Jan 25 2016

This week has been trying for me. I have been studying the scriptures more, and I have see the hand of the Lord in our lives, and I have recieved answers to prayer, but this week I've been struggling with feeling like I am not doing enough, and that I need to be working harder. But truly all is well, the Savior is merciful and I find comfort knowing that repentance to things, big and small, is always available, and it is how we can become who our Father in Heaven and our Savior want us to become. This week we had our Training, and we had the opportunity to see a worldwide Missionary broadcast Training, with an overhanging theme of Teaching Repentance, and Baptizing Converts. This is an interesting concept because we usually think of Baptism as being part of the converting process, but that is just the thing, how can you expect to become a member of the Church of Jesus Christ unless you are first converted to the basic principles of the Gospel? You can't, otherwise the baptism is in vain. I have also been studying my patriarchal blessing. I have a goal to create a plan for who I want to be by the end of my mission. This plan will be achieved, you know how I know? because I'm making sure that it is what Heavenly Father has on plan for me. Czech this... I started planning my goal by saying that I want to be Exactly who my Father in Heaven wants me to be. That is my Goal. If I am to figure out the Path that My Heavenly Father wants me to take to get there, I need to first understand what he Expects of me. My first thoughts about this immidiately turned me to my Patriarchal Blessing. In my PB, I realized that there is a pattern. This pattern is that whenever a blessing is promised, it is conditional upon a commandment within my Patriarchal Blessing. For Example, If I am told that I will be able to recieve Spiritual Guidance, I can look and see what I need to do to qualify for that spiritual guidance. see? pretty simple right? So I follow this pattern, and I made a list of things That I am promised, and then I made a list of things that I need to do to achomplish these things. Another thing talked about in Blessings, are spiritual gifts that are inately ours as gifts from our Heavenly Father. These gifts are to help us, but no doubt, they are also for the intent of helping God's other children. These gifts may include things such as, "you will find that the Gospel comes easy to you" or "you will be a teacher" or something like that. To me they seem to be stated as a complete sentance without ties to other parts of the blessing. These gifts are important in making my goal for the end result of my mission, because If I can create a goal that is consistent with my spiritual gifts and allows me to use them, I will be able to successfully walk the path the Heavenly Father has already Planned for us to walk. I am excited to complete this study because I have just started it about 2 days ago, and it should be finished in a day or two. We'll see where it takes me. ________________________________ So, during communism, the members here in the Czech Republic were issolated from the rest of the church in a sense, and were really kind of Cut off from the Revelation that comes from a living prophet. But the Saints here were dilligent throughout the cold winter and they came together to make things work out as best they could. One man, decided that He would do everything he could to keep the church alive, and he created Yoga camps, where people, members and friends would secretly meet together and practice Yoga, but at the same time, they would share the Gospel. Many of the people who attended these camps were converted to the Gospel, and they became members as soon as the wall of communism was lifted. The amazing thing... The Saints here are the ones who need to be brought into heaven first. There are several members who, throughout communism, saved their money, their 10 percent, throughout all of communism, and they saved it, in cash, and then when the church finially came back into the Czech Republic, they finally could give it all to the church. There is one story I heard of some missionaries (although I cannot remember when exactly this was)... some missionaries who were tracting or contacting one day, and they met this old woman, and when they started talking to her she suddenly got excited and said, "are you mormon missionaries?" to which the missionaries said, "yes" and she gave them a huge glass jar full of money... she had saved her tithing for all those years, without the church available to her, she stayed converted. It blows my mind. I have a hard time staying converted sometimes just because I don't understand the Atonement and here these members are, going through apostasy and they are still remaining faithful. After Communism was lifted, the church had to actually come back in to reestablish the leadership of the church because they had been separated for so long. Incredible. tak jo... Já mám vás rád.