It is so wonderful to be able to send you an email today. I am just so happy. It must be the time of the year. Who doesn´t love Christmas!?
So we have some neat experiences and funny things I was remembering. Time flies so fast and it is so crazy because I think about all the things that I want to do as a missionary and the time is leaving! It´s crazy!!! It´s weird to think this is the last Christmas that I will be called Elder Askins but life goes on.
Well this week was great. We are teaching this part-member couple, Vanessa and Marcos. She is a member and he isn´t but wants to be. So call the elders! haha. But they need to get married.
The Branch of Quatro Barras is amazing. The branch is taking care of all of the business of marriage. It is neat. Well, his documents finally arrived. So we can mark the marriage this weekend and then in 20 days: wedding! (Jack Sparrow LOVES weddings! And Elder Askins as well, if followed by a baptism!) and as Elder Whitlock would say, "That´s the daily double: wedding and bapism." How neat is that?
So we had our first meeting with the branch president. I really love him. Talk about a wonderful man. I think his wife bore her testimony on Sunday and said that her husband was almost perfect (you don´t hear many wives say that about their husbands- just mom) She said that he is 100 percent faithful to her, even in his thoughts. That is an accomplishment and it inspired me to be 100 percent faithful to God, my family, and my future family. That was nice. He also said something great. He was talking to us about the importance of keeping honest records of who we teach and so on, he said "with the records in hand, get your knees to the ground" (how neat it rhymes in portuguese and in english.) He said to make a record of the people and then with the record pray for them. Now we pray for our investigators, but I usually don´t do it with their progress record, so we started this week. He is amazing.
So we were going to visit this couple that I told you about but they weren´t home. So we started walking to our alternative plan. We saw this man working on his bike. We passed by and I felt, we need to talk to him. So we turned around and started talking to him. It turns out he is a member, very very VERY inactive from the church, but wants to come back. He said that many times he was in Pinhais (another city by Curitiba) and wanted to talk to the Elders, but never had the courage and many times he saw us pass and wanted to talk to us, but didn´t have the courage. Well we started talking to him and gave him a Book of Mormon.
Then a few days after, we were going to visit this couple again and they were there again! and right as we showed up, the branch presidency showed up. All of us were there, except the couple. So we were leaving and I said to the branch president that there was an inactive member that lived closed, they didn't know. They went and visited him and since Sunday- he has already gone to a family night and he will come to church this weekend. How neat? This branch rocks!
This week we got the Liahonas of Conference. I love the talk by Elder Robert D. Hales. It was amazing. I know he wasn´t in good health at the conference, but that just proves the message of his talk. It has inspired me on the mission and I challenge you all to read it at home:
Waiting on the Lord: Thy Will Be Done
by Elder Robert D. Hales
On this Sabbath morning, we give thanks for and testify of the living reality of our Savior. His gospel has been restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith. The Book of Mormon is true. We are led by a living prophet today, President Thomas S. Monson. Above all, we bear solemn witness of the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the eternal blessings that flow from it.
During the past few months, I have had the opportunity to study and learn more about the Savior’s atoning sacrifice and how He prepared Himself to make that eternal offering for each one of us.
His preparation began in the premortal life as He waited upon His Father, saying, “Thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever.” Beginning in that moment and continuing today, He exercises His agency to accept and carry out our Heavenly Father’s plan. The scriptures teach us that through His youth, He went “about [His] Father’s business” and “waited upon the Lord for the time of his ministry to come.” At the age of 30, He suffered sore temptation yet chose to resist, saying, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” In Gethsemane, He trusted His Father, declaring, “Nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done," and then He exercised His agency to suffer for our sins. Through the humiliation of a public trial and the agony of crucifixion, He waited upon His Father, willing to be “wounded for our transgressions … [and] bruised for our iniquities.” Even as He cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” He waited upon His Father—exercising His agency to forgive His enemies, see that His mother was watched over, and endure to the end until His life and mortal mission were finished.
I have often pondered, Why is it that the Son of God and His holy prophets and all the faithful Saints have trials and tribulations, even when they are trying to do Heavenly Father’s will? Why is it so hard, especially for them?
I think about Joseph Smith, who suffered illness as a boy and persecution throughout his life. Like the Savior, he cried out, “O God, where art thou?” Yet even when he was seemingly alone, he exercised his agency to wait upon the Lord and carry out his Heavenly Father’s will.
I think of our pioneer forebears, driven from Nauvoo and crossing the plains, exercising their agency to follow a prophet even as they suffered sickness, privation, and some even death. Why such terrible tribulation? To what end? For what purpose?
As we ask these questions, we realize that the purpose of our life on earth is to grow, develop, and be strengthened through our own experiences. How do we do this? The scriptures give us an answer in one simple phrase: we “wait upon the Lord.” Tests and trials are given to all of us. These mortal challenges allow us and our Heavenly Father to see whether we will exercise our agency to follow His Son. He already knows, and we have the opportunity to learn, that no matter how difficult our circumstances, “all these things shall [be for our] experience, and … [our] good.”
