July 15

As for me.  Yes I am staying in the area.  And yes i´m going to be Elder Smiths last companion.  I´m going to be his last comp then i´ll get one more companion.  He goes home on the 19th in august.  

 We are doing a lot more contacts on the street next to people who are less active and fallen away from the church.  Our goal is to get about three roads booming with investigators and less active people to teach.  We brought a couple less actives to church this week and we are trying to bring in more.  It´s incredible.  All it takes usually to bring a less active back to church is a visit.  Just one or two visits and they will start going back to church.   All members of the church should take upon themselves this responsibility to bring back fallen away members to full activity.

We have two people that are making good progress in the gospel.  Two women.  Clairta and Nete.  They are neighbors and best friends.  We got a reference from a member and we started to visit them.  They are both looking to streghthen their faith in God and Christ.  They didn´t really know how to do it and that is where we came in.  I love teaching.  It´s so much fun.  We don´t give people fishes but we teach them to fish so that they won´t ever pass hunger again.  We are helping Clairta and Nete create habits that will bring them closer to god and his son.  The simple things have the most profound effect on ones soul.  Prayer, Scribture study, and Church attendance help the faith one SKY ROCKET!  They feel the impact of the simple things in their lives.  I can see it in their eyes when we teach them.  The gospel is perfect and it´s amazing to see how it makes someones life that much better.  I´m not sure why, but we haven´t really gotten around to baptism yet.  I hope that these two will be baptised and choose to follow the savior.  It´s the right thing to do.

I´ve been studying a lot this week about the attonement.  I felt like I was close to having a spiritual break through these last couple of weeks and I finally had it!  The attonement.  I´ve studied it a lot in my mission but it seems like every time I go back I learn something more and my faith in, and love for the savior grow so much.  I´m so grateful for the attonement.  It gives me force to keep going.  It gives me strength.  Studying the attonement is like going to a cabin and looking out one window.  You can go to the cabin and look out the north side of the window and see the beautiful mountains.  But you miss the flowing creak that is at the south window.  Or even the garden that is to the east side.  To appreciate and understand the attonement it must be applied in all aspects and parts of ones life.  

I know that Jesus Christ is the savior and light of the world.  His attonement is perfect.  He went below all things to bring all back to the presence of the father that accept through faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the holy ghost, and enduring to the end.

Elder Diamond