He brings peace and He sends love.

It's been quite a week! I now have two roommates–they're both FANTASTIC and I love them! My religion class this term is going to be so good, but a little crazy. I think it will be a really good class though. :)

My thoughts during the sacrament were pretty concise today.

"Making improvements." That's something that Rosie said in the opening prayer today, and I loved it. The sacrament is a time to reflect on the past, and focus on making improvements in the future. None of us are perfect, and we all make mistakes, but with the Lord's help, and the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we can work on it. We can become better day by day. And sometimes we might falter, and take a step or two backwards, but we can always get up and try again. We can always overcome. It takes time, and effort, but we can overcome, because the help of Him who overcame it ALL–Jesus Christ, our Savior and Redeemer. He brings peace and comfort to those who need it, and He sends love and forgiveness to those who ask.

 Today was fast and testimony meeting, and it was so good! Some of my favorite insights today were:

• We need to be humble enough to ask Him. 
• Compare yourself to yourself.
• Just be proactive.
• We are doing our best, and that is enough.
• Christ has suffered everything to help us.
• Sometimes things require a lot of time and patience. He won't leave us hanging.
• When we have an eternal perspective, and the end in mind, we can get past the trials; past the hard times.
• He is there and He is listening. He died and was resurrected for us. Each of us. 

Gospel Doctrine was really great today :)

• We are blessed in all things if we obey.
• When we keep the commandments we have an outpouring of the Spirit.
• God can take our small offering and make it more, make it better. He takes what we give and improves it.
• It's our duty to choose God in all things. Hold on to Christ.

Relief Society was so wonderful! The lesson was based off of President Eyring's talk from the April 2017 Women's Session of General Conference entitled "My Peace I Leave with You". It was such a great lesson! Here are some of my favorite thoughts:

• We receive peace in His way. Not the world's way.
• We can find true peace through Christ.
• Remember. Remember past experiences, past confirmations of your testimony and the gospel. Remember. They will help you in times of trial.
• Rosie said something awesome–she said that sometimes we have times of goodness–that's adding to our testimony and life–in order to prepare us for times of trial and struggle.
• God needs us to be humble, and sometimes He won't take away our trials because it is supposed to help us be humble.

Today was a great day at church. I learned some things I needed to hear, or was reminded of things in a different way. I loved getting to hang out with my new roommates:) I am so excited for this summer! We have a lot of new people in the ward and I am excited to get to know them.

I am so grateful for my Savior. I honestly was really worried and stressed about this summer, and my new roommates, and being away from home for a whole summer (and then some), but He answered my prayers. I am SO EXCITED for this summer now!! I have some pretty amazing new roommates, and I have some summer plans and I think it's going to be an awesome summer!! I've also been a little stressed about my major–fun fact, I am going to be changing it again, I think, but this time I don't have to apply for it! Which, honestly, is such a blessing and just what I need right now. 

Sometimes God waits a little bit to answer us, and sometimes the way that He answers us isn't entirely the way we expected, but I know that He answers us. I know that sometimes things don't go the way that we planned them to, but I know that it's all going to work out. I know that He brings you peace and sends you love when you want it and need it. I hope you have a wonderful Sabbath day and an amazing week! :)

Xoxo

Mattie

Trust Him.

This morning before church I was thinking a lot about life in general, just because it's been on my mind the past couple of weeks (*cough* months, really *cough*). I'm kind of an impatient person sometimes. I'm working on it, and usually I'm not so impatient, but there are a couple of things that I really want in life that I have to wait awhile for, and it's been difficult trying not to think about it so much.

Anyway, I was looking on LDS.org, and I found a talk by Elder Robert D. Hales from October 2011 entitled "Waiting upon the Lord: Thy Will Be Done". He says, "As we ask these questions, we realize that the purpose of life is to grow, develop, and be strengthened through our own experiences... What, then, does it mean to wait upon the Lord? In the scriptures, the word wait means to hope, to anticipate, and to trust. To hope and trust in the Lord requires faith, patience, humility, meekness, long-suffering, keeping the commandments, and enduring to the end. To wait upon the Lord means planting the seed of faith and nourishing it 'with great diligence, and... patience.'"

It's a really great talk, and I definitely recommend it. It applies to a lot of different things! It applies to such things as physical sufferings, trials, answers to prayers, etc. So it means a different thing to me than it will mean to you, and it means a different thing to us now than it will in a couple of years. Because you won't be going through the thing that you are currently going through in a couple of years, different things will stick out to you in the future than what will stick out to you today.

I am so grateful for the prophets and their messages. Though the things I want didn't really go away, reading that talk helped me a lot. I just have to be patient.

Speaking of being patient, I found another article, this time from the August 2015 Ensign. The link can be found here. It has a really great message, and it was definitely something that I needed to hear. She said something that I really loved. It was, "It’s discouraging when plans fall through or don’t pan out as expected. To our mortal minds, divine timing can be hard to understand. But what I can understand is that God is a loving Father who has a plan that guarantees eventual happiness if we are faithful, and I am learning to accept His timing with confidence—not with anxiousness."

If you know me, you know that I often get anxious and I worry about things a lot. So that part of her article was really helpful to me. I will be blessed if I am faithful, and He will bless me in His own time. I just need to accept that. His timing is perfect, and I just am not ready for those things that I want right now. I don't know when I will be ready, but I hope that I will be ready soon enough. But right now I just need to not worry about it. I need to not be anxious about it. It will happen when it happens. I need to trust Him and just. let. go.

A thought came to my mind during sacrament meeting today: Christ suffered for you. Do you really think that He will leave you to suffer in silence/by yourself? He won't let you suffer alone. He suffered alone so you don't have to.

I found this picture this morning on Facebook and thought it went perfectly with what I was thinking about this morning. Trust Him. Trust your Heavenly Father. Trust your Savior. His timing is perfect, and He knows what He is doing. He loves you. So trust Him.