Week 69 Joseph Smith & My Thanksgiving Wish

Yooo what's good!! How yall doin? It's yalls favorite Elder back at it again with another BANGER this week! So let's get er done!! 

This week has been good! We had the opportunity to go knock on some doors and to have a good thanksgiving! we ate at our friend brother Adamchicks and then we went over to bishops and had really good turkey! our friends are progressing nicely we didn't have the chance to teach them but we are gonna look to do that this upcoming week! 

we also ending up talking to an active member who cant make it to church because of health reasons and she really loved that we stopped by and talked with her for a while! it was a really spiritual experience and a really good connection!  

My dear friends, today I feel impressed by The Spirit to share with you an experience that I have felt prompted to share with you! First I like to start by bearing you my testimony that God and his son Jesus Christ live and that the only way a man or women can be saved in this life is through Faith in Jesus Christ and his atonement! Jesus Christ was sent into the world to do the will of the father and as a part of that will Christ offered himself a sacrifice and was willing to suffer all pain, sickness, temptations, sins, and everything in this life that makes us human! He put himself on an altar which caused himself to tremble at the sight of having the weight of every child that God has ever created! Then he was taken captive and judged before the world! They spit upon him and he suffered it they called him a false prophet and in the end because of the wickedness of the state of the world he was crucified and slain for all of the world to see! Then after he had passed they took him to a tomb and there he laid and after three days he was resurrected thus completing what we know to be the Atonement of Jesus Christ! After faith and a desire to grow more like Christ we realize that we all make mistakes and we all fall short of the kingdom of heaven. Which is why we repent which simply means a change of heart and a change of mind in wanting to be like our Savior! Through this process you first realize that we make mistakes we then acknowledge that Christ is there we seek and ask for his forgiveness and we apologize and make right the wrongs that we have committed then we strive that we will never do it again! After all of this we must be born of water and of the spirit by following the example of Jesus christ and be baptised by someone holding the priesthood authority of God for the remission of sins being fully immersed just as the Savior was in the river Jordan by John the Baptist! After this we then receive the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands Christ teaches us that he will send us a comforter who till teach and testify of him protect us from danger warn us of things and remind us of our divine nature and our eternal destiny! It's then up to us to endure to the end and strive to partake of the sacrament as a renewal of the promise that we made the Lord at baptism. That we will always remember him, we will take his name upon ourselves, and keep his commands so in return we can have his spirit to be with us! Now the experience I want to share with yall this week is of my own conversion and how I am a witness that Jesus is the Christ and that he does live! Growing up in the Church we learn these truths like families can be together forever that we can see our loved ones after we die and that we can live with God and our loved ones together forever in his Kingdom and that we have a chance to become like him! I've always known that these things I've mention were true but it wasn't till I came out on my mission that I believe that they are! Today Nov 21st, 2023 my son got sick and so we had to stay in our house which is in a Grove of trees and in the middle of a world that is looking for the truth because they need to know where to find it! I was reminded of this today because it was a year ago this week that I officially was in the Conway zone and reminded of the testimony which the lord has engravened upon my heart of the prophet Joseph Smith! He was 14 years old living in Palmyra New York in the world of 1820. At this time in the world there was a lot of boom! As a country we are coming off of the biggest upset in the history of War 44 years ago we defended our land and drove the British out of America and I belive and know for a surety that God is the only reason why but that's a different story for a different day! Religious freedom is on the verge of exploding and with more people who can read and write the more people can see that churches teach different things and have different beliefs over the same thing. Now enter Joseph Smith he had a question that would come to define the world and the world of religion as we know it he wanted to know for himself if any of the churches where he lived were true! So he went high and low church after church congregation after congregation Pastor after Pastor and he felt that they in essence where right but in the eternity they were wrong almost like they had a piece of the puzzle but not the whole picture! 10 In the midst of this war of words and tumult of opinions, I often said to myself: What is to be done? Who of all these parties are right; or, are they all wrong together? If any one of them be right, which is it, and how shall I know it? 

11 While I was laboring under the extreme difficulties caused by the contests of these parties of religionists, I was one day reading the Epistle of James, first chapter and fifth verse, which reads: If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. 

12 Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again and again, knowing that if any person needed wisdom from God, I did; for how to act I did not know, and unless I could get more wisdom than I then had, I would never know; for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible. 

13 At length I came to the conclusion that I must either remain in darkness and confusion, or else I must do as James directs, that is, ask of God. I at length came to the determination to “ask of God,” concluding that if he gave wisdom to them that lacked wisdom, and would give liberally, and not upbraid, I might venture. 

14 So, in accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I retired to the woods to make the attempt. It was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty. It was the first time in my life that I had made such an attempt, for amidst all my anxieties I had never as yet made the attempt to pray vocally. 

15 After I had retired to the place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me, and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction. 

16 But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction—not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being—just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me. 

17 It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him! (Joseph Smith History 10-17)

The answer to the question that Joseph asked was that none of those churches were true because they speak close to me with their lips but there hearts are far from me! I bear you my witness that this is true! And God also told Joseph that in a short time he will be the one to restore the Church that Christ has built while he was here on the earth or what Isaiah calls a marvelous work and a wonder! In response to God's call he sent down Peter James & John as messengers from heaven to restore the authority to Restore Christs church on the earth again today and by the gift and the power of God Joseph Smith was able to translate the Book of Mormon which stands as an additional witness that Jesus is the Christ and God is our Father and we are his Children! For the last 15 months I've spent every day every hour every minute eating sleeping and breathing missionary work! And out of all the things that i've learned on my mission is this! The Church is true! And so when all these southerns tell me I'm going to hell and that they already know who Jesus Christ is and that what I'm doing is wrong I will tell yall exactly what I tell them if you only knew who I really was and what I really do then this is what you would say Elder can you help me get to heaven or hey can you come teach me more about Jesus Christ or hey can I help you because I know what you are doing is right and I want in but my dear brothers and Sisters and my dear friends God didn't intend for it to be that way! He wants all of his children to comeback and to live with him again but each of us in entitled to our agency or simply our ability to choose! So I invite each one of yall to read the Book of Mormon and come to know that the truths which were once lost are back on the earth again today! That Joseph Smith was foreordained before this world was even created to Restore the Church and be it's prophet! That we have a living prophet on the earth today who's name is president Russell M. Nelson who holds the same authority that our Savior Jesus Christ held and still holds today! That Christ really does live and any man or women can be closer to God by abiding by the Book of Mormons precepts then any other Book! By simply inviting all men everywhere to read the Book of Mormon to ponder in their hearts the message it contains and then to ask God the eternal father in the name of Christ if the book is true! Those who gain this divine witness from the Holy Spirit will also come to know by the same power that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, that Joseph Smith is His revelator and prophet in these last days, and that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Lord’s kingdom once again established on the earth, preparatory to the Second Coming of the Messiah. (Book of Mormon Introduction). I leave  with my witness and my testimony as a representative of the lord Jesus Christ! That he lives this is his mission this is his church and this is his work! And I know that God calls on the weak things of the world and as he uses his Eternal Iron he sharpens are Spiritual Iron so we can prepare to live with him again some day! Because my dear friends there is no weapon forged against us that shall prosper! (D&C 71:9)! So this year I'm thankful for my testimony because without it I don't know where I'd be! I leave that with yall in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ Amen....

TILL NEXT TIME THIS IS YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD UTE FAN SAYING GO

UTES AND ILL SEE YALL IN THE NEXT ONE PEACE