Homecoming talk!

Hi everyone! 

Even six weeks later, I can't believe I am homeeeeeee!

I have been so touched by how many of you followed my blog while I was gone. 

I can't begin to tell you how much that means to me. 

I am so overwhelmed by how many great people that are in my life.
I truly am blessed.

I decided to keep this whole blogging thing up! 

Follow my new blog and life adventures at: 

http://nevertoomanyhashtags.blogspot.com/

This will be my last post on this blog! 

I can't think of a better way to sum it all up then by posting my homecoming talk. 

THANKS AGAIN!

LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH!

June 21, 2014

Well 18 months ago, I left for a mission in Los Angeles and I don’t think I had any idea what I was getting myself into. I could talk to you all day about the incredible experiences and … interesting adventures I have had. I could talk about miracles, cockroaches, biking, homeless people, international people, celebrities, parking tickets, Hollywood, Santa Monica pier, etc. I absolutely loved the past year and a half of my life and it really is hard for me to sum it up.

People often ask me, “what was your favorite part of being a missionary?”

And out of all of the things I could say I often reply, “Being able to feel God’s love for people and being able to catch a glimpse of the way God sees them.” When I was set apart as a missionary, I could feel a heavy, yet special mantle come upon me. As part of that calling, I could walk down the street and see a complete stranger and feel completely overwhelmed with pure love for that person. I remember one day in particular where this happened. My companion and I were walking down the streets of South Central L.A. We were the only white people. And we were definitely the only girls in long skirts walking around. We stopped to talk to this kid in his young twenties. He was so hardened by his life circumstances. He was orphaned and abandoned at a young age. He joined a gang to try to survive, but that choice had put him in and out of juvie and jail for years. He was so bitter at God and denied his existence. He ripped up the pass along card I gave him. He was so hateful, but I saw a small part of the potential that Heavenly Father can see in Him. I wanted him so desperately to just stop and listen to what we were offering. We could help him become exactly who he was craving to be. I loved him and that love was not my own.

President Uchtdorf, a modern day apostle of Jesus Christ, has said, “Much of the confusion we experience in this life comes from simply not understanding who we are. Too many go about their lives thinking they are of little worth when, in reality, they are elegant and eternal creatures of infinite value with potential beyond imagination. Think of where you came from. You are sons and daughters to the greatest, most glorious being in the universe. He loves you with an infinite love. He wants the best for you.”

Brothers and sisters He really does. You and I are the reason He created this world. We are the reason He asked us to leave Him for a while to come here and gain bodies. He knew this life would be very hard, but He knew it was the only way for us, His beloved sons and daughters, to become our true potential. He misses us. He loves us. He not only wants us to return home to Him, but He wants us to become exactly like Him. Think of that potential--- to become like our perfect Father in Heaven.

But how? How could we, as fallible humans ever become like Him? Living in this difficult world, our physical weaknesses and spiritual imperfections separate us from our perfected Father and celestial home. That is why we need a Savior. Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He came to this world to redeem us. Think of each your sins, pains, heartaches, sicknesses or weaknesses. Jesus Christ took upon Him your entire load and so much more. He suffered the consequences for our imperfect lives, so we can one day live His perfect life.

But He cannot save us against our will. We must choose for Christ to heal us and help us. So how do we choose Him and this priceless gift? It is called the gospel of Jesus Christ – faith, repentance, baptism, receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, and endure to the end. That’s it! If we follow that process, we can return home and become like our Heavenly Father.

Since the beginning o time, this path home or the gospel of Jesus Christ was taught to us by prophets. Our Savior Himself taught it while He was on the earth and His apostles taught it after. However after they were killed, the gospel of Jesus Christ was distorted. The authority of God to administer these essential ordinances was gone. Many good people trying to find their way back home formed countless of their own churches and practices, but the world was in confusion and darkness. After hundreds of years of being lost from the earth, the gospel of Jesus Christ was restored to the earth in its fullness in the 1800s through the prophet Joseph Smith. DO WE REALIZE WHAT WE HAVE?! Prophets are back. The priesthood is back. The sacrament, temples, an understanding of personal revelation is back. The gospel of Jesus Christ, our way to accept the atonement of our Savior and the path home, is back on the earth. It’s here---in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

 I had the greatest job in the world for the past year and a half of my life. I got to dedicate ALL I had to invite others and help them come unto Christ. I got to wear Jesus Christ’s name on a name tag over my heart. I got to help people realize who they really are, what their potential really is, and progress on their journey home to our Heavenly Father.

When I left my family, my friends, my education and life as I knew it, I naively thought my mission was this great sacrifice I could give to Heavenly Father as a token of my gratitude for all that He has done for me. I thought my mission was my gift to God. I was so wrong. My mission was one of the best gifts that God has ever given me.

This is the Lord’s work. He could do it all by Himself and He can do a much better job at it than we ever could. So why did He ask me to go? Why did He let me participate? I think it is because He knew how much it would change me and transform me.

Before I left one of my sisters wrote in my journal a piece of advice that stuck with me everyday in LA. She wrote, “The Lord loves you, but He wants to teach you. Don’t fight the Lord’s tutoring hand.” I tried my best to let Him take over. And I’m still trying to do that.

The hardest question everyone seems to ask me since I have been home is, “how was your mission?” Uhhh… how do I begin to convey it in a word or even in a sentence? There aren’t words eloquent enough to describe how sacred my mission is to me, even if you had all day to listen. I have asked myself a lot why it is so hard to describe it. I have realized that it is because the only person besides me who was there for all of it was Heavenly Father. So it became this intimate experience I had with Him.

