Change

    I can remember when I was younger and even into my mission I hated change with a passion. I'm not talking about the stuff you find between the the cushions. Back home I would always kind of run away from change or hide from change because I never knew whether the change was good or bad. Most of the time I would presume the change was bad. I can actually remember going as far as fleeing my house and going down to the creek beside my house just to get away from cousins that I hadn’t seen for a while. Eventually I would come back up to the house and everything would be fine but that fear always followed.

Everyone thinks of a changing world, but no one thinks of changing himself

-Leo Tolstoy-

    The idea never came to me that I was doing something wrong. It wasn’t until a while back did I start to realize that change is a good thing. It was actually when our new Mission President came to Nashville did I realize that the future is as bright as your faith. So we have all made mistakes some bigger than other but that what makes The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints so different is that the gospel isn’t a sad message nor a message of sad faces and frowns. “It doesn’t need to be that way because we have a glad message to share, and we have a message of joy.” You will hear this a lot and it because it is true. We have a message that most of us want to scream from the rooftops. The message being Christ has paid for our sins and we do not have to carry our burdens alone. It is because of the atonement we can have our burdens made light as we have faith in Jesus Christ. The atonement is the suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane to the death on the cross. As we apply the atonement in our lives we see the need for change and we realize that change is part of life. I love the way this quote puts it and this is how I will end.

Change has a considerable psychological impact on the human mind. To the fearful it is threatening because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better. To the confident it is inspiring because the challenge exists to make things better.

-King Whitney Jr.-