32 days left and just figuring things out :)

Hey Everybody,

How are ya? I'm doing great. Just enjoying this new area... last week we weren't able to email because we drove to Tulsa and on the way back it was super icy and snowy, so we stayed and drove home the next day... it's like 7 hours of driving to Tulsa from here...This new area is awesome we live in an old bed and breakfast members own and we live in the servant's quarters or as I say with an english accent (servants qo'tas) its like a small apartment on the roof of this big old house. We had a very cool experience yesterday and I will share it with ya'll when I get back. But as I am reading the scriptures and PMG everything is starting to make sense. The phrase most elders share when they get home of, "Right as you start to get missionary work, they send you home." IS SO TRUE...I was pondering why now at the end of my mission I am starting to truly learn all of these lessons. Why didn't the lessons sink in at the MTC? Why hadn't anyone taught me these lessons or warned me or prepared me? But then I got an answer. Perhaps I had been taught at the MTC these lessons and had been warned and prepared but these lessons can only be learned by experience...the same reason we have the veil, how else can we learn important lessons then by trial and error and by experience. That is why the Savior's Atonement is so crucial, it allows us to learn and grow and become clean, if we couldn't make mistakes we couldn't learn and overcome. No matter how much our spirits were prepped and taught by Heavenly Father in our premortal past, those lessons couldn't be totally understood or learned but by going to earth with no memory of our past and being able to be tested and tried, in turn the holy spirit would help us remember those lessons we once learned by testifying truth to us. The only way we can truly learn about our Savior is by acting as he would, no matter how much we read about Christ, those lessons in the scriptures can only be learned by application. It is so cool that now I am starting to understand everything.


Love,
Elder Blackburn