Week 35: Feliz Páscoa

This week was conference weekend, and I got a good bit of the word of God so obviously it was a pretty good week.

It was also Holy Week and Easter weekend, our moment to remember the week before His crucifiction and the three days before His glorious resurrection. Off of this though, for anyone that doesn't know, Brazil is (was) pretty Catholic and so Good Friday is a national holiday and basically the rest of the weekend as well. Sadly though, being a three-day weekend, plenty (plenty) of people us this opportunity to drink and party as well. It was a little difficult trying to call someone while on the street on Easter morning, being interupted three times by very high people...

I quite enjoyed conference, even though my attempts to comprehend fully the talks while listening in Portuguese really didn't go that well.. My favorite was probably Emily Bell Freemen's about best and worst days and how joy is not the absence of sadness but the presence of Christ in our lives.

Favorite Hymn -- But you know what's most important about conference??? The music!!!

On Saturday? BYU Idaho choirs sang. Yuck. BYU was waay better, I mean BYU Idaho didn't even sing the first Gospel song ever sung at general conference. 🤷‍♂️

But the other session that day? The Tabernacle Choir sang the hymn, Have I Done Any Good?, a usually somewhat overlooked hymn, but this week it actually came up three times. 

First, I just had it randomly in my head one day, pretty normal. But then, that day, we had a lesson with one Adriano. Adriano was easily one of the smartest guys I've met on the mission, a Civil Engineer with pictures of Planck and other people in his home office, or at least the most fun to talk to. When we met him, we talked for a bit about his work and such. Then, he wanted us to teach a lesson to his daughter in English for practice. We started teaching a pretty standard lesson, just in goofy English, when he started asking very, honestly, pointed questions, and yet also good ones, because we first talked about faith, what it is and means. (Man, I keep finding myself trying to define faith in my emails...)

I may have already said this, but when we ask someone "what is faith to you?", 99% of the time the answer is along the lines of "Faith is believing. Without our faith, we're nothing, right?" But, he began to challenge our simple definition of faith, which is to believe and act, with "why?" If we believe, why do we act on it? What about those that don't act but believe, or those that do neither? What will happen to them? Feeling I knew how to answer, I began describing the entire plan of salvation as applicably as I could, basically not letting my companion talk at this point. I felt I answered all of his questions and doubts, trying to show the mercy of God and the reason we need to follow Him, trying to bear my testimony of it too, but it felt a little empty for some reason..

Until, while discussing it with my companion after, I realized why it felt empty: I forgot to mention Christ. Quite literally, I went through the entire plan of salvation without describing Christ's sacrifice -- the who, how, and why of the plan; the reason we can be forgiven and ever return to our Father's presence; and the greatest merciful gift ever given by Him. I learned an important lesson in that lesson. We may every scriptural answer memorized, every logical answer for why religion is good for humanity, and every historical tidbit for why this church must be true at the ready. But without Christ, it's nothing. Christ and my testimony of Him really ought to be at the center of every lesson I give. 

And, while thinking back at one of his tough questions, basically why charity was necessary other than by obligation in our description of God's plan, I was reminded of this hymn, and especially the chorus lines:

We're not here to wait for our lives in Heaven. As I like to think, the atonement is for now! He gives us this hope and ability to change, and so the least we can do is help give these things to others as well.

And with it being the week of Easter, the perfect time to remember Christ, I want to bear my quick testimony of Him. I now that Christ is my Savior. I know that He was chosen before our time here on Earth started to be sacrificed for us. He rose from the grave three days later, and because of this, we all will as well. Because of Him, we have life after death, where we can live with our God and our families for eternities if we did what we could in our life to become like Him. I'm trying to do my part, and I know He'll do the rest. He's already done so much for me. The hope given by Him is greater than any other. As our prophet Dallin H Oaks said, "Christ is the way."

2 Nephi 25:13

That's it for this week,

Till next time,

Elder Haroldsen

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