SABBATH DAY

I feel grateful in my inner core to be your speaker for the second time. First of all, I wanna greet all of you a good morning!

The topic that was given to me by the president, is about “How attending the sacrament every Sunday helped you in your daily life?”

To start my talk let me share with you some chapters of mine; when I was in first and second-year high school I sometimes go to church if I feel too and if someone invites me. I love reading books one is the Bible, I sometimes argue with my friends about the Bible and about their beliefs and my understanding until such time they question me; how could you say that you don’t even attend Sunday services? And then they invited me to come to attend with us to understand the words of God. I tried to attend the church, it was good and yeah I can say that the church helped me but there is something missing that my heart is searching for. At first, the pulling force of the church was good but when I’ve gone through it the force was weakened little by little because of the frictional force acting on it. What is that frictional force? Maybe it’s Satan, temptation, the teachings of the church or maybe me or maybe all of the above that I’ve mentioned. I didn’t attend the church anymore until I began to start the chapter of my book at Sal-lapadan. And there I attend different churches Apostolic, Born Again, and Jehovah’s Witnesses which lead me to question myself; is God real? Does He really exist? Why there are so many interpretations of the bible? Where is the real church? And so much more playing on my mind until such time I realize to myself that the important is I am attending church services during Sundays, I know something about the bible and as long as I am applying the teachings of Christ in my life. What I know those are enough for my salvation. Until I enter college life and met the missionaries, at first I actually ignore what they are saying to me ‘cause what I know the things that I know about God are enough and my understanding and their teachings are sometimes different and are in contrast. They continue to visit us they teach us a lot but I’m not able to appreciate it, the reason is I don’t understand because of the notions that are playing on my mind that I know it’s the truth. You know you can never appreciate things if you don’t understand. The missionaries then ask me if I want to be baptized I decided not to for many reasons but I continue attending this church.

One time we went to La Paz for our field study, we observe an English class supposed to be we will not be observing that class for we are science majors. At that class the teacher talks about achieving goals in life, she was so good at it. Her messages were inspiring it’s from the heart, at her last lines she said: “for you to be able to achieve your goals in life always include God”. Because of that message I came up with a good realization for what God has done for me, he’s there whenever I have problems and whenever there are goals that I wanna achieve. On that day, afternoon the missionaries visit us they ask me what my plan is? If I’ll just attend the church like a visitor or I’ll be baptized. I said, “I wanna be baptized as a Latter-Day Saints but elders I’m not worth it”. Then they speak about the goal “how if make it a goal Haji? We will help you; we’ll set a day for your baptism”. I said yes for I realize that I have many goals in my life that I included God, it’s time that I’ll focus on him as my goal also. Together with the elders, I set my goal to seek God to know him better. Preparing myself is indeed not easy because of satan’s temptations but then I was able to resist those. Then I was finally baptized and received the gift of Holy Ghost.

As a new member of this church is not actually easy, satan will always tempt you. Sometimes I’m not attending sacraments and I almost not attend in a month until someone lets me realize I should always attend the church. I became serious in going here at church and until now I am trying doing my best to keep Sabbath day holy, by attending every class I realize that there are a lot of things that I don’t know. I should give enough time to study the scriptures but I cannot ‘cause I cannot manage my time properly but am trying, thanks to the elders for continuously visiting us kahit papano natututo kami.
And here at church, I feel grateful and I am thankful for being part of it, I’m learning a lot subra. In my life, by attending our church every Sunday it helps me to have inner peace. It helps me to be more righteous, to be kinder to everyone and it helps me to have an understanding of everything that is happening to my environment and an understanding for everyone. We cannot deny the fact that there are times that we feel so stressed to the world we feel angry with the world but through attending this church I gain a lot of things to cope with those stresses. We need to seek God diligently, attend the church every Sunday and work hard to keep it holy, it will help us to gain inner peace in our lives he will strengthen us no matter how weak we are.

In our lives there are a lot of forces acting on it, we are being pushed and pulled to do bad things and if we tried to do good things there are frictional forces that will try to prohibit us. But I am telling you to put God as the center of our lives, He’ll provide a centripetal force for us to move our lives with Him constantly.

I believe that all I’ve shared are true; I believe that this church is real and I will leave all of this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.