Finally, we Endure to the End!

The last part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is called "endure to the end." Lets go through a quick review "just for fun." The first was Faith, then repentance, then Baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost. Good. I'm glad you didn't forget them. The last part of it is this thing called "endure to the end." So lets lay down a Scripture so you know I'm not just making this up. Matthew 24:13 states, "But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved." Here is another awesome one from 2nd Nephi Ch31:20 in the Book of Mormon. Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life. You see I'm not making this up. It's in the scriptures. So, How do we endure to the end? Well, after we make the covenant of baptism and get the gift of the Holy Ghost we continue to live the commandments our very best till the end. Heavenly Father knows the desires of our hearts and knows when we are doing our best. He is just sitting there waiting to bless us, all we gotta do is do our best. If were not 100% perfect after we make this convenat it's still ok. Just start over with faith in Christ. Then move on to Repentence, and strive to live the BEST you can. Christ will fill in our short comings if we come unto him. This scripture in Moroni Ch10:32 is exactly what I mean. "Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God." I know this to be true. I add my testimony once again that the Gospel Of Jesus Christ can really truly bring us Peace, at last. I strongly urge you to get in contact with your local missionaries. For you living in Canandaigua NY, I am that local missionary. Were here to help and to serve. Peace is there at your finger tips. Visit Mormon.org and get the missionaries. If your a member, Send this to your nonmember friends and keep enduring to the end! I love you all, my dear brothers and sisters.

Baptism, and the Reception of the Holy Ghost

The greatest part that comes after repentance is the feeling of forgiveness. I have talked with countless people who have gone through this great process and have all felt the lift of forgiveness. Is that all though? Nope. After one repents they then are ready to be baptized. This picture is of Christ being baptized. A few of my favorite scriptures regarding baptism are John 3:5 "Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." I love it because it's so blunt, like me! Another one of my favorites is found in the Book of Mormon. Its 2nd Nephi 31:5 "And now, if the Lamb of God, he being holy, should have need to be baptized by water, to fulfil all righteousness, O then, how much more need have we, being unholy, to be baptized, yea, even by water!" The funny thing about this verse is I didn't add the exclamation point at the end, its meant to be read that way.
This picture is of an amazing guy named Ross getting baptized. What a wonderful event to see someone enter into the waters of baptism to be washed clean, then after receive the Holy Ghost! The Holy Ghost is given to those who repent and are baptized.
It is a special gift given from Heavenly Father. What the gift does, is it literally guides us in thought and spiritual revelation. Here comes another one of my analogies. Think if you were in a dark room and you knew that there were dangerous things in the room. Spiders, snakes, land mines ext. Would you rather cross the room with a huge flash light in your hand? Or wander through the darkness hoping not to die.... Well the answer seems simple. As it is with life, we are all wandering through a dark and dangerous room(life) we need this help called the Gift of the Holy Ghost. Here is a link to read more up on it!http://mormon.org/searchResults?theme=blue&query=holy+ghost Thanks for reading my Blog. Your awesome. WATCH OUT FOR THOSE LAND MINES!

After Faith Comes Repentance.

The second principle of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is repentance. Now, I want to make something very clear. Repentance is not a "bad" thing. In fact it's a wonderful beautiful thing that everyone HAS to go through. Repentance simply means to turn or to change. Since Christ is the only one who lived a perfect life we all must repent.
For me repentance is a gift. I am truly grateful for the chance I have to repent. Most people think that repenting brings shame or embarrassment. This is false. Repentance sets you free. It makes all the wrongs right again. You might say to yourself, OK OK I get it now. But how do I repent? Great question, here's how.
The steps are basic. First, you must recognise that you have done something wrong.
Admit to yourself that you just plain messed up. Second, you must stop whatever it is that is not in line with God's commandments.This is means to forsake your sin.
Third you must confess. Pray sincerely to your Father in Heaven and plead with him to forgive you. Forth you must make restitution. This means to fix the wrong that was done. For instance, if you stole something you must pay it back. If you hurt someones feelings, tell them your sorry and you love them. Fifth and finally you must forsake. Which means to simply never do it again. Make a promise with your Father in Heaven that you wont do that any more. These are (in my interpretation) the 5 steps of repentance.
I never said it was easy. Although I know that true repentance brings us forgiveness, peace, comfort, and joy! Did we forget the title of my blog? Peace at last..
I tell you my friends, repentance works. As crazy and as imperfect I am, repentance is a wonderful thing that we should not fret. Our Father in Heaven smiles when we his children choose to turn toward him and live his commandments, otherwise known as repentance.

