Illuminate!!

Wow! Another busy week! This was a pretty packed with meeting and such so we definitely didn't have any time to be bored. I feel like I had a lot of good learning opportunities this week, some fun and some not as fun. I'm so grateful for the opportunities I have to learn and for the chance God gives each of us every day to change! We are so blessed!

We saw some pretty cool miracles this week. We often talk about how the spirit can "bring all things to our remembrance," but I feel like sometimes God works in the opposite way with me... We had a meeting in Gwangju this week and we were about to head home for the night but we realized at the last moment we had forgot our luggage in the church! So we rushed back to the church, but everyone had left and we didn't have a key... We called a set of Elders that had been there not too long ago and they agreed to come back and open the church. We were just waiting in front of the church, feeling pretty silly, when all of a sudden one of our old investigators from about a year ago walked past us totally unexpectedly! We were able to talk with him for a minuter of two until the other Elders came. They were also to talk for a second and swap numbers before we all hurried back home to make it in time. But WOW, what are the chances!! There were some other similar experiences where we could tell that God really was very involved. Oddly enough I feel like a majority of them seemed to be more like things were held from my remembrance rather than brought to it... But if that's the way God will do His work through me, then so be it!! ^^

I've studied and thought about light a little bit recently and one of my new favorite goals is to "Illuminate myself and my surroundings with His light and love." I truly believe that we each have such incredible potential to do good and to influence others for the better and there is maybe no better analogy to capture that concept than that of light. Almost everywhere we go we see the contrast between light and dark. We've all seen (literally) bright sunny days and we've all been seen total darkness, but usually experience a mixture somewhere in between. I think that the same is also spiritually true. We have all experienced some amount of the spectrum of light in our lives. We know people living lives beaming with light and others living lives seemingly completely devoid of it. 

When the gospel was restored, Joseph said he "saw a pillar of light ... above the brightness of the sun," and I think that even more than just literally seeing that pillar of light, from that time on the world was once again filled with a fullness of Christ's light through His restored gospel. And we have the opportunity to live it, love it, and especially to share it! We are so blessed to be able to "illuminate" our lives and our families with His love and His light, casting out the darkness of doubt, fear, and despair. We also have the opportunity and responsibility to "illuminate" all those around us in everything we do. It's so fun to share the light of Christ! I'm so grateful for that opportunity as a missionary and I'm grateful that the ability to illuminate isn't limited to full-time missionaries! I'm so grateful for the light of Christ. I know He is our Savior and that He lives!

I love you all and I hope you have a wonderful bright week!!

-Love, Elder Tolman