"The First Great Commandment"

Hello everyone!!

So I feel like I have complete opposite stories in this email...it was just a crazy week with feeling about every emotion...but that's okay. That's the life of a missionary. But I'll start off with the funny story...and kinda embarrassing.

So Saturday we went to Nanay Celia's home for a family lunch...they have this big celebration when they celebrate the deceased...a reunion of the date that they passed away. Anyway, we were at her husband's "death reunion." Haha I guess you could call it that when I had the most horrific thing happen to me! I of course started off with being the center of the party as this big white Americana entering the party but that wasn't the worse. We were just sitting there eating with her grandkids that we are teaching...Joy and Jesselle when this "guy" was leaning in the doorway and winked at me. I turned to my companion and said..."Oh of course, got the creeper guy winking at me." And then she said, "Oh that's no guy, that's a GIRL!" WHAT?! So this "tomboy" or aka lesbian makes her way into the room...totally checking me out and then with the best pick up line ever given says, "Ate, your kinda chubby." AHH!! THE HORROR!! I didn't know what to say!! Salamat....I guess?! Gross! Then she sat right next to me and was staring at my nametag...hopefully just that! Then was asking for my facebook and phone number....I jumped up and said, "umm...we gotta go..." Now that I felt violated!! Then as we were leaving another guy was holding onto my hand and trying to drag me a little bit too close to him...had that happen many times...but not a tomboy!! Oh man, it was the worst but the funniest! We were dying laughing as I was ranting about it. I've never seen Sister Lacanienta almost pee her pants. Haha It was quite the experience I never want to experience again.

Besides that story that I hope you all got a good laugh out of...I had an eye opener this week as well...besides tomboys hitting on sister missionaries. Haha but this was about a kind of love that hurts. Have you ever loved so much that it hurts? Or see someone's potential, what they can become but instead they choose the wrong and don't follow the simple commandments God gives us to be happy and find heaven in this life? This happened this week with Jonathon and his family. I love him and his family so much. But this past week was just not going right with them. Jonathon makes excuses to not meet with us and then going back to drinking again... And then his family doesn't come to church and choose to do things are not obedient to God's commandments. It just finally hurt me after two transfers of loving, caring and serving this family with all my heart. A love that has grown so much within me for them causes so much pain because I see what could happen in their lives, but they don't follow the simple plan Heavenly Father has given us. And what's the saddest thing is that they don't get it. They don't get that they are truly His sons and daughters and that they could be together forever and this life could become a lot happier, and lot easier if they would just put their trust in the Lord. It just hurts to see the one's you love to suffer this way. But it makes you think how Heavenly Father feels. And I realize that I have to experience this, just a little bit of that feeling to understand how He feels. So now I know, and all I can do is give it over to Him. I want all the blessings for them but maybe it's not their time to have them. But even Christ taught that...3 Nephi 18:32. I don't know when Jonathon will be ready or anyone else. But I can help him be prepared and keep trying. To prepare the way for him someday to come unto Christ and be healed. And if so, how great my joy, and my greatest worth. D&C 15:6. We don't stop because that is what this is all about. Bringing people unto Christ.

I just want to end with Jeffrey R. Holland said once...I felt like the words stuck to me, it comes from his talk "The First Great Commandment."

My beloved brothers and sisters, I am not certain just what our experience will be on Judgment Day, but I will be very surprised if at some point in that conversation, God does not ask us exactly what Christ asked Peter: “Did you love me?” I think He will want to know if in our very mortal, very inadequate, and sometimes childish grasp of things, did we at least understand one commandment, the first and greatest commandment of them all—“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind.” And if at such a moment we can stammer out, “Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee,” then He may remind us that the crowning characteristic of love is always loyalty.

“If ye love me, keep my commandments,” Jesus said. So we have neighbors to bless, children to protect, the poor to lift up, and the truth to defend. We have wrongs to make right, truths to share, and good to do. In short, we have a life of devoted discipleship to give in demonstrating our love of the Lord. We can’t quit and we can’t go back. After an encounter with the living Son of the living God, nothing is ever again to be as it was before. The Crucifixion, Atonement, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ mark the beginning of a Christian life, not the end of it. It was this truth, this reality, that allowed a handful of Galilean fishermen-turned-again-Apostles without “a single synagogue or sword” to leave those nets a second time and go on to shape the history of the world in which we now live.

I testify from the bottom of my heart, with the intensity of my soul, to all who can hear my voice that those apostolic keys have been restored to the earth, and they are found in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. To those who have not yet joined with us in this great final cause of Christ, we say, “Please come.” To those who were once with us but have retreated, preferring to pick and choose a few cultural hors d’oeuvres from the smorgasbord of the Restoration and leave the rest of the feast, I say that I fear you face a lot of long nights and empty nets. The call is to come back, to stay true, to love God, and to lend a hand. I include in that call to fixed faithfulness every returned missionary who ever stood in a baptismal font and with arm to the square said, “Having been commissioned of Jesus Christ.” That commission was to have changed your convert forever, but it was surely supposed to have changed you forever as well. To the youth of the Church rising up to missions and temples and marriage, we say: “Love God and remain clean from the blood and sins of this generation. You have a monumental work to do, underscored by that marvelous announcement President Thomas S. Monson made yesterday morning. Your Father in Heaven expects your loyalty and your love at every stage of your life.”

To all within the sound of my voice, the voice of Christ comes ringing down through the halls of time, asking each one of us while there is time, “Do you love me?” And for every one of us, I answer with my honor and my soul, “Yea, Lord, we do love thee.” And having set our “hand to the plough,” we will never look back until this work is finished and love of God and neighbor rules the world. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

I love you all very much and I hope that if you do ever or have experienced that kinda of love, to not give up on them but to keep trying, to keep loving and to never stop. I love you all so much. I know that this is Christ's work that He has called all of us to do and I know this love is real. Mahal na mahal ko kayo and have a great week :)

Love, Sister Burnham

 

 

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