They say that breaking uuuup is

haaaard to dooo

Now I know, I know that it's truuuue

Doooon't saaaay that this is the end

Me voy

que lastima pero adios

Me despido de ti

Me voy

Show me the meaning of being lonely

Is this the feeling I need to walk in?

 

WE HAVE CHANGES.

After 3 changes together, the dream team is breaking up, ladies and gents. Hermana Martinez is heading off into the wild blue yonder, and I'm staying here in LA COSTA.

EVEN THE SKY WAS SAD. It rained PURO AGUACERO, with a ton of wind that was shaking the metal roofs so hard we were pretty sure they were going to fall off and come sailing towards us. We were going to take a magic carpet ride, Guate style. But por pura desgracia, no magic carpet ride for us. 

Oscar held his first Family Home Evening with his daughter, his son-in-law, and his grandkids last night! Which was a lot of fun. He's just so awesome, so converted - I feel really blessed to get to be part of that!

In District Meeting today, we were talking about gratitude.  We read Mosiah 2:19-22, which lead me to 2 Nephi 2:26 (Read it, learn it, love it.), which lead me to this train of thought: (Apologies beforehand if my train of thought takes the most twisty rail there is.)

Agency is power. When our Heavenly Father gave it to us, He knew it meant we were going to use it badly sometimes. He knew that by giving it to us, He would have to suffer, we would have to suffer, and His Beloved Son was going to have to suffer.

But He gave it to us.

I thought of Ruby Sparks, one of my favorite movies. In the movie, the main character is a writer. He writes his dream girl and, in one way or another, she comes to life. He literally creates her. But he's scared to give her agency. He's scared to let her make her own decisions - it's easier to write them into her story. If he wants her to not chew him out for something he's done, he just has to write that she loves him no matter what. If he wants to visit his parents and she doesn't want to, he just has to write into her story that she loves his parents and always wants to visit them. 

He's loves her, but he's scared that if he gives her freedom, she'll leave him and never come back. She's his dream girl!

It reaches kind of an extreme point, but in the end, he lets her go. He writes freedom into her story, he makes her forget, and she goes. 

And she comes back to him.

Of..her own free will.

Our Heavenly Father loves us. A LOT more than Calvin loves Ruby. And I bet He worries that we're not going to come back. He leaves EVERYTHING up to us. He lets us take ALL our own decisions, and we accept the consequences thereof. 

But He wants us to be more than just creations, who do everything we're told because we haven't agency. 

In this FREEDOM (and because we maintain that freedom as we follow His counsels), He lets us become our own person - not the natural man, the work of His hands - but like Him.

Without agency, we could never rise above being mere creations.

With agency, we can become gods. "Man is a god in embryo."

THAT is an incredible principle.

We are His Ruby Sparks. He created us from raw intelligence. HE LOVES US. He wants us to be free. And if we return to Him, as we hope - we have an incredible eternal reward. We exist to have joy (2 Nephi 2:25). And while we don't remember our time with Him before, He puts things into our lives so that we can, if we want, return to Him. And live happily ever after.

I don't know why, but that was such a powerful thing for me to learn today. We are here to ACT, not to be ACTED UPON. So "what'e'er you art, act well your part."

I love you cool cats. Watch some Ruby Sparks for me, read the scriptures, and figure out what you're going to do with all this agency that He gives us.

LOVE,

HERMANA BROWER