Plugging along in Breda

Breda district Pday soccer

We cleaned our bikes today.

We cleaned our bikes today! We also had a district P-day playing soccer, it was really fun. This week we have more dinner appointments, so that's good.

This sunday (I seem to always write home about the weekends huh!) was special. After an interview with the bishop, an inactive sister who's been coming to church with her eleven-year-old daughter for the past few sundays introduced herself to me. I immediately felt a very strong feeling come over me. The sister explained, with strong emotion in her voice, that she had, for a variety of reasons, been inactive for twenty years, also that she was an RM. She then explained that her daughter for that reason has learned very little about the gospel and that she wants us to teach her the lessons, also that she would also like to receive them. The feeling I felt while hearing this Sister ask us to teach her daughter whom I could tell she loved very much was very special, I know that it came from God. It felt God taking all of the pain and sadness that this woman has felt over having been away from the church and the gospel which connect us more with our Heavenly Father, also the pain that I have felt from things that I have done by distancing myself from God, like He took all that pain, and overwhelmed it with a hope and a love like we don't usually experience here on earth. I don't know exactly what she was feeling, but I think it was something of a similar magnitude.

I know that God will one day take away all of the pain and sadness that we feel in this life. He wants us to come home. He loves us and is ready to make all the bad experiences we have had in this life all worth it. He knew that we would sometimes suffer here and that saddens Him, but He wants to show us how we can be happy. Through the atonement of Jesus Christ, all of our mistakes and pain will be overwhelmed in joy. Alma the younger experienced a taste of this after being racked with "the pains of a damned soul" after having seen and shown the magnitude of his many sins, one of which being how he had led many people away from the gospel. But, after exercizing faith in Christ, all of his pains went away and he said this: 

20 And oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold; yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain!

 21 Yea, I say unto you, my son, that there could be nothing so exquisite and so bitter as were my pains. Yea, and again I say unto you, my son, that on the other hand, there can be nothing so exquisite and sweet as was my joy.

We are here in this life to taste both good and evil in order to learn to recognize the two, like the Lord tells Moses:

Moses 6:55

55 And the Lord spake unto Adam, saying: Inasmuch as thy children are conceived in sin, even so when they begin to grow up, sin conceiveth in their hearts, and they taste the bitter, that they may know to prize the good.

And like I said, the Lord has a plan to wipe away the pain of all of the bad experiences that we will receive in this life. Those experiences are necessary, we chose to come here and have them, but like Lehi taught his son Jacob in 2 Nephi 2:2, these afflictions will be for our gain.

I believe that our Heavenly Father has a plan to save all of his children. That is the truth that we learn only through the restored gospel. I love Elder Holland's talk "The First Great Commandment", where he teaches that truly loving the Lord is the first and most important commandment. 

I love the gospel and for this chance I have to really learn who Jesus Christ is, that He is the Son of the Almighty God, that He loves every single one of us that has ever lived on earth, that He has suffered our pains and afflictions in order to free us of these and allow us to be victorious in this life.

Love, Elder Knaupp