In So Great A Cause: A Good Week

Worms Soccer team photo bomb. The one guy with his arm around my
shoulder, after the picture was like "we....are so drunk. We have had
so much beer." So I forgave him for making me Schwarz.

This week had a lot of great, random little surprises in it.

From...

*our split with the Sister Training Leaders, and having some really cool conversations with beautiful people and giving out 4.5 copies of the Book of Mormon in under two hours of basic street contacting,

*to the Bahns starting to run more normally again,

* to me giving my first talk in church in German,

*to transfer calls and our entire Zone pretty much stayed exactly the same (except for a Zone leader getting released to help open a Spanish Branch in Heidelberg, and the new Zone leader coming in being a German with half of his family living in this area),

*to the entire Worms soccer team photo bombing our picture at a Street Display in Worms

*to someone showing up at church that we've invited for several weeks now,

*to playing classical music on my flute for the first time since leaving Utah (Undine Sonata)

All in all, it's been a good week.

A couple thoughts from my talk...this is short, sorry! Email time is like the blink of a very small eye.

It was based on John 17:3

Quote by Joseph Smith:

“What kind of a being is God?” he asked. Human beings needed to know, he argued, because “if men do not comprehend the character of God they do not comprehend themselves.” In that phrase, the Prophet collapsed the gulf that centuries of confusion had created between God and humanity. Human nature was at its core divine. God “was once as one of us” and “all the spirits that God ever sent into the world” were likewise “susceptible of enlargement.” Joseph Smith preached that long before the world was formed, God found “himself in the midst” of these beings and “saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself”³⁷ and be “exalted” with Him.

Joseph told the assembled Saints, “You have got to learn how to be a god yourself.”³⁹ In order to do that, the Saints needed to learn godliness, or to be more like God. The process would be ongoing and would require patience, faith, continuing repentance, obedience to the commandments of the gospel, and reliance on Christ. Like ascending a ladder, individuals needed to learn the “first principles of the Gospel” and continue beyond the limits of mortal knowledge until they could “learn the last principles of the Gospel” when the time came. “It is not all to be comprehended in this world,” Joseph said.⁴¹ “It will take a long time after the grave to understand the whole.”⁴²

To understand ourselves, we need to understand who God is.

The characteristic I pointed out was that of love. That is the first thin we teach, is that God loves us, and that's why we are here, that's why we have prophets, that's why we have commandments and ordinances, that's why we have trials, and that's why I'm on a mission.

Doctrine and Covenants 121: 36, 41-43,45

God's love is also His power. His power is His love.

How do we gain this love?

Matthew 22:36-39

1) keep the commandments

1 John 5:3-4

2) Love others

The best way we can love our neighbors is by basing our worth in Christ, and not in the opinions of other people.

3) see experiences from a state of love.

Choose to see everything that happens as the road to receiving your hearts desires.

President Brigham Young

“All intelligent beings who are crowned with crowns of glory, immortality, and eternal lives must pass through every ordeal appointed for intelligent beings to pass through, to gain their glory and exaltation. Every calamity that can come upon mortal beings will be suffered to come upon the few, to prepare them to enjoy the presence of the Lord. … Every trial and experience you have passed through is necessary for your salvation.”

God loves and loves us. He has all power to make us better, and heal us.