The Inspiration of Inspiration

This week has been an amazing week. I have a friend whom I've been friends with for at least 4 years (since high school). She is one of those people that you wonder if anything is ever going to go right for her. She has had so many struggles, and it's been hard on our friendship. She is not LDS and it's been really hard for me to watch her in her many trials and know that it could be made SO MUCH BETTER for her. During high school, I invited her to church, my friend and I gave her a Book of Mormon with our testimonies in it, she started reading it but it never really got anywhere.

Through the years, we've still kept in contact, even though it's been really difficult for me at times. I've always felt that whenever I talk to her, it almost always brings me down. She has made many bad decisions, and has become an even more negative person from it. Many of my friends that were also friends with her have just kind of lost contact, but for some reason, I never have.

While she has made some bad decisions, I must also say that she is one of the most giving, selfless people I know. She is VERY generous when she gives gifts, and she always remembers your birthday, or if you're having a bad day, she'll do whatever she can to make you feel better. I really admire her for her loyalty and generosity.

Then, a few months ago, tragedy struck her and her family. Her sister was killed in a car wreck because her husband who was drunk, was driving. This left behind her 2 (or 3) year old son. My friend has been through many difficult things, but this is one thing that she won't ever recover from. She hasn't had any idea how to deal with this kind of pain, and it's changed her life. Not only that, but she now is one of the primary caregivers to this little boy.

I'm sorry this is so sad, and I promise it gets better. I've always had this friend on my mind. She's about the only person I know personally who is not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Two weeks ago, the missionaries gave a lesson in our ward that was all about getting friends/aquaintances to take the lessons. I have always had the impression that my friend wouldn't be interested in learning this way. Her father has actually banned the missionaries from coming to their home. So I've always been afraid to ask her.

When they sent around a sheet where you put your name and the name of someone you know who might be interested, I almost just passed it on. But instead I wrote her name down, and kind of forgot about it. Well, we got a call last week from the missionaries asking if I had invited her to take the lessons, and I hadn't, but I told them a little more about the situation, and said I'd try. Saturday night, my friend started texting me, and I suddenly realized I hadn't asked her yet and I knew I had to that night. Our discussion got a little deeper, and I was telling her how the only person that can truly heal her is Jesus Christ, because He is the only one that knows exactly what she is going through. She could be truly happy through Him, and that's about the only way she can correct some of the mistakes she's made. The opportunity arose, and I asked her if she would be interested in learning more about our church, and if she wanted to talk with the missionaries. And she said yes! Our first lesson is going to be on Tuesday night!

I was so worried that she would take offense, because she has in the past. But this time was different. We've both changed a lot since the first time we met, and I know she's seen how happy I am, and knows that it's not just on the surface. I know that she has a deep yearning for something like that when she's been hurt so many times. So the fact that her heart was softened enough to listen to the missionaries makes me so extremely happy! This is a feeling I have never felt before, and I know the Spirit is guiding us both. Our conversation was inspiration. I'm not very articulate or good with words, but the words just came so naturally. I have had such an awesome feeling ever since, that I can not wait!

The best part is, since she accepted the offer, I can tell she's rather excited. She's told quite a few people, and has been inquiring as what to expect. We've got a few people that will be coming, and she doesn't mind it at all. I am so excited I can hardly stand it! I really believe that our Heavenly Father takes a personal interest in every one of us.

One particular scripture has really been standing out to me lately. 1 Nephi 17:3 "And thus we see that the commandments of God must be fulfilled. And if it so be that the children of men keep the commandments of God he doth nourish them, and strengthen them, and provide means whereby they can accomplish the thing which he has commanded them;. . ." I know there are other scriptures that say the same thing. But the Lord prepares the way. It is a commandment to preach the gospel, and the Lord has provided a way that I can help spread it. It is never an impossible task, because it is a commandment, and the Lord will not allow it to be impossible. I love how it says that He will nourish and strengthen us. When I think of nourish, I think of a mother feeding her child, not only food but with love. That it's nourishment on a personal level.

I'm sorry I'm not the best writer. But I hope my excitement at the whole situation showed. I really pray that I'll have more good news after Tuesday night!