The Actual Gospel of Jesus Christ

I have talked a lot about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I have mentioned what is does for our lives. Now I will tell you what it actually is! The first part of the Gospel is "faith." Faith is talked A LOT about in the scriptures,and for good reason. We need to learn it over and over so we understand what it is and how we gain it. Faith for me has been JUST like how Alma Ch.32 puts it. Verse 28 Alma says "Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me." I love this description because it is so simple to grasp. Me, not being the brightest bulb out there understands that both seeds and faith grow over time. Both seeds and faith need to be nourished and taken care of. If not, they will wither and die. Our faith will grow each day as we pray to our Father in Heaven and read the scriptures. This picture of Jesus Christ by Simon Dewey reminds me of who we are to have faith in. Christ is the ultimate example of faith. When Christ healed people he made sure they had faith for Him to heal them. In the other picture(right,by Walter Rane) Christ is healing a blind man. In Mark 8:23 It reads,"And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought." Christ asked the man if he saw anything. Then Christ gave the man his sight. The man must have had faith in Christ to be able to be healed. As we also must have faith in Christ. I urge you with all the strength that my fingertips can type to keep building your faith in Christ. Christ will never cease to have faith in you. Remember, this is only the first part Gospel.

What Will Matter?

This is a sweet poem given to me by my father. I hope you catch the point of it.
By the way I LOVE this. That is why I want to share it with you.

"-Ready or not, someday it will all come to an end. There will be no more sunrises,no minuets,hours, or days. All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten will pass to someone else. Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance. It will not matter what you own or what you were owed. Your grudges,resentments,frustrations and jealousies will finally disappear. So too, your hopes,ambitions,plans and to-do lists will expire. The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away. It wont matter where you came from or what side of the tracks you lived on at the end. It wont matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant. Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant. So what will matter?
How will the value of your days be measured? What will matter is not what you bought but what you built, not what you got but what you gave. What will matter is not your success but your significance. What will matter is not what you learned but what you taught.What will matter is every act of integrity,compassion, courage or sacrifice that enriched,empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example. What will matter is not your competence but your character.
What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how many will feel a lasting loss when you're gone. What will matter is not your memories but the memories that live in those who loved you. What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom and for what. Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident. It's not a matter of circumstance but of choice. Choose to live a life that matters."
(Michael Josephson,"What Will Matter?",L.A.:Josephson Institute of Ethics,2003.)

Never Ending Happiness

Happiness....it seems that easy doesn't it? Then why do we let the little things in life bother us? In my life happiness seems to come like waves in the ocean. Some come in big waves, some small. Waves are a tricky thing. If you catch it right it can push you all the way to shore. But if you don't catch it right you waste a lot of energy and your left out there feeling rejected. Some times after happy times come hard times.Just like when the wave is retracting back into the ocean, it can be powerful and pull you away. I look at the brighter side of life. That brighter side is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Being optimistic is only half of it. When we bring the Savior into our lives everything seems to be OK. When we don't have the Savior in our lives we tend to be worried a lot or be discouraged easily. Happiness is there at your fingertips.Happiness wants to find you. Would you say it's safe to say you've been looking for more happiness? Well, my fellow blogger, it's found you. All you do is open your eyes and notice it! Just today my friends and I, Elder Westley and Elder Anderson, went out for a morning run. It was pouring outside, but that didn't stop us. We charged out into the rain for our routine morning run. We had a great time despite we were all soaked. My friends, I know that true, never ending happiness is yours by living the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel makes life worth living right. We only have one chance at life. Wouldn't you want to live it right?
Visit the NEW Mormon.org to locate the missionaries in your area to share this message of happiness. Find the link to Mormon.org in the section on the right.

Pageant!

The Hill Cumorah Pageant has been so exciting! I have been a few times now with people I'm teaching and its been really really exciting! Meeting the cast and talking
with people from all over the world really gives you an idea of how big of a deal this thing is.


Every night I meet people from all over the world! Last night I bumped into some people from my home town,Mesa AZ! One thing I LOVE about the Pageant is that all the scenes really happened! In the course of my mission i've read the Book Of Mormon a few times. To actually see these events be portrayed live is such a great experience. If you ever read a book and saw the movie you know what I'm talking about. I try to look past the dramatic angle and look more towards the spiritual side. Like when Nephi is filled with the power of God and his older brothers fall to the ground. Yes, its a cool scene because they fall on the ground. But I look at it as, WOW, the lord will protect us in the very moment we need it if we are true and faithful. Or when the angel Moroni shows the boy Joseph Smith the plates. I think, WOW Joseph must have felt like a kid in a candy store! That is SO amazing that IT REALLY happened here on this very hill. Pageant is a wonderful show filled with thrilling special effects and super legit costumes!.. At the same time is is a reenactment of miracles that really happened and they gave give us strength today. I love the Pageant and what it does for the community. Here are a few of my friends I brought to the Pageant; Lynn, Steph, Frankie, and little Daimen
Like I said, have been To Pageant a few times now and it gets better and better every night!
If you ever have the opprotunity to "Come Feel The Excitement" take it! Pageant is great for the entire family. Thats what its really about...bringing people unto Christ and families.