Weeds, the Atonement, and Testimonies

July 30, 2018

So as you have probably been able to tell from my last couple emails we have been doing lots of weeding/gardening the last few weeks. The other day while wedding I was thinking of random things while pulling weeds and I came up with this little analogy.

Weeding a garden is much like the atonement and the gospel in our lives. We have been given the hand book (book of Mormon) and the know how to garden and get our plants (testimony) to grow. We know it's not easy to keep a garden free of weeds and we know it's not easy to keep our testimony as strong as we sometimes wish it was especially in this world we live in now. If we let our garden go to long without being weeded it will be overrun with the weeds and it will be near impossible to keep our plants alive, that is why we must be out there in the garden down on our knees in the dirt every day pulling the weeds from yesterday out from beside our plants making our garden clean again. 
Ways we can keep our garden free of weeds is by reading scriptures daily, going to church, praying every day, and doing the things we know are right, all simple primary answers. When we do these things we can keep our testimony strong and our minds free of all the things the world tries to put in it. God loves you and he knows what you need in your garden. 
"Don't give up... Don't you quite. You keep walking. You keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead - a lot of it. You keep your chin up. It will be alright in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come." 

Elder Holland.