This transfer flew by holy cow, nevertheless I’m happy to say Elder Beckey and I are staying together another transfer! Also, speaking of flying by, Happy March!
This past week was pretty great. Not only have we started to find more people to teach but I gained a better understanding of Christ’s sacrifice for us. It felt as if every person we talked to the conversation was on something we had studied that morning. One day in particular we went to a Walmart parking lot to talk to people and while we were there we decided to mix it up and go inside.
Now the cool part about being missionaries is that when you walk into a store, EVERYONE looks at you and when you try talking to someone they automatically assume you wanna talk about Jesus so they find a way to tie what that are doing back to the gospel. It’s pretty great.
If we ask a question about what books they are interested in the conversation will go something like this. “Oh I’m just looking around, but I make sure every morning I read from the Bible.” So while we were walking we saw a guy looking at TVs and we asked if he was going to buy one and from there he began to tell us how everyone in the world is always looking for the next best thing but in reality the best thing we can look at is our spiritual connection with Christ and have an eternal perspective on life.
He literally said the words, “Gods plan of Salvation” so we talked about it and he wanted us to come over to his house and share with him and his family more about our message.
This whole week I have been studying Matthew 26 which talks about the last supper as well as the garden of Gethsemane. I had no idea how much symbolism is behind every part of those two events. As I was learning more and more about it I started to see what it really means.
Our Savior paid the highest price for us. He sacrificed his life to save us. Sacrifice is a huge part of Gods plan, throughout the entire bible and Book or Mormon you can see the importance of sacrifice, whether that be burnt offerings, or a broken heart and a contrite spirit, God is asking us to give something of ourselves to become better, so we can align our will with his. While Christ was in the Garden he showed us a few things. The biggest one being his love for us by taking upon our sins, or sickness, our troubles. But he also showed us we can be forgiven, and we can overcome.
This week while I was praying to understand the Atonement and praying for forgiveness for my weaknesses I asked to have them taken away but I paused as I was saying that and I realized, without those weaknesses I can’t learn, so I corrected myself and instead said, thy will be done.
Not realizing that that was probably what’s realization was, as he prayed to have the bitter cup removed from him he stopped and said thy will be done, he was reminded of the purpose for the Atonement. And now because of him and what he did we just need to turn to him and use it.
We all go through our personal Gethsemane where we have burdens placed on our shoulders where they sometimes seem to hard to bare but just as Christ did we can turn to prayer and ask for help. We may be told the same thing where we need to go through our trials to help us, but he will also send angels to help us and give us the strength to endure them.
But the biggest thing to remember is that Christ is there for us throughout our trials and he is begging us to use his Atonement, he wants us to turn to him because he can lift our burdens and strengthen us. My testimony has grown so much on the power of the Atonement and the love that is behind it.
I hope each of you may find comfort through him and I hope you have a wonderful week. I love you!
Love,
Elder Summers
