How Great is His Joy for the Soul That Repents

07/20/2015

Well I don’t have a ton of time right now.  We had a pretty crazy day and I don’t have much to say.  This week was pretty normal again.  My comp and I are just trying to find more people to teach, trying to talk to more people.  It’s always a challenge for me for some reason.  It just gets really tiring listening to the same excuses from the people about why they don’t want to listen to us.  Sometimes I wish they would just tell us straight up, no.  One of the challenges of serving in Honduras, but it’s coming along.  

We had an investigator, named Raquel, who has been a big challenge for us.  We have been doubting if she has a testimony.  She’s had a lot of doubts and at the same time she doesn’t remember what we teach after a week.  So we haven’t been really sure about what to do with her.  But yesterday she mentioned that she didn’t have any doubts.  We talked about some of the things that were a challenge for her and she was fine with it all.  So I think she might be getting baptized soon which is pretty cool.  Get one more in… ha ha

We have interviews with President Dester tomorrow, which is always a good experience. I’m looking forward to learning from him.  President Dester is pretty much the best mission president ever. I don’t care what anyone else says of their mission president.  He’s seriously one of the most Christ like people I have ever met.

Anyway, as I was reading the Book of Mormon these past few weeks, I got into the part where the signs of the death of Christ are shown in the Americas, and the people hear the voice of Christ in the darkness.  In those chapters and a little later too, it stuck out to me how many times Christ mentioned that we had to repent and come unto Him.  It was pretty interesting to see how many times he said it.  Really, it shows the love that He has for us.  Christ really wants us to come unto Him, to use His atonement to be able to become like Him and live eternally with our Father in Heaven.  He wants us take advantage of His gift.  The scriptures talk about how God is happy when a soul repents.  Doctrine and Covenants 18 verse 13 says... in my translation, which isn’t exact.... “and how great is His joy for the soul that repents.”    I often times, as a perfectionist, think of God as exacting and just.  And He is, but at the same time He has more mercy than we know.  That’s why He gives us the opportunity to repent and rejoices when we use it.  So we should repent no matter how hard it is, and we will come to be more like our brother Jesus Christ.

Elder Ollis

7/20/2015 - Exploring a cave with the zone

06/2015 - The top of the peak on a hike with the zone (I believe this is from his last area)