrament. By the end of the week, my soul needs a renewal, I have become tainted and need a clean slate. When I prepare for the sacrament during the week and then go and take of the bread and water on Sunday, my would is infused with light and strength. I try to ponder on my Savior and his sacrifice and I commit myself to living more worthily of the companionship of the spirit and remembering more often my Savior. The Sabbath day is a day to remember the mercy of The Lord. I was reading about this topic recently and I came across a quote I really liked, it says:

"We can readily see that our observance of the Sabbath is an indication of the depth of our conversion...our observance or non-observance of the Sabbath is an unerring measure of our attitude toward the Lord personally and toward His suffering in Gethsemane, His death on the cross, and His resurrection from the dead. It is a sign of whether we are Christians in very deed, or whether our conversion is so shallow that commemoration of His atoning sacrifice means little or nothing to us" -Elder Mark E. Peterson

That's pretty intense. But so true, if we truly understand and appreciate the atonement of our Savior, nothing takes precedence over dedicating our Sabbath day to Him. That doesn't just mean taking of the sacrament and then going about doing whatever else we want on our Sunday. In Preach My Gospel (written by the prophets and apostles) it says, "When a community or nation [or family or individual] grows careless in its Sabbath activities, its religious life decays and all aspects of life are negatively affected. The blessings associated with keeping the Sabbath day holy are lost. We should refrain from shopping on the Sabbath and participating in other commercial and sporting activities that now commonly desecrate the Sabbath". Well that's pretty direct. I love the line I underlined, all aspects are negatively affected. I love the Sabbath day, it truly is a gift from our Father in Heaven who loves us and wants to bless us if we will only make ourselves more worthy of these blessings. I invite you all to consider your sabbath day worship and make it more in line with what the Savior expects of us.

Just to finish because this is ridiculously long, this awesome quote I found in a talk this morning,
"We cannot enjoy optional obedience to the laws of God, or place our own limits on the law of sacrifice, or mitigate the charges of righteous conduct connected with living the gospel. We cannot be willing to sacrifice only that which is convenient to part with, and then expect a reward. The Atonement is everything; it is not to be had “on the cheap.” God is not mocked in these things; we do not make promises and covenants with mental reservations. Unless we keep our covenants, Satan has power over us.....The point of all this is that atonement requires of the beneficiary nothing less than willingness to part with his most precious possession. Joined with the requirement of sacrifice is the requirement of consecration, which has no limiting “if necessary” clause; we agree to it unconditionally here and now. It represents our contribution to our salvation." (-Hugh Nibley: The Atonement of Jesus Christ, Part 4).

Well I love you all. I know obedience and sacrifice is what will bring us before the pleasing judgement bar of God with a clean conscience. I know the redemptive and ennobling power of the Atonement are real. It makes up everything we lack and is also the difference between where we are and where we need to be. From the very depths of my soul I want to be good and do good. I want the same for all of you too. I never knew before what I know now. I love the gospel and I want to hold to the rod and live it actively and diligently all my life. I invite you to hold to the rod and do the same, because the mist is covering the earth and if we do not hold tightly and are not careful, we will be lost, almost imperceptibly. I love you all. Fight the good fight, please.

Sent from my iPad

Edwards Baptism - April 20th, 2015

I have like no time to write an email this week, so I will write a

bunch next week :) but I will send some pictures. This first one is me

after an entire day of cleaning up the tornado. It was a lot of work

and we were filthy. We pulled down a barn. Literally. And also a tree.

It was so cool, I was so tired though.

Then a picture from Edwards baptism :) it was awesome and he was so

happy!! That Sunday we had a family come to church that we have been

teaching that hasn't come to church in almost 2 years! It has seemed

like they haven't really been changing or moving at all. But finally

they came. It was unreal. My heart was filled with joy. We also had

the mom of a recent convert who hasn't come to church in a long time

come as well!! It was so cool. So many miracles. Which was just what I

needed. This has been a really hard week for me. Satan has been

throwing everything he can as a final push against me personally and I

have had a lot of stress. So being able to have Edwards baptism and go

to church and see so many miracles and then partake of the sacrament

which just renewed my soul really helped me. And now I am just holding

onto the light and it's all coming together again


I'm sorry this is lame. I really meant to write an awesome email this

week. But there's no time. But I will tell you all the stories another

day. I love you all :) fight the good fight!


❤️Hermana Simmons