One of my favorite scriptures says, “Be still and know that I am God.” I may not be able to express the past year and a half to you, but I can at least tell you about a few experiences I had with Heavenly Father. Moments where I stopped, was still, and knew that God was real and with me. They might be small moments, but they are definitive moments in my life. I could feel His love and cannot deny that.

One of these moments happened early in my mission at the Missionary Training Center.  They have this practice teaching center where volunteers from the community come in and pretend to be non-members and we, as brand new missionaries, get to teach them. Occasionally, someone you teach won’t be pretending. Well one day my companion and I went and they told us that the person we would be teaching wasn’t pretending but was actually a less-active member of the church. We walk in to meet a 19 year old kid named Parker. Parker became less active when he was 14, when he started an addiction. That addiction led him to a downward spiral. Then, years later, he wanted spiritual help. He talked to a friend that worked at the MTC about it. He said he didn’t want to go to his bishop, to his family, or missionaries in his area; he didn’t want to talk to anyone he knew. So his friend suggested he come to the teaching center. He could talk to missionaries like us and never see us again. My companion and I started to teach Parker about the healing power of the atonement of Jesus Christ. I wanted to share my go-to atonement scripture at the time in Alma 11. As I opened up my scriptures, something stopped me. The Spirit whispered in my mind “Isaiah. Isaiah.” Why would I read Isaiah to a teenager?! Well, I followed that prompting and read this scripture in Isaiah 53: 4-5 about our Savior. “Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.” As I read that scripture, Parker began to weep. He said to us “you know, since I went less active when I was 14, I only attended one year of seminary. And in that year, I only memorized one scripture. You just read the only scripture I ever memorized.” In that moment, I KNEW God was so aware of us. He loved Parker so much and had a plan for him.

I remember the first time that someone we were teaching rejected us and asked us to not teach him anymore. I was so heartbroken. My companion and trainer was a genius and took me to the middle of UCLA campus (because that’s where we were assigned at the time). We went to somewhere called Bruin walk where thousands of students were walking to class.  She told me to read this scripture out loud and replace Nephi’s name with mine. I told her, “sister! I am not going to read this in front of everyone.” She replied, “Are you kidding? No one is paying attention to us as usual. Just read it.” She was right, and I’m glad I listened. I read in Helaman 10, “…the [people] divided hither and thither and went their ways, leaving Sister Atkinson alone, as [she] was standing in the midst of them.” (and here we were standing in the midst of so many people, yet feeling so alone and abandoned). “As [she] was thus pondering because of the…people… a voice came unto [her] saying : “Blessed art thou, Sister Atkinson, for those things which thou hast done; for I have beheld how thou hast with unwearyingness declared the word, which I have given unto thee, unto this people. And thou hast not feared them, and hast not sought thine own life, but has sought my will, and to keep my commandments. And now, because thou hast done this with such unwearyingness, behold I will bless thee forever.” In that moment, I could feel Heavenly Father’s love wrap around me. We were not alone. We were not abandoned. He was proud and He was grateful. And He had a work for us to do. And we got back to work.

A lot of things happened at home in the year and a half I was gone. This week I got to meet my niece and two nephews that were born while I was gone! Many people graduated or got married. I also missed several funerals of close family members and friends, including my two grandmothers’. And you know, that was hard. I could share many experiences about feeling close to the other side of the veil or feeling comfort when these times happened, but I feel like I should share one in particular. My mission president pulled me in to his office one day and said, “Sister Atkinson, your Grandma Atkinson passed away this morning.” Then he said, “tell me about her.” I started to tell him about how special she was. Then I felt prompted to tell him about her and grandpa’s legacy in WV and how they sacrificed so much for the Church here. (Which I was surprised I did, because I didn’t really know grandpa that well, because he passed away when I was so young). Then it was so amazing. The Spirit and my mission president told me the same thing at the same time, “Sister Atkinson. I want you to know that your grandma and your grandpa, because they were sealed in the temple, are reunited today. They are missionary companions right now. They are doing the exact same work you are doing on this side of the veil. This is the most important thing you could be doing right now.” All of a sudden it hit me: temples are not some fairy tale. This is all real life. This is all true. And there is nothing more important than dedicating our lives to and sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ.

One day, (it’s a long story of why), but a companion and I decided to go in to an appointment ten minutes early. We were on the porch and my hand was on the doorknob when the Spirit stopped us dead in our tracks. We both felt like we were being asked, “You have ten extra minutes of the Lord’s time; what are you going to do with it?” So we turned around immediately and decided to street contact on that street for the ten minutes we had. It was a residential street where we rarely found success, but we felt like it was the best option. As we started down the street our lives changed when we met Ted. Ted had prayed to God just two days before that he would find a new direction in his life. He made and kept an appointment with us. He came to church. He read the Book of Mormon. He gave up addictions. He knew so quickly that this was the work of the Lord and immediately turned over his life to us. At his baptism a few weeks later he testified, “I know that Christ is exactly who He said He was and Joseph Smith is exactly who he said he was.” Ted is a very different person now than he was six months ago. As I watched this man completely transform as he applied the atonement of Jesus Christ, that is available today through the restored gospel, my life was changed. My understanding of this life and of our Savior deepened. I could feel my Savior’s love for me and for Ted in every part of my soul.

These experiences are just a few of those moments where I was still and knew that God was real and that He loved me. We don’t have to be wearing nametags to have these experiences. Our perfect Heavenly Father and our Savior Jesus Christ are trying so hard every day to help us, to heal us, and to love us. We just need to come unto them.

“Come unto Christ and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God. And again if by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God…that ye may become holy, without spot.” (Moroni 10:32-33)

It’s all true. I know it. And I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.