Semana: Noventa
Though Your Sins Be As Scarlet, They Shall Be As White As Snow
It is starting to look and feel like winter here in Ephraim. We
got a cold front that moved in on Friday and blanketed everything with a
dusting of snow. Saturday night the same thing happened. The world just seems
different when covered in snow. Things seem brighter and cleaner. It always
makes me thing of how clean and bright Heaven will be. The roads haven't been
bad so that is a plus. The snow always seems to melt during the day, which is
good. I hope you are recovering quickly mama. You have been in my prayers as
well as countless others I'm sure. I should be sending a package home soon. I
need to start sending some things home like letters and other little things
that I probably won't need since the weather won't get warm for the remainder
of my mission. Zach Collier wrote me the other day and asked me if girls still
write me- I laughed pretty good and need to write him and tell him that mail
has never really stopped flowing through out my mission knock on wood. lol :) I
feel so blessed to have good friends.
Overall the week has been a bit of a struggle. Investigators are
not progressing like I would have hoped, the cold weather makes it difficult to
go out and tract, and on top of that, companion struggles take away the shelter
and protection of our house from contention and the adversary. My patience has
definitely been tested this transfer and I have three more weeks of this life
lesson. Thankfully I am going on exchanges with the zone leaders and we get
along really well. One of them, Elder Isabell, is from Pendleton Oregon and the
other is Elder Niumatalolo from the DC area but went to BYU. Exchanges should
be good.
Monday night we had another lesson with Rodney. It went on and
on but I feel like we are making progress. Today we are going to teach him
about the Restoration and the Book of Mormon. These lessons with Rodney have
really been good for me as a missionary. This week I've read The Message of the
Restoration by Elder Charles Dider, The Book of Mormon- A Book From God by
Elder Tad R. Callister, Our Identity and Our Destiny by Tad. R. Callister,
The Only True God and Jesus Christ Whom He Hath Sent by Elder Jeffrey R.
Holland, My Words... Never Cease by Elder Holland, and one of my all time
favorites: Safety For The Soul by Elder Holland. Through reading these talks
and marking them for Rodney my thirst for knowledge has just skyrocketed. My
testimony of this gospel has as well been strengthened through these teachings
of men called of God. As Elder Holland put it, " As one of a thousand
elements of my own testimony of the divinity of the Book of Mormon, I submit
this as yet one more evidence of its truthfulness. In this their greatest—and
last—hour of need, I ask you: would these men blaspheme before God by
continuing to fix their lives, their honor, and their own search for eternal salvation
on a book (and by implication a church and a ministry) they had fictitiously
created out of whole cloth?
Never mind that their wives are about to be widows and their
children fatherless. Never mind that their little band of followers will yet be
“houseless, friendless and homeless” and that their children will leave
footprints of blood across frozen rivers and an untamed prairie floor. 9
Never
mind that legions will die and other legions live declaring in the four
quarters of this earth that they know the Book of Mormon and the Church which
espouses it to be true. Disregard all of that, and tell me whether in this hour
of death these two men would enter the presence of their Eternal Judge quoting
from and finding solace in a book which, if not the very word of God, would
brand them as imposters and charlatans until the end of time? They would not do
that! They were willing to die rather than deny the divine origin and the
eternal truthfulness of the Book of Mormon." Not only by my faith have I
come to know this is Christ's restored church but I've had that testimony
fortified and clad in the undeniable teaching of the scriptures and historical
records. It gives me great pleasure to think of the fullness of the gospel and
the Restoration through the prophet Joseph Smith.
Well I have to run like usual but if nothing else I am so
thankful for the Holy Ghost and his sweet whisperings that teach me that
this is the true church of Jesus Christ. This church, its leaders, and the rock,
which it is founded upon, are so amazing. With all the struggles I'm
loving my mission! This is the definition of livin' the dream! Vaya con Dios!
Elder
Bennion
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