Dear President,
Happy New Year! And as you know, the 51st baptism couldn't have come in more timely as sister Mild (and all of us) strive to be new men and women in Christ. This year, I should tell you I have resolved to "Always be in constant companionship with the Holy Ghost; to always keep in remembrance His presence with me - this entire year."
We've already seen the trials. Thank you for sharing that talk with Elder Merkley. Without going into to many details, with my new resolve I have felt the presence of the adversary attack on many fronts on my mission, and we're under siege here often. There's a reason we were split-off from our Bang Naa friends and the hand of the Lord is manifest in abundance - and so are the trials.
Well, as we have increased our efforts (I mean to say I've invited more people to come unto Christ and be baptized in this transfer than I have in my entire mission) we have run into the grumpiest, anti, resistant, and even pugnacious individuals. For instance, all roads lead to the top of Mt. Fugi, right? Well, we taught a lesson by accident to this very nice man who works by our house where we eat at daily (we intended to teach his wife). But as we started talking, HE started teaching and teaching and teaching about Buddhism - I mean to say he was even translating terms in Bahli - and wouldn't listen to what we had to say. But then he started to reason out to us how there can be no such things as a Savior, that Christ lived and died for nothing and that our whole religion was in vein because there is no such thing as an atonement. A bit different than "Every religion teaches to be good," huh? We bore testimony of some things we knew to be true, but he got up and left in our mid-sentence. Its one thing to read about anti-Christ’s in the scriptures; it's another to be the ones contending on the front lines with them. This experience shook me up a bit and I had been trying to focus on my studies, but it was hard. What is the Atonement? I felt like Enos: "Lord, how is it done?" But Friday I read 3 Ne 12:2 where Jesus charges the multitude that any who believe in the words of the disciples are blessed because they had SEEN him AND KNOW THAT HE LIVES. I read this and then stopped to think: The disciples wrote this book; this book had to come forth the way Joseph said it came forth because there is no other way; and if those two things are true, Christ did visit the Americas because he did ascend into heave after he did die upon the cross and was slain for the sins of the world...
Sorry this is long, but I know that Christ lives because I know this book open in my laps couldn't be anything but truth. I now know that Christ lives. I prayed and received this as an answer to its truthfulness and cannot ever go back. I feel my chest is warm because of the spirit not just the Tom yam Gai I ate. I thought I'd share that with you. I do so as a representative of him through his spirit. Amen.
Now I ask you - all of you: my brother and sisters whom I Skyped with, my friends who read this, my family whom I love, my friends I adore - read this book. Then ask God in the name of Christ if it is true. Dang it, it is, but you just have to read it! If you haven’t I am asking you as a representative of the lord under the direction of the spirit of the lord which is in me to do it. Thank you mom for your lesson about this book, and I know it will bless you in ways unimaginable. In Christ's name I seal things as true. Amen.
