My last weekly email was pretty unpolished and left unfinished—I ran out of time before I needed to send it out; so hopefully this one’s a bit better.

Transfer News

I doubt I’ve ever had a companion as excited about transfer news as that of Elder Cockx. He’s been bouncing off the walls all week in anticipation for it haha. Definitely reserves the top spot for my most energetic companion, but he’s awesome. This morning we opened up the transfer board, together with Elder Clark (his trainer Elder Chapman went home, so he’s with us for the time being). The running joke is that he was going to stay in Nanaimo because he’s already been in Nanaimo for five transfers. To his excitement, he’s finally leaving Nanaimo, not that he didn’t like it, he’s just been here for too long haha. As anticipated I discovered that I am staying in Nanaimo, and receiving a new companion. Elder Jessop will now be my new companion, and I’m really looking forward to working with him. Now that I look back on it, we’ve kind of served around each other in and out my whole mission. The first time I believe I met him was while I was in Richmond—he was in the other district. Then he was in the other district in Prince George, but we saw each other for Zone Conference and while they stayed at our apartment, and now he’s coming over to Nanaimo with me. He’s a great Elder, lots of good things ahead. I’m sure gonna miss Elder Cockx and his energy.

We had the opportunity to meet our friend Prashant for the first time and taught him a bit about the Doctrine of Christ and the Restoration. The lesson was really good, you could tell that he felt the Spirit. This occurred when we spoke about and read from the Book of Mormon. That book never ceases to amaze me. It is unlike any other book I have ever read and is literally created for the gathering of Israel. The gathering wouldn’t be possible without it. I’m always reminded that I need to use it as much as I can in lessons.

Had a few lessons with our friend Lisa. Long story short her baptismal date is now February 14th again. She feels really good about that day for numerous reasons other than it being Valentine’s Day haha. So that’s what we are going to shoot for. She brought Elder Cockx a gift before he leaves Nanaimo, which was super sweet.

A Little Dive into Faith and Hope

We went over to the Walburger’s house one last time to teach Tenaya before Elder Cockx leaves. The lesson usually begins with the missionaries teaching her, then Brother Walburger brings up good points, the discussion continues to the point where he ends up teaching us. This lesson was probably the best I’ve seen since I’ve been here teaching them. We had a really good discussion about faith and hope. What they entail, the difference between them and how they both work together. I believe we all came out of that lesson with a new perspective. The consensus was that faith is an action, while hope is a feeling and expectations of good things to come. A good example of this is right after Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden. What was the first thing that they did after they were kicked out? They built an altar and offered sacrifices. Why did they do this? They had faith in the commandments they received from God, though they didn’t see him, they had faith that he was there. However at this point they didn’t have hope. What was there to hope for? It wasn’t till they were visited by an angel who spake unto them to bring forth eternal truth that the Spirit can bear witness of to bring hope.

“Why dost thou offer sacrifices unto the Lord? And Adam said unto him: I know not, save the Lord commanded me. And then the angel spake, saying: This thing is a similitude of the sacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father, which is full of grace and truth.” (Moses 5:6-7)

It was at this point that Adam and Eve could receive hope. This was characterized by the reception of the Holy Ghost—”and in that day the Holy Ghost fell upon Adam” (Moses 5:9).

“And in that day Adam blessed God and was filled, and began to prophesy concerning all the families of the earth, saying: Blessed be the name of God, for because of my transgression my eyes are opened, and in this life I shall have joy, and again in the flesh I shall see God. And Eve, his wife, heard all these things and was glad, saying: Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient.” (Moses 5:10-11)

It was at this point where they obtained hope and not just hope but the Christ-like attribute of hope. “And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise.” (Moroni 7:41) The Christ-like attribute of hope is centered on the Atonement of Jesus Christ and His resurrection. Christ-like attributes are needed and necessary for exaltation. You can have hope in a lot of things, but if you don’t place your hope in Jesus Christ you will be damned.

Let’s look at another example of faith and hope. This one is found in the account in Alma 36 where Alma the younger teaches his son Helaman about his conversion.

