Christ's Promise

Heyo! This is my talk that I gave on July 25th in two wards (the Liberty and the Fourth Wards that are near downtown Salt Lake).

Of course, both times I altered it; I either cut out a paragraph or two and/or added in some additional thoughts that came to mind, but what follows covers the basic principles and thoughts I shared.

My use of brackets either indicacts more improvised portions of my talk, such as "[bear testimony here]" or notes for purposes of clarifying sections to readers, such as "[I don't remember how I transitioned to the next subject, but I did]".

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Hello!

I talked or, at least, bore my testimony in this ward not too long ago, so I hope many of you still remember my face.

But regardless, similar brief introduction. My name is Elder Perazzo. I come from the town Fallon, Nevada which is about an hour east of Reno, Nevada.

I grew up adjacent to a diary farm run by my uncles. And I tried to remember details about what I said last time, so I apologize if this is all repeat, but: My uncles ran it, and I just grew up next to it. So the most I did was help cows back in their pins when they got out. Regardless we got infinite raw milk, so it was pretty awesome and I wouldn't have had it any other way :)

I’m the youngest of five with a Sister right above me and three brothers above her. Living next to the dairy, all my neighbors are my family. Cousins here, here, here, with grandma and grandpa there and great aunt/uncle there.

My family is the best and my favorite thing on this on the planet :)

Today, I really wanted to talk about the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Of course, there is probably an infinite amount of talks you could write on this one subject.

I pray that the Holy Ghost will direct me as I write and speak about these precious truths. I also pray that the Holy Ghost will help you hear what you need to, especially if what you need to hear is different than the words I say.

“The Savior’s Atonement included His suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane, and His suffering and death on the cross, and ended with His resurrection.” (Preach My Gospel; Chapter 3 Lesson 2)

It is because of these events that everything in life that we do is made possible. Or, at least in my opinion, purposeful.

Without the Atonement of Jesus Christ, where are we?

Well, I can say that if Jesus Christ had not volunteered himself to be a sacrifice for us, we would not have chosen to come to this earth.

Before this life, we were together in a grand council. We were shown a plan. In order to become more like God, we would have to come to earth. 

We would suffer all manner of afflicitons. We would experience, in my opinion, what would be the most difficult time during our entire eternal existence. 

We knew we had to go through these things to become more like God.

Taking a slight deteor on this subject of why these difficult things are necessary, I wanted to read a quote from Elder Holland, who is quoting Neal A. Maxwell. This is perhaps my favorite quote written on the subject. He said,

"It simply will not work 'to glide naively through life,' saying as we sip another glass of lemonade, 'Lord, give me all thy choicest virtues, but be certain not to give me grief, nor sorrow, nor pain, nor opposition. Please do not let anyone dislike me or betray me, and above all, do not ever let me feel forsaken by Thee or those I love." ----The next sentence is my favorite sentence---- "In fact, Lord, be careful to keep me from all the experiences that made Thee divine. And then, when the rough sledding by everyone else is over, please let me come and dwell with Thee, where I can boast about how similar our strengths and our characters are as I float along on my cloud of comfortable Christianity.'"

Heavenly Father knew we had to experience trials and difficulties. But that doesn't mean we would be left alone. Quite the opposite. That is yet another reason he sent Jesus to atone for us.

Anyway, back to us in our premortal council:

On top of wanting help through our pain, there were two main problems we had to figure out how to overcome. 

[One of the times I gave the talk I chucked in something about the Fall of Adam and Eve here]

Our mortal bodies would die, and if we sinned even a single time, we would be separated forever from God. Not the most promising aspect.

And so, as foreordained, Jesus volunteered himself to be the mediator. “The one that would make the atoning sacrifice that makes it possible for us to overcome the effects of the Fall.” (Slightly altered quote from Preach My Gospel Chapter 3 Lesson 2)

And so we accepted the plan. Having faith that Jesus would do what he promised to us that he would do.

My MTC teacher, who helped me a lot during my MTC experience, explained it this way.

“We chose this plan because we trusted Jesus. He was our bigger brother. He was the one who always did the best on tests, always helped others. He was always the smartest, the brightest, the kindest, the best. We knew we could count on him.”

This reminds me of the lyrics found in the song, Gethsemane

"While His friends were asleep, He fought to keep

His promise made long ago."

He promised us he would do this for us. And we trusted him to do so.

I cherish the words in the song Gethsemane, and wanted to read the rest of them as well.

"Jesus climbed the hill to the garden still.

His steps were heavy and slow.

Love and a prayer took Him there

To the place only He could go.

Gethsemane. Jesus loves me,

So He went willingly to Gethsemane.

He felt all that was sad, wicked, or bad,

All the pain we would ever know.

