Well today I am extremely excited to share all the miracles and tender mercies that Father has provided us with this week in celebration of the birth of the Messiah, Jehovah, Jesus the Christ himself.
This past week I have had a chance to reflect back on what we truly should reflect back on during Christmas season, the Atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ. One of the biggest lessons I have learned on my mission in the FFLM is the change that comes when Fathers children partake of the enabling power of the Atonement through baptism. I stand as a witness that as surely as the Lord liveth, men can change through Christ the Lord. Whether you are rich or poor, married or widowed, male or female, all of Gods children can change. It is our purpose to help them to do so by inviting all to partake of the Atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ through baptism.
This past week we saw many huge miracles, I wanted to share a few with you:
On Christmas Elder Morgan and myself were biking and we knew we need four more blessings to be obedient and get eight by Wednesday. So we stopped and contacted these kids outside their house. They took us to the backyard to their mother who we then blessed. Little did we know how prepared this family is! The mother was taught by missionaries in Haiti and always went to the church just never got baptized. After the blessing she expressed how she desires to prepare to be baptized and how she knows God sent us to her family to help them to do so, on Christmas Day too!!
Another huge miracle came when we went to visit the lady that got baptized last week, on Christmas Day as well. There was an old time friend visiting and immediately when we walked up we greeted him. But he was very standoffish and immediately walked away. So we proceeded and went inside to pray with and teach the family. Just as we were about to pray the man ran up and exclaimed that he wanted to pray as well. We left a blessing with him and immediately he felt the Spirit and opened up to us. He talked about all the tough things that have been happening in his life and how he has been turning to alcohol instead God. Baptism=January 5th without a doubt!
The last miracle that I want to share with ya'll happened in the last hour Saturday night before church on Sunday. It had been an extremely rough day and no one was extremely committed to come to church the next day. So at 8 PM the Spirit told us to park and take our bikes and ride to where Father wanted us to. So we did listening to the Spirit and we saw a man that we would always pass and invite to church outside his yard about to go inside. The Spirit whispered yell at him to wait for you, so I did so and we went over and spoke with him. It seemed like every word I spoke carried direct power from the Spirit of God. Well Sunday morning him and his family came to church and are now preparing to be baptized this Sunday!
Well as you can see I am extremely grateful to Father this past week for providing us with many mighty miracles! "God is a good God, YES HE IS!"
Well now looking towards the future the New Year of 2014 is immediately around the corner so in closing I wanted to leave you with a quote from President Uchtdorf:
“[A] regret people express was that they failed to become the person they felt they could and should have been. When they looked back on their lives, they realized that they never lived up to their potential, that too many songs remained unsung.... I am speaking of becoming the person God, our Heavenly Father, intended us to be... Our Heavenly Father sees our real potential. He knows things about us that we do not know ourselves. He prompts us during our lifetime to fulfill the measure of our creation, to live a good life, and to return to His presence... Why, then, do we devote so much of our time and energy to things that are so fleeting, so inconsequential, and so superficial? Do we refuse to see the folly in the pursuit of the trivial and transient? Would it not be wiser for us to ‘lay up for [ourselves] treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal’? How do we do this? By following the example of the Savior, by incorporating His teachings in our daily lives, by truly loving God and our fellowman... We certainly cannot do this with a dragging-our-feet, staring-at-our-watch, complaining-as-we-go approach to discipleship... As sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father, we are capable of so much more. For that, good intentions are not enough. We must do. Even more important, we must become what Heavenly Father wants us to be... We do matter. We determine our happiness. You and I are ultimately in charge of our own happiness... The path toward fulfilling our divine destiny as sons and daughters of God is an eternal one. My dear brothers and sisters, dear friends, we must begin to walk that eternal path today; we cannot take for granted one single day. I pray that we will not wait until we are ready to die before we truly learn to live. (President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, General Conference October 2012)
As President Uchtdorf stated let us fill this New Year with the eternally important things that matter most! As we do so, I so testify that our joy will be filled by the Lord himself.
With Love,
Elder Pond
