Letter #47 08/31/15

I got this picture from the family that was feeding Becca yesterday.  Such a fun surprise!

During our district meeting this week, we watched this video about the atonement of Jesus Christ. It is a nice mash-up of an Elder Eyring and an Elder Holland talk (The atonement and Missionary work), and it is absolutely glorious. It brought back a slew of memories from when I was just a wee little babe, sitting in my little desk in the middle of the CCM in the middle of Mexico City and.. I thought I knew what it meant. When Elder Holland says

I believe that missionaries and investigators, to come to the truth, to come to salvation, to know something of this price that has been paid, will have to pay a token of that same price.

For that reason I don’t believe missionary work has ever been easy, nor that conversion is, nor that retention is, nor that continued faithfulness is. I believe it is supposed to require some effort, something from the depths of our soul.

If He could come forward in the night, kneel down, fall on His face, bleed from every pore, and cry, “Abba, Father (Papa), if this cup can pass, let it pass,” ¹¹ then little wonder that salvation is not an easy thing for us. If you wonder if there isn’t an easier way, you should remember you are not the first one to ask that. Someone a lot greater and a lot grander asked a long time ago if there wasn’t an easier way.

I remember thinking, feeling, in all honesty that I understood EXACTLY what He meant. That, whoa, that through my last 5 weeks spent in the MTC, loving investigators and watching them fall or struggle, and seeing the falls and struggles in myself, I had tasted a portion of the anguish, the heartache, the fear, the homesickness that I'm sure my Savior felt as He sacrificed everything to understand me. 

But watching it, having been through all of these feelings of an entire year of serving the Lord, I couldn't help but be overwhelmed with all of the understanding I have recieved as my Savior has given me little bits of His experience through the challenges I have faced.

It's in the way, as Sister McNeely and I discussed yesterday, that we don't even remember the "Old S" .. that we only see her as who she has become. That now I understand, in even the smallest sense, how our Heavenly Father sees us as we truly repent. That when He said he wouldn't remember, He wasn't kidding! I know that He really does only see us not in terms of yesterday and today, but in terms of forever. 

It's in the way that, having been through the struggles and anguish of trying to overcome my weaknesses as a missionary/child of God, that I can stand in a lesson with someone that is fighting EVERYTHING He is feeling and feel nothing but the purest love for him. The love that only comes from Jesus Christ.

I know that our Heavenly Father allows us to go through trials so that, in time, we can truly understand just how much He loves and cares about us. His love is REAL. He is with us every step of the way. 

When you struggle, when you are rejected, when you are spit upon and cast out, you are standing with the best life this world has ever known, the only pure and perfect life ever lived. You have reason to stand tall and be grateful that the Living Son of the Living God knows all about your sorrows and afflictions. The only way to salvation is through Gethsemane and on to Calvary. The only way to eternity is through Him—the Way, the Truth, and the Life.