Last Sunday [the 13th] I had the wonderful opportunity to teach the Sunday School lesson at church. It was lesson 34 from the New Testament manual, which was “Keep the Ordinances, As I Delivered Them.” It covered 1 Corinthians 11-16. The third main point of the lesson was charity.

When I was studying chapter 13 during my preparation, I thought of last summer after I’d been home a few months. I made a breakthrough with charity. My entire life, “the pure love of Christ” just didn’t really penetrate my heart. I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. It was too abstract for me. I read Sheri Dew’s book If Life were Easy, It wouldn’t be Hard, and that’s when I understood charity because she spent two chapters talking about it.

I was so excited about my new-found knowledge. As always, I had to write it down. But I couldn’t get the words to come out if I tried writing it like a textbook answer. So, I wrote a mock letter to the district leader on my mission who had the greatest impact on me and the one who talked about charity the most. Even though this is a mock letter and I had no intentions of sending it, it was easier for me to express my thoughts and emotions to someone who knew just how much I struggled with having charity towards others. More than that, though, I think it captures how I felt in the moment and the growth of my testimony.

It took me awhile to find the file – I actually deleted it and it was sitting in my trash can on Google Drive. I wanted to put it in a place where I could always find it.

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Elder —,

I just had to share this experience with you. I’ve shared it with a few other missionary friends that I email on Mondays, but I think you might appreciate this the most.

The transfers you were district leader I heard more about charity than I ever had in my life. The last 4.5 months of my time in the field – and even after I had come home – the word charity was on my brain like a duck floating on a pond. But that word aggravated me because I couldn’t seem to draw any deeper meaning from it than “the pure love of Christ.” I felt, in my heart, that something wasn’t quite sinking in; like I was grappling for a missing piece of a puzzle, but couldn’t figure out what it was.

The answer finally came to me.

My dad is on the high council in our stake, so on June 29th he went to his assigned ward’s sacrament meeting. Turns out a Spanish branch meets in that same building, so I decided to tag along because I miss Spanish and Hispanics. I had to wait an hour before the Spanish meetings started, so I brought along Sheri Dew’s book “If Life were Easy, It wouldn’t be Hard.”

You know how you read something in the scriptures or a General Conference talk and it smacks you in the face because you didn’t know just how much you really needed to hear those words? That’s exactly how I felt about the two chapters I read.

They were essentially on charity and how charity can literally change our nature.

Sheri Dew said it best:

“Charity is not an emotion or an action. It is not something we feel or do. Charity is who the Savior is. It is His most defining and dominant attribute” [56].

That’s when, after 23 years, it finally clicked. Everything fell into place.

Charity is the character of Christ.

For the longest time, I’d been focusing so much on its definition we use from the scriptures. I’d been engrossed in perfecting the emotion of loving others for who they are and the action of looking past the things they do that are aggravating. That’s why I would get frustrated on my mission when charity was brought up – I was missing the point of charity. You know how much I struggle with loving people, especially those that really get under my skin. I kept hounding myself with, “Everyone is a child of God. They need to be respected and treated as such. Just learn to see them as a child of God” that I was missing the bigger picture.

Charity is Christ’s personality. It’s the one word that can describe His personality as a whole.

When we embody charity, we’re donning the nature of Christ. It’s quite literally changing ourselves to reflect Christ in every way possible. It truly is speaking as He would – not a foul, backbiting word; doing as He would – serving at every little opportunity; obeying the Father as He would – never justifying or rationalizing or giving in to the natural man; thinking as He would – cultivating pure thoughts that align our will with Heavenly Father.

It’s when we start adopting Christ’s character that our natures begin changing. All of the weaknesses we have start melting away as the other Christlike attributes settle in, filling up the cracks. That happens because we don’t want to be anything less than our Savior.

Sheri Dew also said:

“[C]harity is a healing, transforming balm – bestowed by the Father, applied by the Holy Ghost, to true followers of the Son – that will change our very nature as it purifies us” [62, emphasis added].