Making it to the Celestial Kingdom

About a month ago, we had a combined Young Men/Young Women activity that was a large object lesson on the three kingdoms. After the fun was over, we gathered together and I summed up the experience with a short talk. Here are some of my notes from that night:

Kingdoms
Celestial Kingdom

• Dwell in presence of God and Christ
• Don’t receive it in one attempt. “It is the result of a lifetime of righteousness and constancy of purpose”
• Must exercise faith in Christ
• Must receive ordinances of salvation and keep associated covenants: Baptism, Gift of the Holy Ghost, Melchizedek Priesthood ordination for men, Temple endowment, Marriage sealing
• Must keep commandments
• Must repent
• Must Endure Faithfully
• Given to all who would have received it if they didn’t have the opportunity in this life
• Given to all children who die before age of accountability (eight)
• Comparable to Glory of the sun

Terrestial Kingdom

• Can have presence of Christ but not the Father
• Honorable people who were deceived by craftiness of men
• Members of the church who were not valiant
• Those who rejected the opportunity to receive the gospel in mortality but later received it in the postmortal spirit world
• Comparable to Glory of the moon

Telestial Kingdom

• Did not receive the gospel or a testimony of Jesus
• Redeemed from spirit prison (hell)
• Comparable to Glory of the stars
  

Utilize the atonement: You can do it! You can gain Eternal Life

• "...be assured that eternal life is within your reach. The Lord wants you to return to Him, and He will never require anything of you that you cannot fulfill. All His commandments are calculated to promote your happiness." (True to the Faith, page 53)
• The Atonement reconciles us to the Father, we are made perfect through Jesus (DC 76: 62 and 69)
• The Savior invites all of us to receive eternal life
• We ALL sin; we ALL need the Atonement
• Repent Now—for most of us that will mean daily
• Elder Eyring said in General Conference (Do Not Delay: http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=c63a6a4430c0c010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&hideNav=1 ): “All of us have faced deadlines. Fear can grip us when we realize that there may not be enough time left to finish what we promised we would do. The thought comes, “Why didn’t I start earlier?””
  
  "That temptation to delay comes from our enemy, Lucifer. He knows that we can never be truly happy unless we have hope in this life and then realization, in the next, of eternal life. It is the greatest of all the gifts of God. It is to live in families forever with our Heavenly Father and with Jesus Christ and to have eternal increase. Satan wants us to be miserable as he is. And he knows that we can only have that true happiness if we are washed clean through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, by deep and continuing repentance, and the making and keeping of sacred covenants offered only through God’s authorized servants."
  
  "And so Satan tempts with procrastination throughout our days of probation. Any choice to delay repentance gives him the chance to steal happiness from one of the spirit children of our Heavenly Father."
• President Kimball said:
  “One of the most serious human defects in all ages is procrastination,” and then he defined it: “an unwillingness to accept personal responsibility now”
• Elder Eyring also said:
  "...know that we are not the helpless victims of our circumstances. The world tries to tell us that the opposite is true: imperfections in our parents or our faulty genetic inheritance are presented to us as absolving us of personal responsibility. But difficult as circumstances may be, they do not relieve us of accountability for our actions or our inactions. Nephi was right. God gives no commandments to the children of men save He prepares a way for them to obey. However difficult our circumstances, we can repent."
  
  "Similarly, the world might be willing to excuse our bad behavior because those around us behave badly. It is not true that the behavior of others removes our responsibility for our own. God’s standards for our behavior are unchanged whether or not others choose to rise to them."
  
  "The truth is that today is always a better day to repent than any tomorrow. First, sin has its debilitating effects on us. The very faith we need to repent is weakened by delay. The choice to continue in sin diminishes our faith and lessens our right to claim the Holy Ghost as our companion and comforter."
  
  "...even should we be forgiven at some later time, the Lord cannot restore the good effects our repentance today might have had on those we love and are to serve."
• Alma 34: For behold, this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors…Ye cannot say, when ye are brought to that awful crisis, that I will repent, that I will return to my God. Nay, ye cannot say this; for that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world
• Story from Elder Eyring:
  " I knew a man once who could have thought that and given up. When he was 12 he was ordained a deacon. Some of his friends tempted him to begin to smoke. He began to feel uncomfortable in church. He left his little town, not finishing high school, to begin a life following construction jobs across the United States. He was a heavy-equipment operator. He married. They had children. The marriage ended in a bitter divorce. He lost his children. He lost an eye in an accident. He lived alone in boardinghouses. He lost everything he owned except what he could carry in a trunk.
  
  One night, as he prepared to move yet again, he decided to lighten the load of that trunk. Beneath the junk of years, he found a book. He never knew how it got there. It was the Book of Mormon. He read it through, and the Spirit told him it was true. He knew then that all those years ago he had walked away from the true Church of Jesus Christ and from the happiness which could have been his.
  
  Later, he was my more-than-70-year-old district missionary companion. I asked the people we were teaching, as I testified of the power of the Savior’s Atonement, to look at him. He had been washed clean and given a new heart, and I knew they would see that in his face. I told the people that what they saw was evidence that the Atonement of Jesus Christ could wash away all the corrosive effects of sin.
  
  That was the only time he ever rebuked me. He told me in the darkness outside the trailer where we had been teaching that I should have told the people that while God was able to give him a new heart, He had not been able to give him back his wife and his children and what he might have done for them. But he had not looked back in sorrow and regret for what might have been. He moved forward, lifted by faith, to what yet might be."