Am I my brother's keeper?

"And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper?" - Genesis 4:9

"And again I say unto you, is there one among you that doth make a mock of his brother, or that heapeth upon him persecutions? Wo unto such a one, for he is not prepared, and the time is at hand that he must repent or he cannot be saved!" - Alma 5:30-31

"By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples if ye have love one to another." - John 13:35

"My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth." - 1 John 3:18

Last week I gave a talk in Sacrament Meeting about the divine gift of repentance! I used an analogy of irrigation water, sprinklers, and green grass. I quickly learned that I don't have those vocab words unlocked in Spanish yet lol. Lucky irrigation can be said "irrigación" so I was chilling. Basically, the analogy was that once the water is turned on for the neighborhood the water is ready to go and accessible watering the lawn. But if you have ever worked with irrigation you know that that is not really the case, it takes a few hours on Saturday afternoon with Pops to fix all the sprinklers, timing, etc. Sometimes the pipes have frozen over and exploded and you need to dig down to fix it. Once the whole system is running nicely, we can turn on the water and water the lawn to keep it nice and green. The water is always accessible to us, but we need to work with the irrigation in order to utilize that water and receive the blessings. 

The blessings of Christ's Atonement are always accessible to us, but we only receive them when we make it possible for them to flow to us or through us. The process of "cleaning, fixing, and adjusting the irrigation" is necessary, and the process of repentance is necessary to receive the blessings of the Atonement of Christ. I share this because afterward, a lady we are helping come back to church said she liked it a lot and asked us for a few scriptures about repentance. That made me feel really good to know that the Holy Ghost guided me to help at least one person!

We had a Zone Conference this week and talked about the importance of working through less active or inactive members of the church. One thing that I have found, which isn't a crazy revolutionary thing at all but anyway, is that "practice makes perfect", even in missionary life. So my comp and I made sure to emphasize the roleplay/practice part of the training. 

I will toss a PDF version of the training if you want to see what's good (slide 14 is my favorite).

We are teaching a little girl named Dawn (codename). Her dad is a member who has been pretty inactive but now he is coming back to the church. Dawn is so cute and super smart. Recently we taught her about why Jesus Christ is important and she totally understood it. I love seeing her learn and even more than that, I love to see her dad testify and teach her about the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you are still reading this super long email I invite you to reach out to a friend or family member who is inactive in the church and see how you can help them. I know that they can actually feel the spirit again and have desires to return! Buena semana chavales :)

Élder Ditto