I smell baptism....

Hey everyone!

So this week has been a good week! Elder Shields and I have been working hard and we're seeing a lot of success. The work has been a little bit slow, but that's okay because....

Kayla's getting baptized on Saturday!!! WOOOOOOO!!!! She's stayed super solid this last week and she feels ready!! I'm so excited. It's been so awesome to work with her since the very beginning and to be able to see the change that the Savior has made in her life. It's been very frustrating at times and there have been times when I was an inch away from dropping her, but there has been miracle after miracle with her and it's truly so awesome to see her ready to take this step. She's also asked that I baptize her, so that's cool too! But if you all would keep her in your prayers, that would be awesome. She's so close and she's going to need as much help as she can get.

Aside from all that excitement, I'm doing really good. We've had a really fun week and things are going really well for us. Elder Shields is starting to get more trunky by the day, but I'm going to drag him by his tie if I have to. He's still working really hard though, he just sometimes needs a swift kick in the butt to get moving haha!

So this week I had a bit of an epiphany about the Atonement. We were having a lesson with Kayla, and she was telling us about some of the trials that she's going through right now. She expressed to us that she feels that God is making her pay for her past mistakes. When she said that, the Spirit brought a few things to my mind that had me reach a conclusion that I'd never really considered before: We aren't required to pay anything, because Christ has already payed it all. He didn't pay half, and now we're required to pay for the rest. He didn't even pay most of it. He payed for it ALL. He payed the full price of our sins and mistakes so we don't have to. And what's even better, he doesn't require us to pay Him back. He does, however, ask us to do our best to become better. He wants us to not only be saved by His grace, but to be changed by it. There's an awesome talk by Brad Wilcox that talks a lot about this if you want to look it up. It's called "His Grace is Sufficient."

Hope you all have a great week!! Sorry that this email is kinda short, but hopefully next week I'll have some fun stories and some awesome pictures from the baptism! Love you all!!

Love,
Elder Brennan Jon Rosenlof