Hi again Family!
How is the book of Mormon reading going? I hope yall are
still doing it! I loved this week reading in Alma 36 where Alma is telling his
son helaman about his conversion. I loved especially, the part where Alma
is saying that when he thought about standing before god that it
filled his soul with inexpressible horror that he wished that he could just be
destroyed both body and soul so that he didn't even have to exist to stand
before god to be judged! I think that is how we feel sometimes when we
have things we need to repent of and change in our lives, the thought of
standing before our Heavenly Father is terrifying. but I love as we
continue to read, he tells of his repentance and the forgiveness he received,
and what joy filled his heart as he was able to be forgiven. Then at
the end he says "... me thought I saw...God sitting upon his throne,
surrounded by numberless concourses of angels in the attitude of singing and
praising their God: Yea, and my soul did long to be there."
he had gone from wishing to be non existent to longing to be in the
presence of God because he had been forgiven of his sins! what a great message
that carries... the power of the atonement is real! Alma went from what was
termed as the most vilest of sinners to someone who went on the become a great
prophet and missionary! The atonement has the power to change lives I know
this is true, to take a person who would otherwise shrink from the
presence of the lord and transform them into a being who would be happy,
comfortable and confident in the presence of their Heavenly Father! What great
power! I know that the Atonement of Jesus Christ is real! I have felt it
and seen in my own life and I have seen it work in the lives of others...
I know it is real with all my heart! We just have to accept it and be
willing to change and we are promised eternal peace... how great is that! I
love Alma he is such a great example of the atonement at work in a life!
I invite all of you to make a life time study of the
atonement! we will never understand fully, it's power, but we will
appreciate it more and more as we study and use it's redemptive power!
The atonement isn't just for the healing of sin though!
there are great powers of the atonement... one in particular that I love is the
enabling/strengthening power of the atonement! that enables us to do
hard things!
I got this from one of my companions and I just love
it!
The six powers of the Atonement
C-cleansing power
H-healing power
R-resurrecting power
I-understand power (Christ knows how we feel)
S-strengthening power
T-transforming power
I could make a life long study of these
powers!
ok now onto the funny part of this week, it was another
interesting week! we met a very interesting lady we call her Wendy! So we knock
on her door and we introduce ourselves as representatives of Jesus Christ and
she says "oh, I am too!! What church do you belong to?" so we told
her and then she says "oh... the Mormons...?" yes ma'am the
"Mormons" then she begins to go off about how we don't believe in
Christ and how we believe in witchcraft and dark powers... yatta yatta yatta...
I stopped her and I said actually ma'am you have been misinformed, our faith
has absolutely NOTHING to do with such things... where did you get your
information... "from the internet" so I asked her if she would mind
visiting our website to see what we really believe and she looked very skeptically
at the Mormon.org card that I held out and said "actually I would
mind...no thank you!" she then went on to tell us about a woman who had
committed a murder recently and she was Mormon and how could a person that
claimed to believe in Jesus Christ do such a thing unless evil spirits were
telling her to do it... I just laughed at her and said "Ma'am, there
are people of ALL different faiths who do horrible things, not just
Mormons... they for whatever reason have chosen not to follow Christ. She didn't
really say much after that, but then she told us that there was something
weird going on in our religion and that we needed to pray about it so we
could make a better choice. then she asked if we as Mormons celebrated
Halloween and I told her that we did participate in the festivities
for the fun of it! then she began to go off on how Halloween is the devils
holiday and that it was "satan's way to train lil Jonny to be a devil
worshipper" I just laughed and told her to have a good day! and we left...
we got a really great laugh out of it though! she was a funny lady!!
We meet the most interesting people out tracting! it's fun when we get crazy
stories from it! ha ha!
Last night I received a prompting to go and visit a referral
that we had try contacting and he stood us up.. but I had the thought to got
check on him again... so we went and stopped by his house and he and his wife
were home and he invited us in and asked us to tell them about the book of
Mormon... so we did an impromptu lesson on the restoration of the gospel!
and at the end the guy said "now I haven't been baptized, but if I
got baptized I would want my whole family to be baptized." so we
explained to him that the lessons that we teach would prepare him for baptism!
and he said he would like that and so we will be seeing him again on
Thursday!! WOW! that was so awesome! Whitewashing an area is hard, but the lord
blesses us as we are obedient to him and his commandments... as we follow
promptings and do as we are asked the lord has blessings just waiting for
us! I LOVE my mission!
Well family, I hope that yall are having a blessed week! I
love yall so much and I will talk to yall soon!
LOVE,
Sister Dannika Nielsen
Sister Dannika Nielsen
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