Does this mean we will always understand our challenges? Won’t all of us, sometime, have reason to ask, “O God, where art thou?” Yes! When a spouse dies, a companion will wonder. When financial hardship befalls a family, a father will ask. When children wander from the path, a mother and father will cry out in sorrow. Yes, “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” Then, in the dawn of our increased faith and understanding, we arise and choose to wait upon the Lord, saying, “Thy will be done.”
What, then, does it mean to wait upon the Lord? In the scriptures, the word wait means to hope, to anticipate, and to trust. To hope and trust in the Lord requires faith, patience, humility, meekness, long-suffering, keeping the commandments, and enduring to the end.
To wait upon the Lord means planting the seed of faith and nourishing it “with great diligence, and … patience.
It means praying as the Savior did—to God, our Heavenly Father—saying: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.” It is a prayer we offer with our whole souls in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Waiting upon the Lord means pondering in our hearts and “receiv[ing] the Holy Ghost” so that we can know “all things what [we] should do.”
As we follow the promptings of the Spirit, we discover that “tribulation worketh patience” and we learn to “continue in patience until [we] are perfected.”
Waiting upon the Lord means to “stand fast” and “press forward” in faith, “having a perfect brightness of hope.”
It means “relying alone upon the merits of Christ” and “with [His] grace assisting [us, saying]: Thy will be done, O Lord, and not ours.”
As we wait upon the Lord, we are “immovable in keeping the commandments,” knowing that we will “one day rest from all [our] afflictions.”
And we “cast not away … [our] confidence” that “all things wherewith [we] have been afflicted shall work together for [our] good.”
Those afflictions will come in all shapes and sizes. Job’s experience reminds us what we may be called upon to endure. Job lost all his possessions, including his land, house, and animals; his family members; his reputation; his physical health; and even his mental well-being. Yet he waited upon the Lord and bore a powerful personal testimony. He said:
“For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:
“And though … worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.”
“Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.”
Even with the shining examples of Job, the prophets, and the Savior, we will still find it challenging to wait upon the Lord, especially when we cannot fully understand His plan and purposes for us. That understanding is most often given “line upon line, [and] precept upon precept.”
In my life I have learned that sometimes I do not receive an answer to a prayer because the Lord knows I am not ready. When He does answer, it is often “here a little and there a little” because that is all that I can bear or all I am willing to do.
Too often we pray to have patience, but we want it right now! As a young man, President David O. McKay prayed for a witness of the truthfulness of the gospel. Many years later, while he was serving his mission in Scotland, that witness finally came. Later he wrote, “It was an assurance to me that sincere prayer is answered ‘sometime, somewhere.’”
We may not know when or how the Lord’s answers will be given, but in His time and His way, I testify, His answers will come. For some answers we may have to wait until the hereafter. This may be true for some promises in our patriarchal blessings and for some blessings for family members. Let us not give up on the Lord. His blessings are eternal, not temporary.
Waiting upon the Lord gives us a priceless opportunity to discover that there are many who wait upon us. Our children wait upon us to show patience, love, and understanding toward them. Our parents wait upon us to show gratitude and compassion. Our brothers and sisters wait upon us to be tolerant, merciful, and forgiving. Our spouses wait upon us to love them as the Savior has loved each one of us.
As we endure physical suffering, we are increasingly aware of how many wait upon each of us. To all the Marys and Marthas, to all of the good Samaritans who minister to the sick, succor the weak, and care for the mentally and physically infirm, I feel the gratitude of a loving Heavenly Father and His Beloved Son. In your daily Christlike ministry, you are waiting upon the Lord and doing your Heavenly Father’s will. His assurance to you is clear: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” He knows your sacrifices and your sorrows. He hears your prayers. His peace and rest will be yours as you continue to wait upon Him in faith.
Every one of us is more beloved to the Lord than we can possibly understand or imagine. Let us therefore be kinder to one another and kinder toward ourselves. Let us remember that as we wait upon the Lord, we are becoming “saint[s] through [His] atonement, … submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon [us], even as a child doth submit to his father.”
Such was the submission of our Savior to His Father in the Garden of Gethsemane. He implored His disciples, “Watch with me,” yet three times He returned to them to find their eyes heavy with sleep. Without the companionship of these disciples and ultimately without the presence of His Father, the Savior chose to suffer our “pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind.” With an angel sent to strengthen Him, He “shrank not to drink the bitter cup.” He waited upon His Father, saying, “Thy will be done,” and He humbly trod the winepress alone. Now, as one of His Twelve Apostles in these latter days, I pray that we will be strengthened to watch with Him and wait upon Him through all our days.
On this Sabbath morning, I express gratitude that “in my Gethsemane” and yours, we are not alone. He that watches over us “shall neither slumber nor sleep.” His angels here and beyond the veil are “round about [us], to bear [us] up.” I bear my special witness that our Savior’s promise is true, for He says, “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” May we wait upon Him by pressing forward in faith, that we may say in our prayers, “Thy will be done,” and return to Him with honor. In the holy name of our Savior and Redeemer, even Jesus Christ, amen.
Com Amor,
Elder Nathan Askins
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