Elder Mitchell Rush: 4th of July!

Hello!

Hope you had a great week!
And a great Independence Day!

Thursday we went on exchanges with the Assistants. I was with Elder Bradfield in the Pocatello North Stake.

HIGHLIGHT! We had sushi for lunch!

That night, the real highlight, we had a lesson with a man named Eric. He is struggling with PTSD and has turned to alcohol to deal with it. He wants to quit and overcome his addiction but is struggling. So we brought Ralph who facilitates an Addiction Recovery Program meeting in Pocatello. It was quit a touching with similar things and it help Eric open up. Ralph testified very plainly about how much God loves Eric and he knows that because Heavenly Father sent Jesus Christ to suffer for everything for us! President Packer said really well,"He by choice accepted the penalty in behalf of all mankind for the sum total of all wickedness and depravity; for brutality, immorality, perversion, and corruption; for addiction; for the killings and torture and terror—for all of it that ever had been or all that ever would be enacted upon this earth. In so choosing He faced the awesome power of the evil one, who was not confined to flesh nor subject to mortal pain. That was Gethsemane!"

Ralph's testimony really seemed to touch Eric and he became teary eyed. That moment was another moment when I understood how much Christ loves me.

Another moment this week was with Hannah. She is a member from Florida that stopped going to church years ago. Her life has been in chaos the last 2 years. She came to Idaho for a new start and to get away from a bad marriage. Coming here was a wake up call she said. The two weeks she has been here she has gone to church both weeks. She said that she has felt so much love in the past two weeks that she cannot contain it all. She knows that Heavenly Father has directed her back to the path she needs to be on and she knows that God loves her and always will even through her mistakes.

This picture she said is how she felt!