Fresno YSA

(Elder Cummings)
Tuesday morning during personal study I got a phone call from the assistants...I was being transferred that night out of Hmong work to go be a zone leader in the Fresno Stake YSA ward until further notice.  Alright!  My bags were packed before companionship study got underway and the rest of the day flew by and I fell asleep that night in an apartment I had never been to with a companion I had never met before.

One thing that stood out to me right off the bat: white American single eighteen to thirty years olds laugh at different jokes than old Hmong women.  I was not funny to anyone.  I've never considered myself super-funny to begin with, but I was not the conversation killer.  I was pretty good at it too!  I didn't think the Hmong culture had effected me so much, but it did.  I'm a little weird now.  Now worries though, by now I'm back to being "normal."

Another thing: most people don't expect to cry because of spice when they eat dinner. I was actually a little surprised about that and even more surprised when I actually MISSED that!  It has been a week now without any crazy spicy peppers and I am actually craving them.

Third thing: being a missionary in a YSA ward is exhausting.  In the Fresno Mission YSA missionaries have a bedtime of 11:30 as opposed to the normal 10:30 for missionaries.  They do not, however, have the privilege of getting up an hour later than normal.  I had no idea how much of a difference one little hour of sleep could make.  I have been completely dead this week and one of my New Years resolutions, to be up by 6:00 every morning to have time for meaningful morning prayer, is already out the window, for now at least.  That will just be my vision for the end of the year instead of my demand for the beginning of it.

Perks of being a YSA missionary/zone leader include the pickup truck that we drive around town, a much more comfortable approach to teaching and finding, and a seemingly endless supply of Jamba Juice, Starbucks hot chocolate, and In and Out that the college aged people we visit dump on us.

The teaching is so strange.  It feels like more organized member missionary work.  We do really schedule "teaching appointments" per say, we text and see if we can "hang out and talk about Jesus."  There is a reason that works better for my generation.  Anyways, it has been a lot of fun to talk to people my age again.  It has been hard not to be around Hmong people and not be speaking Hmong, but since my companion, Elder Whitfield, is actually a Spanish missionary we have still been able to do language study.

The normally scheduled transfers are this coming Tuesday.  Saturday night we got the call outs for who was going where and I'm heading to a new area again.  I had just become comfortable with a whole different style of missionary work and now I am heading to who-knows-where with another new companion and I am just excited to go on another adventure!  I may have only been in this new area for a week, but I have done the work God needed me to do here.  I have been able to share my testimony with many who I never would have met.  My determination to be obedient to the commandments and missionary rules has increased.  I am so full of the Spirit and I love it!  I know that God has a specific plan for me and I am excited to see where it takes me!

This week in my scripture study has had the theme of the Grace of Jesus Christ.  This is a doctrine I do not understand thoroughly and for the most part I have never spent any time seriously pondering it.  As latter-day saints we have a tendency to focus on the "good works" part of living a Christian life to make it clear that we do not believe that salvation comes from accepting Christ as your Savior alone.  This leads many to believe that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believes in salvation by works.  We absolutely don't.  There is no salvation without grace.  Despite our best efforts we all will ALWAYS fall short of the perfection necessary to return to live with God.  This is what the prophet Nephi is getting at when he says that "it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do." (2 Nephi 25:23).  We will never be able to qualify ourselves by our own merits alone and so it will never be by something we do alone that we are actually saved.

The function of grace is to bring the imperfect sinner to become clean and perfect so as to live with God again, "for no unclean thing can dwell there" (Moses 6:57).  Grace enables us to change who we are.  It doesn't force us to become something we aren't.  Grace, freely given, makes repentance possible!  That is so wonderful!  That we can progress to become someone worthy to live with our Father again!  The most wonderful thing about grace is that we can use it in our life TODAY to make those changes.  It is accessible NOW through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end.  All of that is using grace to change us.  All of that is what we must go through to return to live with God again.  We use grace to change, and once we have become a completely new creature perfected in Christ then we receive Salvation.  No grace, no salvation.  No works, the grace goes unused and the salvation made possible is not received.  Were it not for the Atonement of Christ we would be hopelessly lost.

I am so grateful to know my Savior.  He is the Son of the Most High God.  I know that He lives.  I know that He did suffer in agony for us so that we can be made free from the bonds of death and the chains of sin.  He is the Savior of all mankind.  He is my Lord and Redeemer.  He has a perfected body of flesh and blood and speaks to His living prophet today.  He is Alpha and Omega.  It will not be long before he reigns again triumphant on the earth.

I hope you all press forward this week and use the grace of Christ in your life to draw closer to God!

Lots of love,

Elder A. Jared Cummings