Email from President Bingham to their Missionaries: Feb 12th

 Happy Preparation Day to All of you!  I hope you all have a wonderful day that prepares you physically, emotionally, and spiritually for an upcoming wonderful week.  We have all been physically fed at zone conference, but more importantly, spiritually fed.  Please put into practice the things you learned and were confirmed through the spirit.

 

Like so many of you, I love chapter 6 in Preach My Gospel.  Studying and living the attributes of Jesus Christ will help us to become more like Him, and bring much joy into our lives.  It helps us to become His true disciples, and allows us to more fully love and appreciate our companions.  Permit me to share a few quotes from chapter 6.

 

As you pray for the gift of charity, you will be less inclined to dwell on negative feelings such as anger or envy. You will become less likely to judge or criticize others. You will have more desire to try to understand them and their points of view. You will become more patient and try to help people when they are struggling or discouraged. (See Moroni 7:45.)

 

Patience is the capacity to trust God as you face delay, opposition, or suffering. Through your faith, you trust God’s timing for His promised blessings to be fulfilled.

When you are patient, you look at life from an eternal perspective. You do not expect immediate blessings or outcomes. Your righteous desires will usually be realized “line upon line, … here a little and there a little” (2 Nephi 28:30). Some righteous desires may not be realized until after this life.

 

Patience also means that when something cannot be changed, you come to accept it with courage, grace, and faith.

Develop patience with others, including your companion and those you serve. Be patient with yourself as well. Strive for the best within yourself while realizing that you will grow step-by-step.

As with other Christlike attributes, growing in patience is a lifelong process. Exercising patience can have a healing influence on your soul and on those around you.

For those of you who want a little challenge, please consider the following words given by Elder Dale G. Renlund in the October, 2016  general conference:  (His words are pretty complex, but the message is beautiful).

We can—and sometimes do—make different choices. Such choices may not seem intrinsically wrong, but they prevent us from becoming truly penitent and thus preclude our pursuit of real repentance. For instance, we may choose to blame others… By so doing, we shift responsibility for our actions to others. When the responsibility is shifted, we diminish both the need and our ability to act. We turn ourselves into hapless victims rather than agents capable of independent action.¹³

Another choice that impedes repentance is minimizing our mistakes… But minimizing our mistakes, even if no immediate consequences are apparent, removes the motivation to change. This thinking prevents us from seeing that our mistakes and sins have eternal consequences.

Yet another way is to think that our sins do not matter because God loves us no matter what we do… But this seductive idea is false. God does love us. However, what we do matters to Him and to us. He has given clear directives about how we should behave. We call these commandments. His approbation and our eternal life depend on our behavior, including our willingness to humbly seek real repentance.¹⁵

 

Instead of making excuses, let us choose repentance.  When we understand how our sins can affect our eternal happiness, we not only become truly penitent, but we also strive to become better.

 

Elders and Sisters, I want to thank you for the decisions you have made in your life, which have given you the blessing to be a fulltime, set-apart servant of Him, whose work this is.  The Doctrine of Christ and His Atonement gives us access to all that we truly need in this life to be happy and ultimately obtain eternal life.  Thank you for what you do each day to share the gospel and become His lifelong disciples. 

 

I appreciate and love you!   ---  Pres Bingham