That's What Lights Do

नमस्ते !!!  

How are you? I love you and thank you for all you're doing.  I hope you feel my prayers going your way and want you to know I feel your support, and it makes so much difference in the work here in Fiji.  
If your week was as amazing as mine, 
HIGHFIVECHESTBUMPUNBEARABLEHAPPINESS!

This has been maybe the very best week of my whole life on earth so far... and seriously, that might not actually be an exaggeration at all.  

This week will be a simple tribute to "My Family."  Asmin, Manjula, Shameer, Nafisha, Nikhil, and Shayal!  These 6 people... After my mission I will just have to get a lot of adoption papers and actually adopt these 2 families and my family all into one big, perfect family.  I am part of this family here in Fiji, and forever and eternally a part of my Celestial Howard family--I do have the best of every world.  

These 6 people got Baptized together 31 October, 2015.  

​Me and Shayal, my little princess sister.


​Right to left: Manjula, Shayal, Nikhil, Shameer, Nafisha, Asmin.  With Elder Luatua and myself.

I can straightforward and honestly say this is the highest most elated, celestial, happiest point of all my mission and life yet.  I can say that with all I am and it really i8s true.  This is it!  All, I mean ALL my prayers  and desires of my heart have been addressed perfectly by Heavenly Father.  If I do nothing more than just remember how good I felt this week, all my life, my whole life will be GREAT!  The mere memory of this week's Celestial feeling would carry me through anything.  There is no more pure joy except if I were with my wife, but I'm on a mission, so there is no higher that exists for me up to this point yet. 
God gives me a higher high every new day.

That pretty much sums up how Heavenly Father wants all His children to live.

Our hardest times and our happiest times, both have that potential.

I can say I know that.

Keep going forward, upward, outward = future unbounded outcome OF JOY! 

The days before the Baptism were full on trials and testing.  But, they really had no power over any of us.  Our faith in the Savior, totally trumped it all and we all gave the opposition no power.  For example, the weather needed to be good in order for this Baptism to take place.  In Suva, that is asking for a blessing that is just not possible.  It is almost always raining here in Suva City.  One of Asmin's neighbors said to her, "you won't be able to be Baptized tomorrow.  The weather will be bad.  It is raining and cloudy."  Asmin, without a second of hesitation and with a spark of unquenchable light in her eye, said, "I am with the right God.  He won't let it rain.  You'll see.  I know He won't.  I am going to be Baptized."  

They did overcome all opposition.  They all came together and had the best moments  of any of our lives so far... the Baptism was perfect.  I don't know if I have ever been more perfectly happy.  That's saying a lot, but you really can't get in ANY kind of words how unearthly fantastic this day was!

These are people who laid everything down for Jesus Christ and their testimonies of the Restoration through the Prophet Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.  They are truly disciples of Jesus Christ.  Their past, is all given over to the Savior; all washed away, all the way pure and holy and blameless and clean and fresh and NEW.  

Shameer is 15.  He is my hero!  His testimony at his baptism, was the one that made my eyes flood and my smile almost rip my physical face...haha, he is my brother, and that's going to be forever.  And all of them!!! Each one!

The Fiji Mission President even came to their Baptism and spoke for it.  The room really felt like nothing you'd think you would be able to experience on this earth--the kind of transcendent joy that only the faintest memories of the deepest parts of your soul remember from the days before your birth when you lived personally with your loving and eternal heavenly Father while you accepted his plan, shouted for joy, and prepared to come down to this earth. 

These are the moments that make every moment of my life to have all been worth it--more than worth it.  

I gave a talk at the Baptism called, "The Journey Ahead."  Heavenly Father spoke through me to each of them individually about their full potential for the future even to the Celestial Kingdom.

President Monson calls us higher.  And we will take him up on it. 
I really am at the best point of my life yet, in every way.  A point which I have never before reached or known.  I feel like a little kid on his dad's shoulders... the height and growth is scary and unfamiliar.  It is that kind of thing.  A point at which I can decide what kind of influence I will have (Heavenly Father working through me).  We are each called to be ripplers.  The effect you can have is nearly without scope or limit, eternal, lasting, tremendous, and setting in motion innumerably grand chain reactions.  For a child of God, shouldn't there be no other choice? You are designed to choose radically the fullest measure of the light, the best, and nothing short of a fullness of your Savior's greatest desires and vision for you.  So you choose.  You choose by the Holy Spirit voice in all the being that makes up you.  And that is all up to you.  Take the power of a week--and just make sure by the end of the week you are up the ladder from where you were; in measurable and specific ways.  

I can see in amazement, that I am higher in my progress and abilities and formation of character and everything the mission had to make of me, than I had even hoped.  Humbly and simply, I've become all I ever set out to become.  And so now I have to catch a higher vision than I'd though of before.  Heavenly Father and I are working on the next steps of progress; and we've formed great plans and they are all being realized and actualized--because what Jesus Christ can make of you has no limit except for the limits you give it.  You can give him your past, you can give him your future, and you can be consecrated FULLy. 

"Consecration is the only surrender which is also a victory." 
                                                                                                      ~ Apostle Neal A. Maxwell

He gave me and has made me all I ever wanted, so now my cup is full and ready to nonstop and constantly steadily spill over into serving and growing others to their highest levels.  My (selfish) life is done.