Third Week in Laredo

Hola Mis Amigos,

"But if ye will turn to the Lord with full purpose of heart, and put your trust in him, and serve him with all diligence of mind, if ye do this, he will, according to his own will and pleasure, deliver you out of bondage." Mosiah 7:33

I have been thinking a lot this week about putting our trust in the Lord. To say, put your trust in the Lord is one thing but doing that and leaning on Jesus Christ is quite another thing entirely. To do this you must first know with assurance that He loves you. That Christ is mindful of you and will take care of you especially when we are following His commandments.

To know Christ, to really know Christ, means putting aside pride and any idea that we can do this on our own. To know Christ takes effort on our part. I see the Atonement (or death of Jesus Christ) as a gift wrapped in beautiful paper, which we must open in order to use the gift. The way we can use the gift that Christ has given us is through faith, repentance (changing our hearts), baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and then enduring to the end. Simple steps, simple steps that we must use every day of our life to draw closer to Christ.

I believe that we can have a better understanding of these steps as we pray to our Father in Heaven through Jesus Christ, as we read our Scriptures, and attend Church. In doing so, each of us can come to know and feel of the Heavenly Father's and Jesus Christ's love for us.

After having just expressed all of that I want to discuss how hard it has been for me this week to put my trust in the Lord. I trust that the effort and energy that I put in each morning in studying is going to prepare me for what to say. To trust with a surety that I do not have to come up with things to say as someone is talking but as I truly listen, the words will come.

This is hard because my whole life I have never had to rely on the Lord this much. I relied more on myself but here I have to rely on the Lord for strength. When I am able to do this, the things I say are better because they are His words. The things I do are better because they are the things He would do.

I am loving Laredo so much. Each Sunday night we have dinner with a family that lives in our area and I really look forward to these dinners. This family is so committed to helping missionaries in any way that they can. I invite all of you to look for ways to bring others to Christ.

Thanks so much for all of your support and letters. You all are in my thoughts and in my prayers.

Con Amor,

Hermana Zani