Sister Delgado serves in the Great Legazpi! : Grace shall be as your day‏

Dear friends and Fam!

It's been such a great week of finding and teaching!!! Hay nako!!

Sister Davocol and I have seen many miracles in opening our mouths to share the gospel with others and with teaching when we find and finding when we teach. We’ve had several cases were we were looking for investigators in our area book (a lot harder to do in the PI because no really has direct addresses haha) and we’d ask people if they knew a certain someone and the person we’d ask ended up being the person we were looking for! Super cool stuff. Then we’d teach them and have super spiritual experiences.

But since we are the first sisters to ever go to Irosin, the elders basically gave us the less actives who have been having a hard time coming to church. Its been a humbling experience to find ways to help then in their individual trials and help them realize that coming back to church is the answer to helping them feel of Heavenly Father’s hand in their life.

During our personal study, I started to read a talk I printed last week from BYU speeches called, “His grace is suffient” By Brad Wilcox.

That changed everything for me.

I wish I had all the time in the world to talk about how that talk strengthened my understanding of the atonement and it dawned on me what should be shared to the less actives who are having such a hard time coming back to church. THE ATONEMENT OF CHRIST!

Once we started focusing on Christ and his grace and mercy and LOVE for all His children, the eyes of the less actives let up and were even watery. And as I testified of our savior’s love for them no matter what they’ve done in the past, my eyes started to water as well.

And seeing some come back to church the next Sunday was such a tender moment.

Brad Wilcox writes:

“The miracle of the Atonement is not just that we can go home but that—miraculously—we can feel at home there. If Christ did not require faith and repentance, then there would be no desire to change. Think of your friends and family members who have chosen to live without faith and without repentance. They don’t want to change. They are not trying to abandon sin and become comfortable with God. Rather, they are trying to abandon God and become comfortable with sin. If Jesus did not require covenants and bestow the gift of the Holy Ghost, then there would be no way to change. We would be left forever with only willpower, with no access to His power. If Jesus did not require endurance to the end, then there would be no internalization of those changes over time. They would forever be surface and cosmetic rather than sinking inside us and becoming part of us—part of who we are. Put simply, if Jesus didn’t require practice, then we would never become pianists.

Christ’s Grace Is Sufficient to Help Us

“But Brother Wilcox, don’t you realize how hard it is to practice? I’m just not very good at the piano. I hit a lot of wrong notes. It takes me forever to get it right.” Now wait. Isn’t that all part of the learning process? When a young pianist hits a wrong note, we don’t say he is not worthy to keep practicing. We don’t expect him to be flawless. We just expect him to keep trying. Perfection may be his ultimate goal, but for now we can be content with progress in the right direction. Why is this perspective so easy to see in the context of learning piano but so hard to see in the context of learning heaven?

Too many are giving up on the Church because they are tired of constantly feeling like they are falling short. They have tried in the past, but they always feel like they are just not good enough. They don’t understand grace.

One young man wrote me the following e-mail: “I know God has all power, and I know He will help me if I’m worthy, but I’m just never worthy enough to ask for His help. I want Christ’s grace, but I always find myself stuck in the same self-defeating and impossible position: no work, no grace.”

I wrote him back and testified with all my heart that Christ is not waiting at the finish line once we have done “all we can do” (2 Nephi 25:23). He is with us every step of the way.

Elder Bruce C. Hafen has written, “The Savior’s gift of grace to us is not necessarily limited in time to ‘after’ all we can do. We may receive his grace before, during and after the time when we expend our own efforts” (The Broken Heart [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1989], 155). So grace is not a booster engine that kicks in once our fuel supply is exhausted. Rather, it is our constant energy source. It is not the light at the end of the tunnel but the light that moves us through the tunnel. Grace is not achieved somewhere down the road. It is received right here and right now. It is not a finishing touch; it is the Finisher’s touch (see Hebrews 12:2).”

The Savior is with us every step of the way.

Our every falling moment, He has atoned. He will help us during the journey of becoming better people. That’s something I didn’t understand so well.

Im so grateful for the Savior and my better understanding of the atonement.

Because of Him, we can do all things.

Love ya all!

-Sister Delgado