“Yea, I did remember all my sins and iniquities, for which I was tormented with the pains of hell; yea, I saw that I had rebelled against my God, and that I had not kept his holy commandments.” (Alma 36:13)

We find here that Alma had faith in God, he came to a realization of his mighty distance from him, harrowed up in his sins and iniquities. Despite his belief in God and His holy commandments, he rebelled against Him and His commandments, so I guess it could be argued that he didn’t have true faith and I would agree.

“And it came to pass that as I was thus racked with torment, while I was harrowed up by the memory of my many sins, behold, I remembered also to have heard my father prophesy unto the people concerning the coming of one Jesus Christ, a Son of God, to atone for the sins of the world. Now, as my mind caught hold upon this thought, I cried within my heart: O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me, who am in the gall of bitterness, and am encircled about by the everlasting chains of death.” (Alma 36:17-18)

Now this is where the hope comes in. He believed in God, he came to a complete knowledge of his sins and iniquities while he was thus suffering he then caught hold onto hope. This hope led to him “relying wholly upon the merits of him who is mighty to save.” (2 Nephi 31:19) which ultimately led to his redemption from the eternal pains of hell. Now the biggest difference between this example and the example of Adam and Eve was the first law of Heaven: Obedience. Although Adam and Eve didn’t understand or have a knowledge of the why behind God’s commandments they wilfully followed, Alma the younger however did not. There’s a wonderful Ensign article written by Bruce C. Hafen titled “On Dealing with Uncertainty”. He writes about three different levels of ambiguity and for the sake of the length of this email I’ll refrain from writing about them all (and also because my understanding of these levels is still developing). But here we read about the author’s stance on “level three of ambiguity.” This is what Adam and Eve have illustrated through their obedience outside of the garden of Eden.

“It seems to me that the most productive response to ambiguity is at level three, where we not only view things with our eyes wide open, but with our hearts wide open as well. When we do that, there will be many times when we are called upon to take some action at a point where we think we need more evidence before knowing what to do. Such occasions may range from following the counsel of the Brethren on birth control to accepting a home teaching assignment. My experience has taught me always to give the Lord and his church the benefit of any doubts I may have when some such case seems too close to call. I stress that the willingness to be believing and accepting in these cases is a very different matter from blind obedience. It is rather, a loving and knowing kind of obedience.”

The All-Knowing Nature of God

We discussed repentance, Brother Walburger brought up the point of predestination he shared that the scriptures discuss “those whom the Father hath given [him].” He didn’t directly quote any scripture but I believe he may have been pointing to this one: “But behold, ye have both heard my voice, and seen me; and ye are my sheep, and ye are numbered among those whom the Father hath given me.” (3 Nephi 15:24). We discussed what it means. What does it mean the Father hath given me? He shared that they are already numbered, similar to the Jehovah Witnesses and the 144,000. We talked about the all knowing nature of God. He shared for a long time he thought similarly to us that God knows those that will inherit His glory because He knows us so well; He knows the decisions that we will make due to our character and nature. Brother Walburger explained that this wasn’t why He knows. He brought up the point that God exists outside of time, to which he referenced the 4th dimension to this. This basically means that He has already seen everything past, present, and future, and that it has already happened. Due to this nature He would of course know and number all those that will inherit his glory.

Among these ideas there was so much else that was talked about, the burning of the earth twice, earth becoming a great Urim and Thummim that is a sea of glass, the size of the galaxy in lightyears. He shared that the parable of the Ten Virgins is for us and is currently happening right now. He mentioned that he doesn’t think we are going to be able to make it to the end of our missions; he believes that all missionaries everywhere in the world will be recalled really soon based on what’s going on in the world, to which I don’t know the magnitude of because we are completely isolated as missionaries haha. He brought up how he’s been studying Judaism and their ancient marriage ceremonies and how closely it connects with the temple and completes our understanding of what we do there. (It was actually super interesting, I would love to look into that more). He has many interesting ideas of and insights that I won’t be able to fully express here but we had a really good discussion.