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Saturday, July 27, 2013

Testimony

This week has been wonderful. My new companion is so great and we are already best friends. She is 17 but she acts like she is twenty!Inline image 3
My companion is the one in the dark blue shirt to the left of me. Sister Stahle!

We have been working super hard, which is wonderful and we have some cool events coming up. With hope, another young man named Harry will be baptized on the third and I think that he will. He has read the whole Book of Mormon. His only issue is actually coming to church and keeping that commitment, but I think he has finally overcome that. We have some really fun and exciting things planned for this branch. It is going to take a lot of work, but it will make it stronger and more how God wants it it to be.

Heavenly Father has answered my prayers so much this week. The cockroaches still aren't gone. I guess I will just have to pray harder for that! But seriously, He knows me and when I am obedient, He blesses me temporally and sends me the Spirit, which is the greatest blessing.

I spoke in church yesterday in FRENCH! BOOYAY!  I translated the whole thing by myself and then have Jennifer help with my errors afterward. I gave a story about butterflies. It was about how they have to have a lot of faith by following their instincts and then that led into repentance. I thought it was good! It was super short and simple but I did it and after everyone said that they could understand me which is awesome because my biggest struggle is reading out loud in French. My companion says that I have really improved in this last week and I think that have to. We were in a CEP meeting one night when I realized that I was actually following the conversation. I wasn't lost and I understood all that was being said. It was so cool! So know I can pretty much understand anything that someone says to me. Speaking is a little harder but that will come.

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My companion, Sister Stahle, and me
We went on a hike this morning which was awesome. Did I mention that I live in the jungle? Well, I do! The hike was crazy and intense and awesome! It was sooooo wet and we walked through sooooo many rivers and were climbing over giant trees the whole time. At the end there was this beautiful HUGE water fall. Pretty awesome, but I am exhausted!



We had a baptism for Wine, our investigator, this week. It was so great! The spirit was really there and she started crying when one of her friends bore her testimony about her change and the Lord.

Something that I have been thinking about recently is testimony. Why do we need a testimony and what is it? To me a testimony at first is a hope and a grasp that God is there. That is hard at times to believe because life seems so hard and at least I have felt very alone in my life. But a testimony makes the darkness and the loneliness in our lives illuminated with hope. It brings us up out of the darkness and gives us faith that someone is there. Someone cares. Someone actually knows you and hears you. Our silent prayers that are sometimes just whispered out because the pain we feel is so great that that is all that can come out. But something lifts us up. That is the Holy Ghost. Our constant companion that we have received by baptism. A baptism that was performed by someone who was given permission to act in our Savior's name. It's also felt with out a baptism but only when a truth needs to be testified. That truth could be that love is good or that something is from God. Once we grasp that God is there, our faith begins to grow. We feel the spirit more and more in our lives and in the little things that we do. But if we choose not to feel it, if we are not constantly seeking for answers from God, that won't come. We will fall again into the abyss of the unknown. But when we nurture it and seek for that feeling it doesn't just become a hope or a grasp but a fact. We KNOW God is there. We KNOW he loves us and hears us because we have felt the Holy Ghost. No other worldly pleasure feels the same as the Holy Ghost; nothing makes us happier or actually fills us with light. Elder Holland said in a talk that simply that if the feelings you feel encourage you to do better or to be kinder or to seek after a knowledge of truth that it is from God and it is right. So think. "Have I felt the Holy Ghost in my life"? And if you are not sure think, "Have I wanted to be better to do better to be kinder"? When did you feel those feelings? I guarantee is was when you were readying the scriptures or listening to someone speak about God or just thinking about righteous things. that is your testimony. That you felt something tell you it was right. Hold on to that. Grasp it with everything that you have. It is your rod of iron and if you let go you WILL be lost and you will never taste of the fruit of life that God has to offer those who made it through the darkness by just holding on to what the believed. I believe. I know this is true. I know that the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is true because I feel it. I have felt it and in know that I will continue to feel it. I hold on to that knowledge when i am tried and when Satan tries to break me down with everything that he has because he knows how great I can be. He knows how many souls I can influence to come to the side of God and to fight against him. But God knows that to. I don't doubt my God. He has given me a testimony that is stronger than anything that Satan can do to me. So, I will hold on when trials come to my rod of faith because I KNOW that this is true and I LOVE my Heavenly Father for giving me the chance to prove myself to Him. I am not perfect, but I can be perfected in my savior Jesus Christ after ALL that I can do. I know that this is true.

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