Good morning!

 Blog-wise, I will be here off and on the next 3 weeks, as family starts arriving tonight and it snowballs from there, so the luxury of just sitting and sharing my heart-thoughts, will diminish to the point of most likely vanishing!  

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I love gospel study and seeking to gain understanding and application in my own personal life, in order to feel the Spirit and increase in testimony.  The thrill, when it hit me that the Atonement is not just an available power for sin, but a heavenly aid in daily life and all of the complexities of mortality, was/is so amazing to me!  

This recent talk by Elder Packer is more for those suffering some feelings of guilt.  The last paragraph that I printed here offers such hope and promise.  If you are beating yourself with a mean stick, then take heart and read this talk and claim the promise of the Atonement.  The amount of power that I personally access today, of this available source of strength, will still leave more than enough for you also!  It never runs out and is always there for each of us!  

(I am so appreciative of all I learned from Elder Packer and will miss his counsel and presence at General Conference.  He had so much influence and impact on me.)

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The Plan of Happiness by Elder Packer...here

The Atonement, which can reclaim each one of us, bears no scars. That means that no matter what we have done or where we have been or how something happened, if we truly repent, He has promised that He would atone. And when He atoned, that settled that. There are so many of us who are thrashing around, as it were, with feelings of guilt, not knowing quite how to escape. You escape by accepting the Atonement of Christ, and all that was heartache can turn to beauty and love and eternity.

I am so grateful for the blessings of the Lord Jesus Christ, for the power of procreation, for the power of redemption, for the Atonement—the Atonement which can wash clean every stain no matter how difficult or how long or how many times repeated. The Atonement can put you free again to move forward, cleanly and worthily, to pursue that path that you have chosen in life.

I bear witness that God lives, that Jesus is the Christ, that the Atonement is not a general thing that is for the whole Church. The Atonement is individual, and if you have something that is bothering you—sometimes so long ago you can hardly remember it—put the Atonement to work. It will clean it up, and you, as does He, will remember your sins no more.