I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I sure did here. It was a beautiful day filled with so many good things.
OK - so let's see if I can fit in everything that I want to say - it's so hard to do that. It's just like in the scriptures when they say that there are so many things that they can't write because they couldn't find the words to write them all down. I feel like that! And there's also very little time to write down everything you're feeling. But, I try to write down what I can in the moment I'm thinking about it so that I won't forget it.
So on Christmas morning, I got to play the fiddle in the Christmas Celebration. Sister Nally (our Relief Society President, and the wife of the MTC President) had us audition for her earlier and she asked me to go first. I was nervous to start but then remembered that scripture in Moroni 8:16 - "perfect love casteth out all fear." If we're doing things for the right reasons and with the right intentions we don't have any need to be fearful, even if others may think differently of us. For me, I was reminded yesterday that I was there to play for others, because I love others and want to share my talents to benefit others. Not because I want to show off, or because I care about what I look like to others. That helped me to not be fearful with such a big crowd. It was a lot of fun and there were a TON of really cool talents that people shared! There was a magician and a Yiddish Bottle Dance. It was hilarious!
Then I got to be in the Choir for when Elder Bednar came! I want to share the words to the song that we sang, but I don't have them with me right now - I'll send them to you later. It was a beautiful song about the Savior called "Where Shepherds Lately Knelt" by Craig Courtney. Hermana Pugh (another Hermana in our district) sat next to me and it was a really special experience for both of us. We loved the words to this song about the Savior. The Spirit touched our hearts.
Then...Elder Bednar....wow. Ok - I have to first tell you what happened. This is historic and we weren't expecting this, but he decided to run the devotional a little differently than usual and it was SO cool! Instead of coming with a prepared and planned Christmas message, he spent the entire time answering questions from missionaries. BUT, the cool part was HOW he had us ask questions. This devotional was broadcast to all of the other MTCs (but 2) in the world. You might think this sounds weird at first, and at first I thought he was joking, but he was serious. He handed out over 200 cell phones to the audience of missionaries and had arranged for the other MTC's in the world to have cell phones handed out to them to pass around and share. On his ipad, he had an app that allowed him to receive text messages, so he gave us the phone number to connect with His ipad and allowed anyone who wanted to, to text in any question that they wanted to ask Elder Bednar - as people had questions we passed the phones to them. I texted him 2 questions I've been thinking about, but he didn't get to mine - there were so many. But, this way, it was anonymous, and we had an opportunity to ask him personal questions about anything. AND, people from all over the world participated! Lots of questions were from the Provo, MTC - but there were some from the England MTC, and from other places! Isn't that amazing? Not only was it a cool opportunity for us to ask an apostle questions, but Elder Bednar now has a huge list of text messaged questions of things that are truly on our minds, for our age group and for our demographic. I was touched to realize how much the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles love and care for all of us. They want to know how they can best help us (the missionaries, members of the church and people everywhere), and I just thought this was such a cool way for them to understand more of what's on our minds, anonymously, but personally. We don't even realize how lucky we are to have the technology we have...it truly is helping us to hasten the Lord's work in ways that we've never been able to do in the history of the church and the world. This was a really cool demonstration to me of how we can use technology to communicate with others about the Gospel!!!
Ok - so one question that Elder Bednar answered was, "What was the most important principle of the Gospel to you, that helped you teach more effectively on your mission?"
Elder Bednar then talked about the Atonement! It was amazing! I love how Elder Bednar clearly states what he's going to talk about, and then defines everything so well and bears such strong testimony of what He knows is true.
He talked about how the Atonement has 2 fundamental parts: 1) It cleanses 2) It strengthens. I loved this! I knew that the Atonement was everything already, but because he broke it down into these 2 elements, it just made me want to gain even greater understanding and testimony of how the Atonement blesses us in both of these ways specifically. He gave us an apostolic blessings that if we would sincerely seek to understand the strengthening power of the Atonement, that we would be given the reassurance that we do have the strength through the Atonement of Christ to do whatever the Lord needs us to do, wherever we are called to serve throughout our life.
Earlier in the week I had been thinking about how I could better access the Atonement in my life. And also how I could effectively teach others how to access the Atonement in their life everyday. The thought came to my mind that we hold ourselves back from accessing the blessings of peace and comfort that the gift of the Atonement offers because of our lack of faith. That may sound harsh, but I know that's true. So how can we have true faith? Another thought came to my mind, that in order to have greater faith, we need to have the mindset of expecting the Lord to bless us if we are obedient to Him. We need to truly believe and expect the Lord to bless us with what we need (not necessarily with what we think we need or want). If we don't believe and expect the Lord to bless us, then we won't be looking for the blessing that he does give us - and we certainly won't recognize the blessings that do come that the Lord is trying to have us see. The blessing of the Atonement has already been unleashed for us, it has already occurred, we already have access to that gift and the blessings of peace and comfort so why don't we actually use it and why don't we allow it to help us? The Atonement gives us the opportunity to think at a higher plane of thinking and to live a higher quality of life. It offers everyone in the world peace. Use it! Let it and allow it to bless your life. Don't let yourself be limited to having the Lord's blessings because of your lack of faith. Believe and expect the Lord to bless you through the Savior's Atonement and you WILL see His blessings everyday. The Lord sees so much greatness in each of us and wants us to recognize that we need the Atonement in order to become ALL that the Father intends for us to become.
I love you all! Have a happy Christmas Week! Be safe and take care :)
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