Repentance

Hey y'all!

How are you all doing?

This week was a little different... again. So this past weekend we had Sanford and Manassa Days. Yesterday we had a parade and rodeo in Monte Vista which is fairly close. This upcoming week, there is one in Del Norte which is also fairly close. I feel bad for my trainee because every weekend so far on his mission, we have gone to a parade/carnival/rodeo/derby! He understands that this is not normal though haha. The people down here in the valley love their Pioneer Days. The 24th of July is THE holiday down here. If you have not been able to experience a true Pioneer Days, I strongly recommend you go to Manassa and see what it's like!

This week, we had a Zone Conference in Pueblo which is about 150 miles away. We had to go up there Wednesday night because the Zone Conference started around 7:30 in the morning because there is a box in our cars called Tiwi. This very annoying box does not allow us to go more than 6 mph over the speed limit. It yells at us for aggressive driving, seat belts, speeding, and various other things. Our mission was one of 26 trial missions a few years back and they just updated the firmware on them because there were many cases the speed limit on tiwi was wrong or it would yell at us randomly while going down the road. They just updated them and hopefully fixed all those issues. We had an incredible Zone Conference where we discussed a lot of incredible issues. I learned a lot and have applied it to my mission.

Elder Tillman is an incredible missionary and I am very excited to have him as my trainee. There is a lot I am learning from him; he and I are very good at teaching together and our focus is mainly having discussions. I was called to give a talk on Sunday and well... I didn't give the talk, there was a misprint in the program, so the Bishop's mom gave a talk instead. I prepared a 15 minute talk and then didn't have to give it, however I will be giving that talk in 2 weeks being asked by the bishop. I will type out my talk in 2 weeks and have it posted on my blog for y'all to read. Well we are going to go sandboarding here soon at the sand dunes so I need to get going.

---

Spiritual thought

I have been thinking a lot about repentance this week. I had an incredible experience this past week regarding repentance. So, I'm going to straight up with y'all, missionaries aren't perfect! Shocker! So, during church yesterday, I had been thinking about repentance because of a lesson we had on Thursday. There was a young girl who was baptized on Saturday and so they called her up to the front to welcome her to the ward. This then got me thinking about Repentance and Baptism which go together very well. We are baptized when we are 8 years old and washed clean. When we partake of the sacrament we are renewing those covenants or promises. Here is a story that happened to me on Sunday at church that I wrote down right away.

"Today while partaking of the sacrament and during my humble prayer, asking the Lord for forgiveness for the mistakes I have made this week, I felt something different. Since being on my mission, every time I earnestly ask for forgiveness, the spirit has whispered to me, "You are forgiven." That is such an incredible feeling to know that the Lord has forgiven me of EVERYTHING I have done. This time however, it was much stronger than normal, not only did I feel forgiven, but such great joy and peace overcame me and for possibly the first time I KNOW what the sacrament truly means. I feel fully cleansed from the mistakes I made last week. The lord promises us, "Though your sins be red like crimson, they shall be made white as snow... and I the Lord will remember them no more." It's incredible to feel no guilt and completely renewed from mistakes such as the feeling after baptism.

Christ atoned for our sins. One thing that just came to mind is the last part of the repentance process. We must forgive ourselves of anything we have ever done, if we do not, we have not completed the repentance process. I am finally learning the importance of that. There is always a deeper feeling of our Father's love we may feel once we forgive ourselves.

If Our Savior says he will remember them no more, why should we?

I love you all, have a wonderful week!