Monday, March 19th 2012

Oi Família!

This Monday was a great experience for all of us here in the ward. Remember how we baptized a man in a wheelchair last Sunday? Well, the Saturday before the baptism, there was an extremely heavy rain shower. It even started to hail with these cubes of ice the size of a Reese´s candy. The roof of their house got destroyed by the rain because the guy who built their house didn´t do a very good job. They were all getting discouraged and didn´t think that it was the right time for him to be baptized, but my companion and I thought quickly and told them that we would come by on our day-off to fix the roof. Well, he was baptized on Sunday and the next day, we went to his house to fix the roof. We were up there for about three hours, but it was great because we fixed it and the look on their face was so great! The wife got so happy that it seemed as if she had just took a million pounds of stress off her back. We talked with the family yesterday about eternal families and they got all excited to make the goals and the plans for them all to be sealed one year from now in the temple now that the entire family are members of the Church. I love being to be a part of this process. Seeing a family be completed is something so gratifying and there really isn´t any other substitute. You have to go on a mission to have these experiences. A man who never wanted to be a part of religion and complained every day about his health is now encouraging his family to go to Church every Sunday and participates in the lessons that we give them and doesn´t say anything about his health anymore. It really is the power of the priesthood. It really is the True Church of Jesus Christ.

I had a good experience while reading the scriptures the other day. I was reading about when Christ was starting His mortal ministry here on the Earth. After His baptism, He went out to the desert and fasted for 40 days and 40 nights. During these days of fasting, He was learning a lot from Heavenly Father. He was being instructed in the way that He needed to fulfill His mission here on Earth. After these days, the devil appeared and started to tempt Him. Something that I realized right off the bat is that immediately after being instructed from on high, He was tempted. It´s the same way with us nowadays. We have very spiritual experiences every now and again in our lives that edify us and bring us closer to God, but exactly when we are being spiritually lifted, Satan is there waiting for us to show a weakness. He wants to tear away every good feeling that we have, so he will always be around us when we are being instructed from on high. One thing that Jesus shows us in this example is that He had the Holy Spirit of God with Him, the Holy Ghost, to guide Him away from temptation. We, members of the Church, have the Holy Ghost with us if we go to Church and patake of the Sacrament to cleanse our soul. We, too, can drive away Satan and keep our spiritual experiences if we always strive to have the Holy Ghost at our side. I know that the Church is true and I know that without the Holy Spirit, I would be lost in my life. The work I am doing right now wouldn´t have meaning if I didn´t do it by the way of the Spirit.

I love you all and thank you all for the support that I have. Hope you all can have a great week, full of the Spirit!

Love,
Elder Clark