Elder Tyson Dawson: Week 41 in the Field - Ch-ch-changes, Danny, and Repentance

Weekly Letter 3 of August 2015

Well, it turns out that I will not be sticking around here in Minerva for long because I have changes. Tonight I'll receive the details about where I will be going and also any potential leadership assignments I will have.

This came as a surprise because we thought for sure that I would finish Elder Alarcon's training before leaving the area but oh well, I'll go where you want me to go.

This week I had the opportunity to get to know a guy named Danny. Danny was born in Guatemala but at the age of five his family moved to Reno, Nevada. He went to school and everything in the United States and a few years ago joined the church there. However, he began to distance himself from the church and began to start some bad habits. He came to Guatemala three months ago to get away from his past and two weeks ago he came to church for the first time in a couple of years. He speaks English way more than he speaks Spanish, which is cool, and he really wants our help to start a new life.

This week I had the opportunity to baptize an eight year old kid in the ward named Edgar. It was a neat experience and I'm glad I was able to do that for him.

In other news, I bought new ink for my typewriter and I can now write in red so that's pretty cool.

This week I was able to study a little bit on the topic of repentance. Certainly such a topic often conjures up images in our minds of tears and frustration, confession, guilt, and shame. At times, these elements of repentance are certainly crucial, but it is my belief that perhaps they draw our attention away from the images of smiles, relief, rebirth, peace and forgiveness which should come to mind when pondering repentance.

Repentance should be one of the most joyful and glorious words in our gospel vocabulary. "True repentance," taught President Joseph F. Smith, "involves...a thorough reformation of life, a vital change from evil to good, from vice to virtue, from darkness to light." According to President David O. Mckay "the first step" towards such a spiritual reformation "is the belief in a higher and better life, or conversely, a realization of the meanness of one's present state. repentance is turning away from that which is low and striving for that which is higher.

Hugh B. Brown taught that "the need for repentance will continue while life lasts" and that "We cannot replace a bad life with a good one by any single word or act; there must be a continuing process of replacing err and wrong-doing with truth and right-doing; of going from bad to good and from good to better..." He continued that "A growing conception of the good life must be accompanied by constant adjustment thereto if one would achieve harmony with the will of God."

Elder David A. Bednar has taught that repentance and the atonement of Jesus Christ can be compared to a hypothetical machine filled with black sand. In said machine, if one places a grain of white sand in one end, a grain of black sand will leave out the other end. Black grains of sand represent sin and the natural man while grains of sand represent righteousness and spiritual rebirth. When we use the atonement of Christ and repent, we replace the black with the white, the bad for the good. It is a slow, perhaps meticulous practice, but it allows us to purify our lives to the point that we only have white sand, we only have righteousness, we have been, as Moroni puts it, "found spotless, pure, fair, and white, having been cleansed by the blood of the Lamb, at that great and last day."

It is my prayer that we might believe and trust that wickedness never was happiness and that the path of discipleship is also the path to happiness. May we be willing to adjust our lives to the will of God and therefore lose a life of sin and gain life eternal.