Hello Everyone!
I hope you all had a wonderful Easter. From what I understand you woke up to snow there in Colorado; we didn't have any snow here in Idaho, just a beautiful spring day. I'm so thankful that it is finally warming up! We have almost run out of miles on our car because we were cut 300 so the nice weather helps us walk and ride bikes.
We have Elder Duncan from the first quorum of seventy coming this week for our zone conference. This zone conference is going to be way awesome because Elder Duncan has requested specialized training for all the zone leaders in the mission! We get to meet with him before zone conference in the high council room for an hour and he's doing it in two sessions so there will only be 10 of us meeting with a General Authority. Way cool.
For this zone conference I'm in charge of the musical number and the prelude and playing the organ... surprise, surprise. I guess I shouldn't say "for this zone conference" because I do this for all zone conferences and leadership meetings. Good thing I love to play right? For the musical number we'll be performing one of my favorite hymns, "Lord, I would follow Thee." I've arranged to have 6 Male and 4 Female voices with a way cool piano accompaniment. I hope Elder Duncan likes it.
For this e-mail I've entitled it "a missionary's thoughts on Easter" because I wanted to share with you my testimony of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ especially because of His Resurrection and His life.
My favorite part of being a missionary is to testify, to all I interact with, of Jesus Christ. My commission is to be a living witness in word and deed of the divinity of His great and marvelous latter-day work.
I testify as His witness that Jesus Christ is the living Son of the living God; He truly lives and reigns. The Savior is our Master, our Redeemer, our Lord, and our God. I know that by following His example we can and will find peace in this life and eternal joy in the life to come. His Atonement is real and because it is real we too will live again and become perfect spiritually after all we can do and physically because we have followed Him before. The best feeling in the world is to testify that God is our loving Heavenly Father and that Jesus is His son; the reason this is the best feeling in the world is because the Spirit will testify to each of us time and time again that this is true.
I've recently studied in 2 Nephi 25 and I love verse 20 that reads, "...as the Lord God liveth, there is none other name given under heaven save it be this Jesus Christ, of which I have spoken, whereby man can be saved." I testify of what the prophet Nephi has said that it is only through Him, by Him, and of Him that we can be saved.
I heard this quote by Elder McConkie, "the Atonement isn't apart of the gospel, it is the gospel." The Atonement is central to God's plan and to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel is faith in the Atonement, repentance through the Atonement, baptism because of the Atonement, and receiving the cleansing power of the Holy Ghost by the Atonement. This is our great purpose, "invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in the Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end." When we fulfill this purpose it is then that we are one with the Godhead. Remember Christ's words, "if ye are not one ye are not mine." (D&C 38:27)
May we all increase our testimony of the Atonement and the Savior Jesus Christ. The promise is real in Preach my Gospel that as our testimony of the Atonement increases our desire to share the restored gospel with others will increase.
I leave you with the words of Elder Holland who says, "may we stand by Jesus Christ 'at all times and in all things, and in all places that [we] may be in, even until death,' for surely that is how He stood by us when it was unto death and when He had to stand entirely and utterly alone."
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Peace and Love,
Elder Tyson Rigby Walker
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