This year I have been memorizing the Articles of Faith so that I can earn my Faith in God Award. In the third Article of Faith, it states, “We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel.” I love this principle.
This means that when I do something wrong, the things I did can be forgiven and forgotten. It means that if I make a mistake and fight with my brother over whether to play Monopoly or Sorry or who gets to sit in the front seat of the car, I can be forgiven. It means that my Mom and Dad, who are so good at listening to me, fixing my problems and helping me be successful in my goals, will be able to continue doing this when we live together after this life. Most importantly it means that, once again, I will be able to live with my Father in Heaven, who knows me better than anyone and loves me.
Ever since my mom was little she knew that she would name her first daughter after my great-grandmother, Rose Calder. I was lucky enough to be that first daughter and receive the name Emilie Rose. I remember visiting my Grandma Rose often. I knew that my Grandma had lived an amazing life. She was born on the run from the Mexican Revolutionaries, she received her masters from Columbia and PhD. from Berkley in the 1930’s when women simply didn’t do such things, she raised her three small children in Burma and Ethiopia while she and her husband were professors there and she traveled to over 150 countries in her life time. However, it wasn’t these things that she talked about when we came to visit. She wanted to know exactly how each one of us were doing in school, with friends and at church. She would ask us about which talents we were working on and then insist that she push her walker, which was very painful for her, into the living room so that she could see us play our latest piano piece, even though she could have heard it from her chair in the family room. She would then praise us up and down, and send us out the door with a Nestle Crunch bar to eat on the way home. I thought that my Grandma would be waiting for us to come visit her forever, but last May, at age 96, she suddenly died. If I thought that this was the end of my time with my Grandma Rose, I don’t know how I would be able to accept her death. I love her so much.
2000 years ago, when Christ came to the earth, he preached his gospel, established his church and preformed miracles. However, his main mission was to take on the sins of the world and be physically sacrificed so that each one of us could have the chance to be spiritually clean enough to live with our Father in Heaven again. In John 3:16 it says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believieth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” I look forward to the time that I can live together with my grandma again along with the rest of my family in the presence of our Father in Heaven. I am so grateful that Heavenly Father has a plan for all of us to return to him and for Christ’s willingness to be sacrificed for us. I say this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Emilie Ebert
Sacrament Meeting Talk
November 15, 2009
