Hey family and friends! :) wow another week has already come and gone! its is crazy how fast time is flying by! this week has been awesome! First off i went to the doctor on friday to get a check up on my thumb and they were astounded by the results! my lower joint had completely healed and my upper joint was healing quickly! they moved me down to just a splint for my thumb and they are estimating ill only have to wear it for a few more weeks not months!!! holy miracles! :) other than that our investigators are doing well :) we have been able to transfer a lot of our just english interest investigators to gospel interest investigators and they are really asking great questions. Something i have really come to enjoy on my mission is questions :) both personal questions and questions from others:) i always feel like I can draw closer to my savior as i seek for the answers to these questions through my studies. this week something i was thinking about was the nature of God and that led me to the question of what is the actual meaning of bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of man, God's purpose? I thought about our state before this life. How we are all children of our father in heaven and we dwelled with him as spirits. And it was then that he created the glorious plan for us so that we could become like him. So i then contemplated and thought about what kind of a state we were in before this life that was not in the same state as our father in heaven and i basically came to the conclusion that there were approximately 3 things. The first, although we were his spiritual children we lacked the image of God (i.e a body). Second, we existed but not in a state of glory (i.e we were not glorified beings). and Third was that we lacked the true character of God (ie Christlike Attributes). In order to obtain those things we needed to be separated from God and come to this earth. This prompted Choice. In order to obtain any of the 3 attributes that God had they we lacked we had to exercise choice or our agency. Our first choice was to come to this earth. We could choose to obtain a body or not. We all clearly did so therefore we are here and obtain the 1st attribute. The next two are obtained during this life. The Glory of God is obtained through obediences to the laws and principles of the gospel. in other words keeping the commandments, partaking of the ordinances neccessary for exaltation and living worthy of them at all times. And the final one, or Character, is obtained through the struggles, trails, blessings, relationships, and experiences of this life. There is no short cut to obtaining character. and this is kinda how i came to understand it.... you sow a desire, and reap a thought, sow a thought and reap and action, continually repeating the action reaps a habit, repetion of a habit yeilds a character, and sowing character yeilds our eternal destiny. In other words we work and labor every day focused on righteous desires and as we labor in the spirit we yeild the desired Characteristics that our Savior Jesus Christ emulated. But at the same time the opposite can be true. Therefore as we go through this life we have to constantly be aware and make sure that our thoughts and desires are centered on Christ and continually strive with all our might so that we can obtain the Character of God in the life to come. as preach my gospel says....work work work there is not satisfactory substitute :) so basically that is the answer in a jist that i got to that question :) anyways i hope all is going well back in the states! Sure love you all and am praying for you! I hope you are all safe and sound and are having many wonderful opportunities to see miracles every day in your life! :)
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