Agency-Choice-Accountability

Hey everyone! Another week gone by! I swear they go by like nothin! It's crazy! I don't know where time goes some times! So just some updates then i will talk about something that has been on my mind. So we got to teach viliami and lueni again. The spirit was really strong, it was probably the easiest time i ever had teaching, speaking tongan wise. It was just really good. After we taught we again invited viliami to be baptized and he said he still needs to think about it and tui lahi which the best translation i have for that i guess is just believe alot! but i asked them both what they were feeling or thinking after we taught and viliami said it was a good reminder, we talked about faith repentace baptism the gift of the holy ghost and enduring to the end, but he is slowly progressing. After him i asked his wife and she said, while looking at him, while he was looking down, in sort of come on lets do it tone, "hopefully we can tui lahi and be baptized!!" I know she wants to be baptized so hopefully we can get him to that point to! But it was really good! I really hope they make that step and get baptized! haha after we taught we returned home and viliami came over after a little bit and asked for 5 bucks so he could be credit for his phone haha. At least we know he is comfortable with us! We did alot of service this week. helped plant a garden while it was really rainy and helped people harvest their tapioca. It was fun. Got stung by three bees all at once on my left calf haha it was great. That's about all for the updates this week. Now for what has kinda been on my mind. Agency, choice, accountability. 3 words that all go together and are part of EVERYONE's life EVERYDAY. Everyday we have the agency to make many choices and we are accountable for those choices we make. We can either choose to make the right choice or the wrong choice. And how we choose is ultimately how we end up feeling because of those choices. I have a choice to wake up at 630 every day like i should or not to. When i do i know the days go much better and at first i'm really tired but over all less tired throughout the day. My days are alot easier if i just do what i'm supposed to starting with waking up. i have had lots of people say since i've been out that waking up on time is the most important thing i can do on my mission. Something you think is so small but holds so much weight! If i don't wake up at 630, i don't have the spirit the rest of the day. We all have consequences, good or bad, according to how we choose. Agency is something we were giving since the beginning. Before we came to this earth we all made a choice to come here. We all knew God perfectly. Right now it's our time to try to know god without knowing he is there perfectly because our knowledge from before was taken from us. We can choose to find God and follow what he desires us to follow, or we can choose not to. God allows us this freedom of choice because he loves us and wants us to learn how to always choose good. Yes we will choose to do wrong sometimes. He allows us to do that so we can know wrong from right. If we choose wrong he isn't going to instantly take us from our wrong choice and place us in right. He will give us little tender mercies or little helps to help us remember and give us the will to begin to again choose the right path and so we can know the wrong from the right. It's all about choice. We can suffer for awhile and keep choosing wrong and fall deeper and deeper into our own dispair and then we can feel bad for ourselves and do nothing. Or we can start to try to make the right choices and pray to God to help us do that and dig ourselves out of the wrong and find the light and the good again. All of us deal with this on a daily basis. I see it alot when trying to teach people and help people when you can see in their eyes their dispair and unhappiness when you know what you have can help them if they will but choose to do what we ask them to do to find light and happiness. In order to have true happiness we have to keep ALL of Gods commandments. We cant pick and choose some and expect to be happy and blessed that way. D&C 82: 10. I the lord am bound when ye do what i say but when ye do not what i say ye have no promise. He doesn't say when you do some things that i tell you to do i'll bless he. We must do live by every word of god. Of course we are not perfect and it is hard to do that sometimes and we don't always live by EVERY word of God. But if we are doing our best, choosing to live by his words, repenting daily for what we don't live by and asking for forgivness, that is when he blesses us. When all is said and done, at that day when god judges us for all our choices. We are accountable. Whether it be good, or bad. there is a song i like that helps me keep this eternal perspective that says: When all is said and done, when he sees how ive be come, will i live with him, when all is said and done. I know life is hard. I know that. But life is short. If we do our best, we will be eternally, forever happy. I know this is true and this can only happen because of our brother jesus christ who suffered the most painful death for all of us. He didn't have to. He CHOSE to. I know he lives today as a resurrected being. My we all partake of this incomprehendable gift and choose to do our very best. I love you all very much and i miss you all! Please keep yourselves safe. I pray for you each and every day. I hope God blesses you more than you have room to recieve because you choose to do as he says. Until next time,
Elder Rose