“Charity is the antidote for every baggage-breeding behavior. It is what lifts us above telestial living” [41].

So, I had all that spiritual enlightenment going through my brain when the Spanish branch began. We started with Sunday School first, and it was amazing. As part of the lesson the teacher had us read this gorgeous Psalm. Even though it translates pretty much directly into English, it still sounds deeper in Spanish:

“Crea en mí, oh Dios, un corazón limpio, y renueva un espíritu recto dentro de mí.” – Salmos 51:10

That scripture struck me so much and I couldn’t get over it the rest of the lesson [I actually started tuning out a bit because so many thoughts were whizzing through my head].

I’ve struggled with even the desire to be charitable towards some people. In fact, I’ve made a mental list of 6 people who I’ve been struggling to forgive [isn’t that just pathetic?]. Five of them, I’m sad to say, were leaders from the mission.

Coming home was probably the most unwelcome, jarring feeling I’d ever experienced. So many emotions were running through me the first week and a half I was back. Two of those emotions were anger and hurt over some things that happened in the field. And, even two months later, that hurt is real and raw and deep. At times I’ve just sat and stewed and vented and written out my feelings so I could try to make sense of them.

When I read those Sheri Dew chapters, I realized I’ve already come to terms with my feelings and understand them. I’ve acknowledged that I’m angry at those people and feel I’ve been wronged. But I haven’t done anything about the hurt because I want to feel vindicated. I want those five people to personally come to me and tell me that I was right and they were wrong.

If charity is the only thing that can help get rid of baggage and negative feelings, I realized I needed to somehow have the desire to forgive those people. But how do I do that?

By asking Heavenly Father to help me have a clean heart and a righteous spirit, just like it said in that Psalm.

My biggest problem with charity is my pride. For a long time I used to shoulder the blame so no one else had to. I think I got tired of feeling like a bumbling failure of a human being, so after an incident on my mission I snapped and hurtled in the complete opposite direction – I wasn’t going to take any blame anymore or be sorry for what I said because my opinion deserved to be heard, too, and I wasn’t going to let anyone ignore me anymore.

Finding that middle ground of being humble enough to think of others and their feelings/viewpoints but standing up for myself has been hard to find.

But charity – the nature of Christ – is the answer.

And I need a clean heart and a righteous spirit to acquire it.

Maybe in the past I didn’t have much of a clean heart and righteous spirit because I wanted others to feel as hurt and broken as their actions and words have made me feel.

It was a humbling experience, sitting there in that church building, realizing my weaknesses and follies. Though I felt saddened and ashamed by how I acted those last few months on my mission, I couldn’t help but be filled with an overwhelming sense of hope, peace, and joy. Maybe I have damaged my relationship with quite a few missionaries. Maybe I can’t ever repair them. But I can repair myself and the bitterness I’ve felt. I can learn from those mistakes, walk away a better person, and hope that those I’ve wronged find peace in their life, too.

It’s never fun to realize you’re not as good of a person as you think you are. But it was a great chastisement that I needed.

That Sunday I decided to work on those 6 people that I’m struggling to forgive. I’m focusing on the person at the bottom of the list – who I have the least amount of anger towards – and I’m begging the Lord to help me forgive them. I’m trying to talk to Him about it with all the energy of my heart. Once I feel like I’ve forgiven that person, forgotten the wrong, and moved on, I’ll work on the next one. I have no idea how long this is all going to take. But at least it’s a start.

So, I guess I want to thank you, too. Thank you for always bringing up charity in your trainings. Those three months you were district leader were really the first time I ever began seriously thinking about charity and why it’s important we have it.

-Kim

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The reason charity never faileth is because it’s the character of Christ.

The reason it’s the greatest attribute – more so than faith and hope – is because it’s the character of Christ.

Charity can start out as an emotion and action.

But the end goal is to be like Christ – so completely that people see Him through us. And that I can understand.