Missionary Work Online

Recently in a meeting for missionaries in my mission, President Gardner shared with us a quote that someone had shared with him, it is a quote by President Spencer W. Kimball from 1974. In this quote he gives a prophecy about how Technology will help spread the gospel. He says:

"Technology will help spread the gospel. We need to enlarge our field of operation.… The Lord will lay in our hand inventions which we can scarcely conceive whereby we will be able to bring the gospel to the peoples of the world…. I have faith that the Lord will open doors when we have done everything in our power. I believe that the Lord is anxious to put into our hands inventions of which we laymen have hardly had a glimpse….We shall use the inventions the Lord has given us to awaken interest and acquaint people of the world with the truths, to ease their prejudices and give them a general knowledge. We shall need to answer specific questions, and perhaps that can be done by two-way radio and TV perfected to a point beyond our present imagination. It is conceivable that such a program greatly perfected could be multiplied ten thousand times in ten thousand tongues and dialects in ten thousand places far and near…. Tens of thousands of young missionaries endowed with the power from on high will follow up the proselyting."

What an amazing prophecy, and how wonderful an opportunity it is to be part of the fulfillment of this prophecy. Technology indeed has truly advanced and is helping all to receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

God, Our Father in Heaven

One of the most important truths that we teach as missionaries and as members of the church is that God is Our Loving Heavenly Father. That line nearly says it all. Heavenly Father is literally our father in Heaven! Is that cool or what? What does it mean to you to have a Father in Heaven? Do you find that it is important? I know that I do. Having a loving Heavenly Father means that we are never alone. In those times of need that always come with out a doubt, we know that we can turn to Him in prayer. Just like an earthly parent Heavenly Father wants to hear from us! He wants to know what is going on in our lives, its just like our parents here on Earth. Prayer is the communication that Heavenly Father has given us so that we can talk to Him. Think for just a moment about what you believe about God. As we learn to lean on our Heavenly Father we will begin to grow, we will live the way He has asked and as we do so I know that we will return to live with Him once again. I bear a second witness to the testimony that Jeffrey R. Holland gives in the video below. I know that God is our literal Father, I know that he loves us, and I know that He watches over us.

Our Purpose Here on Earth

I'm going to be honest, this is probably the third time that I have written this blog. I sat here pondering about what I should blog about and I had a million things pop into my head, I wanted to blog about The Restoration of the Gospel, a poem called The Oak Tree by John Ray Ryder Jr, I wanted to blog about temples and so many other things. But as I began to write about each one of those subjects I just didn't feel write about the thing that I was blogging about. The one topic that kept coming to my mind was the purpose of life and I feel like this is what I need to write about for this current post.

Have you ever wondered why we are here?

The purpose of life is fairly simple, in the book of Alma thirty-fourth chapter thirty-second verse a missionary named Amulek is talking about what our purpose is here. He says, "For behold, this ^alife is the time for men to ^bprepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of ^cthis life is the day for men to perform their ^dlabors." Put very simply I like that first sentence where he says this is the time for men to prepare to meet God, how can we prepare to meet God? We can prepare to meet God by following His commandments. He has laid the path for us to make it back to him, the path may not be easy but it is there. I know this life is hard I know that there are so many things out there that distract us and make us want to do different things, but eternal life is so important, going to church, reading our Scriptures, saying our prayers, they are so important I know that if we do these things, life may still be hard but it will be made easier than it would have been because we will have God there watching over us constantly. He has tried to set it up for us as much as possible so that we may not fail, and if we do, He has given us His son Jesus Christ so that we may make it back to him.

Amulek goes onto say in verse thirty-three, "And now, as I said unto you before, as ye have had so many ^awitnesses, therefore, I beseech of you that ye do not ^bprocrastinate the day of your ^crepentance until the end; for after this day of life, which is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not improve our time while in this life, then cometh the ^dnight of ^edarkness wherein there can be no labor performed." Please let us not procrastinate we are talking about eternal life here, it is worth so much, it may not seem like it now but I know that it is worth it. Let us repent and continue on the straight and narrow path. Remember we are here to do the things that Heavenly Father would have us do, he has come up with this great plan so that we could come to Earth and then make it back to live with him once again let us try our hardest and earn his trust.

The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ

Recently I've been studying a lot about the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. And my testimony of this book has been strengthened, because the more I pray about it the more I read from it and the more I study it, the more I know how true it is.

The Book of Mormon is Another Testament of Jesus Christ, as Joseph Smith said, "It is the keystone of our religion." This Book is so vital to us because if the book were not true then there would be nothing else. But the book is true! We have a prophet of God, we have apostles, we have the priesthood and all of the ordincances of the gospel. It is vital to our salvation and what happens to us after we die. If we choose to study this volume of scripture and other scriptures and live the commandments taught therein that is commanded of God we may have eternal life. I know it too be true and would like to invite all others to know the same thing. Joseph Smith also said this of The Book of Mormon, "A man [and woman] would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts." In closing here are a few paragraphs from the Introduction:

"We invite all men everywhere to read the Book of Mormon, to ponder in their hearts the message it contains, and then to ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ if the book is true. Those who pursue this course and ask in faith will gain a testimony of its truth and divinity by the power of the Holy Ghost. (See Moroni 10:3–5.)
 Those who gain this divine witness from the Holy Spirit will also come to know by the same power that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, that Joseph Smith is his revelator and prophet in these last days, and that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Lord’s kingdom once again established on the earth, preparatory to the second coming of the Messiah."

Ask God our Eternal Father if this book is not true. He will give you an answer.

In the space of "Not Many Years"

There is a phrase in the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ that is used several times, it is the phrase "not many years." In the Book of Mormon the Nephite's when listening to the teaching of the prophets and doing the things that they should be doing receive blessings and gain favor in the sight of the Lord, "not many years" show's how quickly things can turn. For example, "Thus had they become weak, because of their transgression, in the space of not many years." Helaman 4:26

We as people just like the Nephite's have the same problem. We may be doing good and the Lord will bless us for all our good, but it can be something little that quickly turns our tide from good to bad. For in the space of "not many years" we can fall into iniquity. But thanks to the wonderful plan that our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have come up with we can be forgiven. "The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel of transformation" -Joseph B. Wirthlin. The Nephite's soon realized that they had been doing wrong, "..they saw that the Lamanites were exceedingly more numerous than they, and except they should cleave unto the Lord their God they must unavoidably perish." Helaman 4:25. I know that as we learn from the Book of Mormon that we can be forgiven and that although we fall and sometimes in the space of "not many years" God still loves us and through the Atonement of Jesus Christ we an be forgiven.