While His friends were asleep, He fought to keep

His promise made long ago.

Gethsemane. Jesus loves me,

So He went willingly to Gethsemane.

The hardest thing that ever was done,

The greatest pain that ever was known,

The biggest battle that ever was won—

This was done by Jesus!

The fight was won by Jesus!

Gethsemane. Jesus loves me,

So He gave His gift to me in Gethsemane.

Gethsemane. Jesus loves me,

So He gives His gift to me from Gethsemane."

It is my witness that Jesus is indeed the Christ. That he did the hardest thing that ever was done, and won the biggest battle that ever was won. I know that he is my Savior and Redeemer. [Continue to bear testimony of the Savior]

The other day in a big missionary meeting, our mission president gave a talk about the physical and emotional sufferings of Jesus Christ during parts of performing the Atonement.

I love what he said about the individuality of the Atonement. He said something to the effect of,

"He didn’t do it for us. He did it for you. and you. and you. and you. And every single individual in this world. He knows you and loves you perfectly."

[I forget exactly how I transitioned here]

Ether 12:27

I feel, too often, people when they read this scripture they focus on the weakness part. I’m weak; we’re all weak.

I much prefer focusing on the restored truth that Christ can make our weak things become strong. 

Because of Jesus Christ, we are able to change.

My mission president in his talk the other day expanded upon this idea as well.

There are many many many extreme trials we are to go through in this life. Many of them may feel unbearable, and we feel as though we cannot go through them.

And perhaps you can’t. But you can, through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

It’s hard to go through the death of a loved one. And perhaps you can’t. But you can.

[Do the same idea with one or two other major trials we may face during this life]

I didn’t know exactly where to fit this into my talk, but I know I wanted it in here. It is perhaps my favorite line in the entirety of Preach My Gospel.

“All that is unfair about life can be made right through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.”

I bear my witness that that is true.

[Bear Testimony]

[I expanded on the following couple of sentences one of the times I talked]

People don't know about this. Will you please share it?

I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Breakdown of "More Than Thin Air"

In this blogpost I talk about the poem "More Than Thin Air" that I wrote. You can find that poem here: http://whateveriwant7.blogspot.com/2021/06/more-than-thin-air.html

So I kind of just did my own thing for the poem; it isn't any offical poem format. Each line is 7 syllables with each duplet being its own rhyming pair. Except the 3rd and the 6th (the last duplet in each half (each half, as you can probably tell, is kind of its own time period. More on that later)) are very similar to one another.

I feel like it's easier to write poems about sad or confusing things than it is to write ones about happy things. Maybe that isn't true; after all, this is one of the first actual poems I've written and worked hard on, but that's what it feels like currently.

The line "Quandries to an open sky" popped into my head, and I really liked it, so I started to write a poem about prayer. But, as mentioned in the above paragraph, it seemed so much easier to write about sad things. Problem is, I freakin' love prayer. But I didn't always.

And so I had the idea to make half of the poem about how I felt about prayer in the past and the other half about my relationship with prayer now. That's were the basis of this poem spawned from.

"Rise no more than the ceiling" is in reference to a topic one of my favorite companions, Elder Townsend, and I talked about. The same discussions is also what the title "More Than Thin Air" came from.

Sometimes, when you prayer, it feels like your words are just hitting the ceiling and not going any further. It feels like it isn't even making it close to heaven or God.

Similar idea, sometimes it feels as though you are just speaking to thin air. Of course, the poems ending is the opposite of that feeling. Thus the title, "More Than Thin Air". I almost called it "Thick Air" just to be clever, but decided against that idea, haha.

I really really liked the line "Now those thoughts feel so foreign" as a transition line between the two periods of time. The problem I found, though, is it's kind of hard to rhyme with 'foreign'. I didn't like the idea of taking of the 'g' in an 'ing' word, so I tried many other different lines, and eventually shafted the "now those thoughts feel so foreign" line. I tried to use a word that would rhyme easier, but didn't like any of those, so I went back to the original.

'Alein' was a good word I found. But, of course, the idea was that prayer was not alein, so I reflected that in the line. I then didn't want to use the word 'prayer' again, so I searched for a one syllable replacement by searching in the bible dictionary/topical guide and such (pretty much the closest thing I have to a thesaures on my mission, haha). I found the word 'cry' from Alma 34 and I liked it.

The line "revelation I receive" actually come from my givethanks post I did about prayer on Facebook.

I want to say, that that first half of the poem is 100% true. A good chunk of the time, prayer felt very empty to me. Like the poem says, I still had faith that God was there, but it was hard to feel so in my prayer.

I remember when I got my Patriarchal Blessing, there's a line that references me knowing the power of prayer. I wasn't so sure about that part, haha. The patriarch asked me after giving me my blessing if anything in it surprised me. I said yes. I was thinking of that line.

