God is Real

Hey y'all!

This week was good, had some funny experiences!

For some Dallas Daze this week we were riding back from a dinner and a homeless guy flagged us down by saying, "hey! I know you can read my thoughts!" We rode over and confusedly asked, "huh?" He said, "I know you can read my thoughts, so why don't you help me, Jesus would've helped me. I know you can read them." We said though the spirit can inspire us things to say, we don't read your thoughts as they come. He then expounded in a completely different direction and told us about ants that crawl into his pores and how he was at the bus stop and his friend appeared and told him that the ants were crawling in. So he got up and saw a brown recluse that he swallowed and has now killed the ants but it's built a home and wants to raise a family so he is waiting for the green spider with a red belly to climb in to his mouth and fight the brown recluse so it will leave. Then he said how the scripture that reads, "for god so loved the world...." isn't true because he burned it and couldn't read it anymore after that. But he burned the rest of the Bible and could still read it. So that verse isn't true because it burned and he couldn't read it. We gave him a
card and promptly left because we had absolutely no idea what to say hahaha. So that was funny.

This week has been a difficult one. But I had some amazing experiences. I've been pondering on the world we live in. And I came to terms that I didn't feel like I had a true testimony of my own and craved so desperately one that I could tell people I knew God lived, and that he is real. And I read a talk that seemed to fit so perfectly with what I was feeling. From the talk "Your own personal testimony" by Elder Angel Abrea, he talks as if he is conversing with his grandkids and says, "Well now, my dear Russell, you will ask yourself,
'In that case, do I have to go and look for the answer myself? Can anybody have this kind of testimony? Is it a gift only for a few? Do those who say they know really only think they know, or have they convinced themselves through a psychological trick?'" He then says,
"In answer to your questions, and to give more light to these things, let me tell you that Elder John A. Widtsoe said that those who truly have a testimony of the gospel have 'the highest type of knowledge. It comes as a revelation when truth is known and obeyed. … It is really man’s chief possession.'" When truth is known and obeyed is a key phrase to me. I had the thought reading that of how when truth is obeyed you come to know it to be true. But one cannot be unclean and unrepentant and do this. It is a greater sin to know the truth and not obey it than to be in ignorance and not obey it. God is merciful and
at least in my case had not given such a testimony because it would have been worse for me to know and be unrepentant. So now that I am in a position to gain one, by following that process and being patient, believing I will receive, I trust that that day would come. So I continued. We had our last meeting in which President Taylor would be there so it was somewhat of a send off meeting. During that meeting it was discussed the truth of this church, the reality of the first vision, that Joseph Smith was a prophet, and during the closing hymn, Redeemer of Israel, I was overcome to the point I could not sing through the tears. I was overwhelmed with such a force that I was crying, I couldn't get the words out, I knew the Redeemer of Israel is my Savior. It was such a sacred experience. I don't know many things, but this I do know, that God is there, and this is his church, and he loves you. I stand with Lehi and say, "and now....I say these things for your profit and learning, for there is a God, and he hath created all things. Both the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are. Both things to act and be acted upon." He is real. What joy
this brings me. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.