Subject: Wet Willie
Hello everyone!
So this last week was the last week of my mission. It is really crazy.
In so many ways I never thought my mission would end, and I almost
never wanted it to either. It has all happened in the Lord's time
though, and for that I am very grateful. I have learned and grown so
much, and I know as long as I keep practicing the principles I have
learned I will continue to learn and grow.
So this week was a great one. Willie did get baptized on Saturday and
that was incredible. It is so neat to see someone come so far. The
happiness and joy that we all felt at his baptism was amazing. The
experience of working with and being able to teach Willie has been
incredible. It has been so awesome to watch him grow so much from
finding him at the end of June to seeing him get baptized on Saturday
and confirmed on Sunday. It was also neat to be able to confirm and
feel the power as I said to him "receive the Holy Ghost". I know his
growth will just continue because he is going to stick with all of
this. His testimony is wonderfully simple. "Everything y'all taught me
just makes sense. I agree with it, and I feel like I have always
agreed with it, I just didn't know it yet." The spirit is sure amazing
and works in a wonderful way.
I want to share a thought I wrote down earlier this week. It is
something that has been on my mind a lot lately and I feel it is all
very important.
"Lord, help me to live without regret."
To me, that is a very powerful prayer. I have been thinking about it a
lot the past few months. Some would say that it is a prayer that can
never be answered, because to live without regrets one would have to
live perfectly. This is not the case. It is not a prayer for
perfection, it is a prayer for peace. We all know that we are going to
mess up, we will all make mistakes. We also know that we all have
messed up and we all have made mistakes. These things can bring us
regret. We find our selves saying the dangerous words "what might have
been?" This is where the prayer to our loving Heavenly Father to help
us to live without regret comes in.
Being able to live without regret does not come from perfection, it
comes through finding peace with our efforts toward becoming perfect.
It is a satisfaction that comes from knowing our Lord is pleased with
our efforts. A knowledge that we, as imperfect, small, and simple
servants, have done a work that Heavenly Father is pleased with. After
all, imperfect people is all that He has ever had to work with, other
then Jesus Christ. He does not expect us to be perfect right now
(that comes much later). What he does expect for us is to strive for
perfection. He expects us to make it our constant goal. If we do that
He has great things in store for us.
In Alma 37:6 Alma teaches us how the lord works and how he blesses us.
"by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and
small means in many instances doth confound the wise." We are all the
definition of "small and simple things." Yet the Lord still involves
us in his great purposes, he even lets us confound the wise. It is
pretty cool that He involves us in so many things so much bigger then
ourselves. For that matter, until we get to the other side we will
have nowhere near of an idea of what we have done to help those around
us. It truly is a privilege to be able to be involved in His work.
In large part asking for help in living without regret is a plead for
wisdom. Wisdom so that we can see and understand that because of
everything we have gone through, every experience we have had, we have
been led to where we are today. It has also become the foundation that
we build the future on. Every time in life when we are so grateful for
where we are, it is thanks to God for working through everything that
we have experienced to teach us the lessons that we needed to learn.
The amazing thing is, God lets us keep our agency. Whatever we choose
in life, for good or for bad, if we come to him he can help us learn
the lessons that become the foundation of the future. Nephi commands
us in 2 Nephi 32:9 to "pray unto the Father in the name of Christ,
that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy
performance may be for the welfare of thy soul." I have a strong
testimony that when we pray for the Lord to consecrate our performance
unto us that he will, but what does that mean? Consecrate means to
make or declare something to be sacred. So in other words, ask the
Father to make our performance (or actions) sacred to us. Help us to
make our experiences sacred, but more importantly. Help us make the
lessons that we learn from our experiences sacred to us.
I may only be twenty, but I can look back on everything have
experienced in my life and it is sacred to me. Though, what is more
sacred then the experiences I have had, is the lessons that I have
learned. I still sometimes think, if I could go back, I would do
"this" differently, but as I think about it more I realize that the
biggest lessons I have learned have come from the things that looking
back I would like to change. Without the experiences I have had, I
would not have learned the lessons that I know, and the lessons that I
know are truly sacred to me.
My prayers have been answered. I have not found perfection, but I have
found peace, and I can say "I am learning how to live without regret."
May y'all be able to live without regret!
Elder Dane Olsen
Here are two pictures of my last district, What a great bunch!
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