Sept 21, 2015

Sept 21, 2015

This week was a week of work.  But good work.  The Lords work.  We are fighting to help these 2 families get baptized, but this week both of them went to family events where the church was very openly crisized, so we are going to have to work even harder to help them gain strong testimonies of the church.  So pray for Dilma and her family and also Jorge and Noelia and their family!

I think that this week I learned a lot in the lessons that we taught.  I had been praying for the spirit and that I could start learning more from the lessons we taught (bc in a good lesson with the spirit the missionaries and tje investigadors learn together) and the people really said some things that stuck to me and made me think.

The first was an hermana that always plans to go to church on sunday but then she has to work or gets really sick, and she was kind of discouraged the other day, and I had the thought come into my head . . . she really has sincere desires, but her desires cannot save her.  She understands the commandments perfectly, so why can she never fulfill them. . . . .. But then I think a lot of times in my own life I say, I want to be good but I just can{t.  I dont want this to bug me, I dont want this to discouarage me, but it just does.  And in every conference the speakers tlak about those who feel hopeless, feel that the more they want to live the gospel, the more discouraged they get.   And I sudenly understood.  You can understand the commandments, but not undestand the atonement at the same time.  This sister understood very well the commandments, and wanted to live them, but she didnt have hope.  Hope that her now less active family could return.  Because hope doesnt come from understnading the commandments,  IT comes from understanding and using the atonement.

And I got to reading in Mosiah 13 and 14, the famous last talk of abinidi.  And here is this man, knowing very well that when he stops talking these people are going to kill him, and that this death probbly would not be painless, and he chooses to talk about two things.  First, he lists out he 10 mandamiento, clearer than any other part in the BOM.  Here they are, live them or suffer the consequences.  But then, he turns and to this group of very very wicked men, he preaches of a Savior that would come to save the world.  To suffer for every man woman and child.  That the people would reject him, and hate him, and hurt him, but in the end, he would deliver us from all kinds of bondage.  He preaches of the atonement.  And really, I have to say that when the people here openly reject us, when they blatantly say that they do not want to live the commandments of God, many missionaries want to condemn them and warn them of the consequences of their actions.  And abinidi certainly did this, but then he offered them redemption, preaching of the christ that was to come.  What an amazing example.

And I really thought, Do I understand the commandements?  Do I live them with my heart, might, mind, and strength?  And then, do I understand the atonement?  Do i use the atonment and feel the hope and grace that flow from in in my daily life?

And so this week, I am greatful, because the Lord taught me a lot.

Love,

Hermana Jarman