It was so wonderful to Skype with all of you last night! We have the best family in the world!! Congratulations to Brooke and Carl (nice job announcing, Carson!) And also to Lauren and Bret (I'm buying pink!) It will be so fun to have another little gang of three cousins so close in age! and hard to believe we will come home to six new little ones! We love you all so much and appreciate the love and care you give to each other! I agree with Lauren - it is such a sweet blessing that my very best friends are my family!! Here is Dad's weekly letter. Again, it is a wonderful message for all of us as well. Dad has promised our missionaries that as they serve with all their heart they will come to understand better than they ever have before, just who they were thirty years ago. They will be progressing along their mortal path the way they desired to then. The more clearly we come to understand who we really are and our relationship to our loving Father in Heaven, the more we will desire to obey, with our whole souls, His loving invitations (we sometimes call them commandments) to become like Him and feel His amazing love for us. This truly is the Lord's Plan of Happiness! Hugs to all!! MOM (P.S. check out the fun video I just posted on my Facebook page)
Dear Elders and Sisters,
As we discussed in zone conference, a son or daughter of God will never understand who he or she really is and the purpose of this life in mortality until he or she understands the character and purpose of God. As Joseph Smith said, "if men do not comprehend the character of God, they do not comprehend themselves." God's beloved children in Russia who have no other way of learning about His true character and purposes except through you.
Modern revelation teaches us that we are literally sons and daughters of God and that God created a plan that enables each of us to advance through the experiences of mortality and eventually become like Him. As Joseph Smith taught, "God himself, finding he was in the midst of spirits and glory, because he was more intelligent, saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself." The Prophet Joseph Smith further explained, "The relationship we have with God places us in a situation to advance in knowledge. He has power to institute laws to instruct the weaker intelligences [His spirit children], that they may be exalted with himself."
The scriptures teach us that this relationship we have with God is a father/child relationship and that He wants to help us "be exalted with himself" because of His infinite love for us. This infinite love is the primary attribute or characteristic of God with which we must become familiar in order to comprehend Him and ultimately comprehend ourselves. It is the first thing we teach investigators because they must correctly understand His true character and relationship with us in order to have faith in Him and make changes necessary to return to His presence.
The story of Ammon teaching King Lamoni is a perfect example of a missionary helping an investigator comprehend the true character of God. King Lamoni, like the people we encounter every day, had heard incorrect notions about "the Great Spirit" and actually knew virtually nothing about his true character or his true relationship with us. Using the scriptures, Ammon taught the king that "God, created all things which are in heaven and in the earth," and that God is a loving Heavenly Father who knows each of us intimately, for "he looketh down upon all the children of men; and he knows all the thoughts and intents of the heart." Ammon taught King Lamoni that God has a tangible body of flesh and bone, for "man in the beginning was created after the image of God." He taught the king that God created the world and placed Adam on the earth to begin the mortal experience for each of God's spirit children, explaining "the creation of the world, and also the creation of Adam, and told him all the things concerning the fall of man." He taught that the fall of Adam was an essential part of God's plan to enable His children, in the words of Joseph Smith, to "advance in knowledge." He explained to him "the plan of redemption, which was prepared from the foundation of the world," and taught Christ's role as our Savior and Redeemer, making "known unto them concerning the coming of Christ." Ammon made known "all the works of the Lord" so that King Lamoni could understand that our loving Heavenly Father has done everything necessary that His children may be exalted with himself. (See Alma 18:28-39)
For the first time in his life, Lamoni understood the true character of God, which knowledge his people had lost centuries earlier. He also understood for the first time in his life who he, Lamoni, really was. He understood that this "Great Spirit" about whom his people had occasionally spoken but could never comprehend, was not only the creator of heaven and earth but was the literal Father of his spirit who loved him and whose only desire was that he, Lamoni, would repent, be baptized, and keep the covenants necessary for him to return to God and dwell in His presence.
