Words of Wisdom

My friend Elder Kolby Clarke writes books for his letters every week... Seriously, his letters are so LONG. But, he always tell the best stories and shares great thoughts. This week he wrote this in his letter... and I really liked it. I've never thought of this story in The Book of Mormon this way, and I liked the perspective! Anyway, here it is. I hope you like it!

"On Sunday, one of the members gave a great talk in Sacrament Meeting. He told the story from the Book of Mormon of when Laman and Lemuel, due to their sins, tied up their brother Nephi who was God's chosen leader. They didn't want to listen to him anymore because he spoke the will of God; the commandments of God were the last thing Laman and Lemuel wanted to hear. Because of their sins and their rebellion against Nephi, many problems arose as they were sailing on a ship to the Promised Land. The Liahona or compass stopped working. A storm started and pushed them back for many days and nights, and threatened to be their destruction. Laman and Lemuel, seeing that they were about to be the cause of the death of themselves and their family, came to some form of repentance and released Nephi. Nephi then prayed, and through his faith, his family was saved as God stopped the storm and allowed them to continue sailing to the Promised Land. The member then applied this story to us; he asks "Who is your Nephi?" His talk was then centered on how we need to stop rebelling against our Nephi (the commandments of God) and repent. We need to realize that we too are on a journey, and that our Promised Land is Eternal Life. As we tie up Nephi, we rebel against God and stop progressing; we in fact, start to fall backwards in our journey. Once again, we need to let go of the things that are holding us back. We can be ourselves, we can have a personality, but we need to do so while keeping the commandments of God." -Elder Clarke

PS This is just one of many paragraphs... in one letter! He's amazing!