Hello Everyone! I hope that you all had a wonderful week! Halloween is coming up soon! I hope that you are all doing well, and that the Holiday Season will be a blessed one for you.
As of now, I will be hitting my year mark on my mission in approximately 3 more days! (I entered the MTC on October 26, 2016). So that is exciting, but it's always good to remember, "Don't count the time, make the time count."
This week I feel inspired to share about how we receive answers to our prayers. I was emailing with my mom about this, and I really like the principle that I learned. I have had increasing struggles with really feeling like I receive answers to my prayers. Receiving answers to our prayers has to do a lot with faith, because if we want to receive an answer or a confirmation, we must act in faith first. Once we show the Lord our faith by action, we can then pray to Him for confirmation as to if what we have done is the right path to go. The answers that we receive to our prayers are not always these big moments. Sometimes, they are quiet feelings of peace that we receive that what we are doing is right. Sometimes, we might feel like the things that we must do in order to act in faith seem too hard to accomplish, or that would require an enormous amount of courage in order to do so. However, we need not fear, because the Lord is with us every step of the way. When we act in faith and when we trust Him, we are "walking beside Him." I want to bear my testimony that prayer has the power to give us direction, guidance, and inspiration when we need it most, and that our Heavenly Father really does answer our prayers. But first, we must act in faith.
I have also been thinking about faith, and I think about the scripture in Alma 32:27:
27But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.
It can be hard to have faith sometimes, but I really love the message of this scripture: When it says "experiment," that makes me think a lot about action. If we really want to have true faith, there must be action. In other words, we must "experiment" by acting. We must also have a desire to believe, and that desire can drive and motivate us to help our faith grow stronger and stronger. I want to bear my Testimony that Prayer and Faith have the power to pull us out of darkness, and provide us with hope. Prayer and faith are the essence of the Iron Rod that leads us to Eternal Life (I Nephi 8). If we truly apply prayer and faith into our lives, Heavenly father and Jesus Christ will help us overcome our challenges. I would like to invite all of you to think about something that you are currently searching for an answer to, and then to act in faith. After you have acted in faith, ask Heavenly Father for that confirmation.
In Mission news, we have our Branch Halloween party coming up this Saturday, so I will definitely have to send some pictures of that next week! Me and my companion (Elder Thoại) currently have three Investigators that we are working with. In our Branch yesterday, we had 42 people attend Sacrament Meeting, which was awesome! A cool fact about Hanoi, Vietnam is that it has a mural that is about a mile long I believe. It's got a Guiness World Record on it for something.
I hope that you will all make it a great week, and may God bless you in all that you do!
Sincerely,
Elder Ly (Anh Cả Dũng)
Pictures:
1-3. Me with my companion Elder Thoại.
HaNoi HALLOWEEN!
