Well hello! What a week! It began in Drayton Valley with some really good lessons, visits, service and our first snowfall of the season. Then we spent a few days in Edmonton on exchanges after a Zoom Zone Conference.
This week we were blessed to meet with a couple of our people and it was such a neat experience. Lately I have felt the impression and set a goal to be more bold in life and in missionary work. My companion and I also decided together to just be bold in all our efforts! During a lesson this week we were able to stress the importance of the decisions we make in the church, and how following Jesus Christ and God is so important! This includes taking steps, such as baptism, to work toward the goal of entering the temple. As a result of our boldness a couple of our people expressed that they want to work towards being baptized!
Edmonton! It was good to go into the city on exchanges with Sister Smith and Sister Simmons for a couple days. It was so fun to serve with my cute MTC companion Sister Smith once again. We were able to catch up while enjoying missionary work and made more memories like freezing our legs off and then thawing them in hot water! While in the city we were able to see some of my favorite members. The first night we had supper with the Sorochan family and it was just what my little heart needed. Then the next night we enjoyed supper with the Sager family. I met both of these amazing families during the first few transfers of my mission. God truly knows exactly what we need at exactly the right minute! I'm not sure I would be where I am today without them. We also visited with the sweet member I lived with the first 7 months of my mission, and enjoyed lunch with some other missionaries. Serving in an outlying town we don't get to see other missionaries very often so it was nice to see and catch up with all of them!
The title of my email stems from a very needed conversation I had this week. It was also a reminder that my Savior Jesus Christ knows us each individually. I have been thinking a lot about the idea of generalization. How often do we generalize our thoughts and generalize ideas and truth in the gospel? How often do we merely think about things in a big general sense rather than in a personal sense? Maybe no one does this - maybe it's just me? Saying or hearing something is different than LISTENING and HEARKENING to that same thing. As much as I have heard, and even often said, Christ truly is personal. I guess sometimes I just have a hard time really thinking about it because then I start to think about all the people in the world and put it into a general sense. This weekend I felt the spirit so strong as a member shared their testimony of the individual atonement of Jesus Christ. I too know that our Savior Jesus Christ suffered and died for ME and for YOU. I also know He knows EVERYTHING I feel because of His atonement! He has atoned for each of us individually because He knows us individually and He loves us individually.
I want to end by sharing a quote by Chieko Okazaki that was shared with me. It touched my heart and I hope it does the same for you.
“Well, my dear sisters, the gospel is the good news that can free us from guilt. We know that Jesus experienced the totality of mortal existence in Gethsemane. It's our faith that he experienced everything- absolutely everything. Sometimes we don't think through the implications of that belief. We talk in great generalities about the sins of all humankind, about the suffering of the entire human family. But we don't experience pain in generalities. We experience it individually. That means he knows what it felt like when your mother died of cancer- how it was for your mother, how it still is for you. He knows what it felt like to lose the student body election. He knows that moment when the brakes locked and the car started to skid. He experienced the slave ship sailing from Ghana toward Virginia. He experienced the gas chambers at Dachau. He experienced Napalm in Vietnam. He knows about drug addiction and alcoholism.
Let me go further. There is nothing you have experienced as a woman that he does not also know and recognize. On a profound level, he understands the hunger to hold your baby that sustains you through pregnancy. He understands both the physical pain of giving birth and the immense joy. He knows about PMS and cramps and menopause. He understands about rape and infertility and abortion. His last recorded words to his disciples were, "And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." (Matthew 28:20) He understands your mother-pain when your five-year-old leaves for kindergarten, when a bully picks on your fifth-grader, when your daughter calls to say that the new baby has Down syndrome. He knows your mother-rage when a trusted babysitter sexually abuses your two-year-old, when someone gives your thirteen-year-old drugs, when someone seduces your seventeen-year-old. He knows the pain you live with when you come home to a quiet apartment where the only children are visitors, when you hear that your former husband and his new wife were sealed in the temple last week, when your fiftieth wedding anniversary rolls around and your husband has been dead for two years. He knows all that. He's been there. He's been lower than all that. He's not waiting for us to be perfect. Perfect people don't need a Savior. He came to save his people in their imperfections. He is the Lord of the living, and the living make mistakes. He's not embarrassed by us, angry at us, or shocked. He wants us in our brokenness, in our unhappiness, in our guilt and our grief.”
I hope you have the most wonderful week! Love and miss you all!
Love, Sister Merrill
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