But now those thoughts feel so foreign! I love prayer. And I know that line in my Patriarchal Blessing has come to fruition.

There is so much that could be written and perhaps will be written. I'll cut myself off there for today, though. I think my poem says what I want to say pretty darn well anyway, so you'll just have to read that again :)

Tribute to my Dad (as given in a talk in church)

I gave a talk in one of the wards that I serve in today. I talked about two things. Hope and my dad. I wanted to share some of the thoughts that I shared about my dad here.

What I had written down for my talk and what I spoke were slightly different. I edited it to be more accurate to what I spoke.

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Good Morning Brothers and Sisters! Happy Father's Day! *Introduce myself and my family a bit. Talk briefly about what each sibling is up to and talk about the Dairy Farm because people seem to enjoy hearing about it. Share that both my parents are teachers and that I want to be a teacher as well (specifically math)*

I wanted to pay a little tribute to my father in my talk, even though he is not here listening.

I wanted to highlight two of the things that I really appreciate about my dad.

1. My dad is the best example of Christ-like service I know. 

If he has 5 minutes in his schedule, he will gladly fit you in. [author's note: That is a quote from a givethanks post my mom did] He is always out ministering to individuals in need. I was just talking about this the other week to someone; if my dad wasn't home, he was either at work or serving someone. That's what he did. And serving others is part of who he is.

He is genuine and serves with no expectation of anything in return. He just wants to help.

A quick example, is he always picks up trash off the ground when he walks by. He is involved in and takes care of his community.

2. He always got invested into our interests growing up, and continues to do so. When I talk to him on Mondays, he often asks about the people I am teaching, and references things I talked about last week.

Before my mission, he would ask questions about the music artist I am listening to, or the games I am playing, or the books I am reading. Not for some ulterior motive of micromanaging me or sneakily trying to find me doing something I’m not supposed to. But instead because he genuinely cares about what I care about and wants to learn more about why I care about it so much.

He listens intently and allows me to talk freely about the things I'm passionate about.

My father is awesome.

[Author's note: this is where I branch off a little into talking about Father's in general. I really like the quote and such, though, so I thought I would include it in this blog post as well]

I love the quote by A. Theodore Tuttle in his talk entitled “The Role of Fathers” given in October 1973.

"It should have great meaning that of all the titles of respect and honor and admiration that could be given him, that God himself, he who is the highest of all, chose to be addressed simply as 'Father.'"

I know a good Father can make a big impact in a child’s life. I hope that we all have good Fathers. And if we don’t down here, I promise you we have a perfect father up there.

[Author's note: At this point in my talk, I then transition to talking about hope. I share a shortened and altered version of my "Hope is Sometimes Misunderstood" talk that I posted a while back]

More Than Thin Air

More Than Thin Air (6/2/21)

Quandaries to an open sky?

Yet no answers from on high.

Rise no more than the ceiling?

Where is the promised feeling?

I have faith that he is there,

But it's hard to feel in prayer.

Now those thoughts feel so foreign.

To not cry is alien.

Peace and solace brought to me.

Revelation I receive.

I have faith that he is there,

And I feel so in my prayer.

Moroni's Thought

I met a wonderful man named Moroni in my 4th area. You can learn about him by watching a video called "Step 5: Confession-Moroni's Story about Drug Addiction Recovery" :)

He truly is an incredible person and is one of the best member missionaries I know. Here is a thought that he shared with my companions and I alongside his friends.

The rest of the post is my written transcription of what Moroni has shared several times. Each time his thoughts were shifted depending on his audience. I did my best to merge and mold them into one.

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I do not want to go on judgement day to the judgement bar of God to find my friends turning to me and asking me questions I never want to hear. 

"Moroni. You knew about all of this? And you didn't tell us? Moroni, why didn't you tell us? This could have helped us so much down there." 

I might stutter out a response saying something like, 

"Well, I just didn't think you would be interested, and I was worried I might offend you."

To which the response comes,

"You didn't think we would be interested in all of this? In dwelling with God and our families forever? You didn't think we would be interested in having the Priesthood, the very authority and power of God itself, in our lives? And why would we get offended at you offering us something so wonderful that has helped you so drastically in your life? If we would have, we certainly shouldn't have."

I do not want that hanging over my head. I do not want God or my friends to ask me why I didn't help *insert one of Moroni's friend's names here* become worthy of the Priesthood they hold or *insert one of Moroni's friend's names here* prepare for the ordinance and covenant of baptism.

And so I share what I know and treasure. That Jesus is the Christ and is our Savior. And that His Church has been restored on the earth again. That it has changed my life and can change every single individual's.