With his new knowledge about God's true character and his relationship as a son of God, King Lamoni also discovered, with great anxiety, that the life he had been living barred him from God's presence. As Ammon "expounded unto them all the records and scriptures from the time that Lehi left Jerusalem down to the present time," (Alma 18:38), Ammon no doubt shared Nephi's warning that "if ye have sought to do wickedly in the days of your probation, then ye are found unclean before the judgment-seat of God; and no unclean thing can dwell with God; wherefore, ye must be cast off forever." (1 Nephi 10:21) I am sure that Ammon taught King Lamoni, as the Savior would teach the Nephites less than a century later, that "no unclean thing can enter into his kingdom; therefore nothing entereth into his rest save it be those who have washed their garments in my blood, because of their faith, and the repentance of all their sins, and their faithfulness unto the end." (3 Nephi 27:19)
Recognizing his many sins and the devastating gulf between him and his Heavenly Father, the king cried "unto the Lord, saying: O Lord, have mercy; according to thy abundant mercy which thou hast had upon the people of Nephi, have upon me, and my people." (Alma 18:41) As he pleaded for forgiveness, with great faith in the atonement of the Savior, King Lamoni was overcome by the Spirit and collapsed. Ammon understood what Lamoni was experiencing and explained that "he knew that the dark veil of unbelief was being cast away from [Lamoni's] mind, and the light which did light up his mind, which was the light of the glory of God, which was a marvelous light of his goodness—yea, this light had infused such joy into his soul, the cloud of darkness having been dispelled, and that the light of everlasting life was lit up in his soul, yea, he knew that this had overcome his natural frame, and he was carried away in God." (Alma 19:6)
King Lamoni eventually rose to his feet, having experienced the cleansing, healing, and comforting power of the Savior's atonement. He and those who had also exercised their faith in Christ and experienced the redeeming power of the Savior's atonement, "did all declare unto the people the selfsame thing—that their hearts had been changed; that they had no more desire to do evil." (Alma 19:33)
Every time I read the missionary stories of the Sons of Mosiah, I receive a stronger witness that the Prophet Mormon included these stories in his final abridgement on gold plates expressly for us who are serving as missionaries in eastern Europe in these last days. Ammon is a type of every missionary serving in our mission and King Lamoni is a type of every child of God in Russian with whom we interact. Ammon, after living beneath his potential, sincerely repented and, through the redeeming power of the atonement, gained a true understanding of God's loving and merciful character. Ammon learned through his study of the scriptures that God "doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world; for he loveth the world even that he layeth down his own life that he may draw all men unto him." (2 Nephi 26:24)
Our message today begins the same way Ammon's did. We teach the true character of God – that He is our loving Father in Heaven – so that His lost children can comprehend His character and thereby comprehend themselves and their divine potential. More than anything else, God wants each of His children to understand His love for them and wants them to be changed by His love. He wants each of His children to receive of His fullness.
We must constantly remember that the only way we can comprehend God's infinite love for us, which is the essence of His true character, is to experience the tender mercy He extends to us through the atonement of His Son Jesus Christ. We will only comprehend God, and thereby comprehend our own divine potential by following the example of our Savior, yielding our wills to the will of God, and obeying his commandments with exactness.
We have the sacred privilege of helping others comprehend their divine nature and potential by helping them comprehend the true character of God through the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. Our message is that a loving Father in Heaven has placed us "in a situation to advance in knowledge" so that we may become like Him. He has instituted laws whereby we "have the privilege to advance like himself." His laws are not restrictive or confining; rather they give us the opportunity to be instructed, "that [we] may be exalted with himself."
I pray that each of you will follow Ammon's example and do everything in your power to help as many people as possible comprehend God's character and infinite love. You will do so by helping them exercise faith in Christ, repent of their sins, make and keep baptismal covenants, and strive each day to obey God's commandments. As you do so under the direction of the Spirit, those whom you teach, like King Lamoni, will comprehend their own eternal potential and enter the path that leads to eternal life through faith, repentance and baptism.
This is the glorious work in which we are engaged. I love being a missionary and I love each of you.
President Christensen
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