Week Thirty: Families

Dear People,

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you have all watched the Prince of Peace campaign videos and have shared them with your non-member friends. If you haven't, it's ok, don't beat yourself up about it, repentance is real. I watched the gratitude one again and and really liked the quote:

 "I have so much to be grateful for that it would be disrespectful to God if I wasn't happy."

This Sunday on the way home from church we were walking through a park full of happy families, doing their thing, playing, picnic-ing, playing sports, enjoying the spring weather. They all seemed so happy, I realized that Sundays are kind of their P-day; they work so hard all week and it's their only relaxing day. I said to my companion: "We are asking these people to give up their favorite day of the week, to give up all of this in exchange for sitting in a cramped church building for for hours. Why would anyone do that? Why would they give this up?"

Because the plan of salvation is real. We give up some short lived pleasures now and trust God's commandments so we can be with our families eternally.

Another realization I made as I watched all of those happy families, is that none of them will likely find the gospel until it is introduced to them by either a missionary or another member. For some reason, part of Gods plan for His children is that the gospel is introduced to them by their own brothers and sisters. We can choose to become God's tool in bringing the gospel to his beloved children that are only kept from the truth because they know not where to find it. The church will continue to grow, but our use of agency will affect the rate of that growth. 

The greatest joys of earth life come from family relationships. Do not take them for granted.

Elder Child and I have a goal to baptize two families on May 22. You all have plenty of things to pray about, but if you remember, please pray that we will find prepared families to teach.

Living according to the gospel will give you the best life you could ask for or imagine. There is simply no way to get around that. I know the gospel is true. I'm out of time, but I wish I could go on for hours to express how important the gospel is to me. It is everything.

I love you so much.

-Elder Brown