Email to Family and Friends
TRANSFERS - I am leaving Kalispell, I LOVE THIS PLACE! I will miss it with all my heart. I love the people. But at the same time I know I have done my duty, I have no regrets. I know that we have done the Lords will and accomplished what he has sent me here to do.
I'm being transferred to Billings, my new companion is Elder Black he is from Thatcher, AZ, he is a great missionary. We came out together, I am exited to be working with him. We will have a lot of good work to do together. :)
"Faith, Hope, and Optimism"
A conversation Mother and I had today.
Mom: "Today in Relief Society, we had a council. We discussed how Faith, Hope, and Optimism are related. How fascinating! As we learned together, I gleaned that without Faith, there is no Hope. Without Hope, there is no Optimism. Optimistic people are Faithful people. Look around and see if this is true."
"This means that Faith is the key to Optimism. I saw how important it is to plant those little seeds of Faith in people; that what the world needs. I've done it before with you children."
"Sad and Angry and Glad are choices, as we learned in our recent General Conference. In Relief Society today we learned that many people in the world are Sad and Hopeless. There is nothing to hold to, nothing to believe in ~ not themselves, not their families, etc. A woman in our ward is a therapist. She said the majority of her clients are depressed and cannot overcome their depressions because they have nothing to look for to or to improve for, having no belief in anything greater than themselves. And, they don't like what they see."
Me: "I loved your last email. I learned so much from it, I love the way you put that Optimism can't occur in ones life tell faith is planted in ones heart, until one can trust in something greater than themselves. One thing I love about faith is it can only produce fruit if it is in a true principle. Your mind can be masked and if you are falling off a cliff, and there is a branch to grab on to, and if you in your heart honestly believe that it is on your right but it is on your left, it has no power to save you, to bless your life. You must have faith in a true principle."
"That is in Jesus Christ, our Lord. He is true, and he lives. And we can feel ourselves being saved by his branch as we TRUST that he is there. We can feel our fall stopping. We don't need to know that it is there perfectly, but if we will just exercise a particle of that faith, that trust, through that, we will be saved from falling as we take hold of that branch. Our families WILL be blessed, they WILL find joy in life's trials. Not just some temporary happiness, but peace that is everlasting that can never be shaken save it be by our own lack of faith, our own lack of reaching out and trusting our Father, God Almighty. And consequently lose the blessings so much as if He wasn't even there, because we won't reach out to find Him.
"He has given us our agency, and with that agency we are free to chose life or death, happiness or misery. The Plan of Salvation, our Heavenly Fathers plan for our happiness, is so simple, it pains me that this generation is so stubborn that they will not open their heart to see. I don't need to know every doctrine of God to show that this is true, it is shown by the lives of those who live the Gospel. We may not be able to see the surety of the seed, but we can see the fruit of it in the lives of the faithful Saints. And I have never seen any refute that and I never will, the Saints are and will always be happy, because they have faith, hope, and optimism."
Elder Philip R. Bredsguard
Mission Home- 1848 Rimrock Rd Billings, MT 59102
Sent from my iPad
