to Dad 10/26/09

RoseE writes:

"Dear Dad,

Well, transfer calls are in and I'm staying in Taegu, so you don't have to worry about me getting tsunamied. It would take a heck of a tsunami to get across fifty miles of mountains.

Ken Burns has a new series out? Man, I miss all the good stuff. Right up your alley, too--history of the National Parks.

What you said about change echoed something I was dwelling on back in first transfer. We were studying one morning when we heard the phone ring in the other room. Sis. Hill picked it up--it was Pres. A few minutes later, she appeared in the doorway to announce, in a very somber voice, holding her bathroom tight around her, that her father's cancer had disappeared entirely.

And we all started sobbing.

Not that we were upset that her father had been spared from certain death--quite the opposite. But it was a change. A big, drastic, wrenching change. And change hurts, even when it's good. And I thought about the changes I'm going through. Maybe they're good changes. Maybe I'm becoming a better person. But good or bad, pain and fear are just naturally a part of that. And it's the same for our investigators and less-actives. Coming into the gospel is hard and scary--I forget that a lot, but it's true. This is hard. but like Elder Holland* says, Salvation was never a cheap experience. It's supposed to be hard. If it weren't hard, it would be easy. And what's the point of that?

I love you. Keep being a good dad. Because you really, really are. And don't get cancer.

RoseE"


*Elder Jeffrey R. Holland