Contemplate and Ponder

Dear Family and Friends,

I am going to get this cleared up beforehand this time. Transfers are next week and therefore I will not be e-mailing on Tuesday as I would normally. I will look forward to communicating on Wednesday from 1:00-3:00 PM. 

We had a wonderful Baptismal service on Saturday. Melissa and Martin were both very excited and happy to be able to have this experience. Martin did very well with the Ordinance for his first time. He also blessed the Sacrament for the second time this last Sunday. Melissa is doing great! She has come so far in learning to read better from the scriptures and being able to quit smoking.

This week I am prompted to share a message on contemplation. This is something that I do often, though I have much room to improve as the Lord would have me become better in all things. The most influential part of Christ's visit to the Americas for me is 'recorded' (In very small detail for the reason that much of it could not be put into words) in 3 Nephi 17. After having taught them much Christ invites the people to go home and ponder and pray for understanding. I have always enjoyed the ability to ponder things and reason. Like it says in Isaiah 5 or so, "Come now and let us reason together..." I am going to be so bold to say that all revelation comes from pondering. Enos called to recollection the words that his father had often told him and those words "sunk deep into [His] heart." I have found that my heart has often been hardened in many ways to the whisperings of the spirit, often times because of ignorance. I have seen the blessings of praying for a change of heart as it talks about in Alma 5. A mighty change of heart is what a prophet of God invited us all to have. In praying for that I have still been ignorant of the many ways that the Lord blesses me, but I have seen changes in myself and also the people that I have prayed for. So after having prayed for a mighty change of heart, I now realize that I have many things that I need to change about me and most of those will only come through careful and conscious contemplation and pondering on the words of life. As we treasure up the words of life from the scriptures and contemplate over our life the Lord shows us and truly grants us understanding. So many people are just simply slaves of their habitual thought patterns. That is very dangerous because the adversary just wants us to become numb to the decisions that we make. If we are unaware of our agency then there is no way to even begin to choose what is right without some way of seeing light shed on our course of action. This is an important thing for many to understand because it is still a choice to allow ourselves to become numb to out choices. Millions of choices we make every day could be out of alignment with what God wants for us to be able to reach our potential. That is why the Holy Ghost is such a powerful gift. We may not know the plan all of the time, but if we rely on that spirit of truth and consciously make the choices the Lord would have us do, that is being led by the spirit. So that is the pattern I am trying to follow. I hope that each of us can become better at recognizing the spirit and being truly led by the hand of the Lord. 

 I love you all and hope you have a great week!!

 

Elder McGarry

 

Melissa's Baptism

Some cool Graffiti, in NM​ it's everywhere!