Dear Elder Snell,

Someone asked Marilyn vos Savant how many words a person must learn to be able to communicate adequately in a foreign country.  Basic conversation requires 1000 words with some knowledge of verb tenses but some get by with 500.  Just thought you’d like to know what it would take to be proficient in Hawaiian.

I had been feeling a lot of love for Ker—until FHE (You know—the family feud that begins and ends with prayer).  As is so often the case, we started feeling anxious and then aggressive over what could have been a thoughtful stimulating discussion about “The Progressives Rejection of the Constitution and the Rise of Bureaucratic Despotism” by Larry Arnn from Hillsdale College.  I left in a huff after unsuccessfully trying to learn something from our faulty habitual process.  I went downstairs and asked God to help me know what to do.  I started answering emails and was looking up something on “Zoram” when an Apr 2006 conference talk by Robert S Wood (our past bishop who called Kerry to be his counselor) suddenly came onto the screen and started playing his address “Instruments of the Lord’s Peace.”  I was stunned at the answer to my prayer.  I sent it to Kerry who after listening to it said, “ I’ll repent - - - and I love you.”  I told him I needed to repent too.   Elder Wood was an instrument of the Lord’s peace right in our own home!  

Went to bed thinking about “loving our enemies.”  Decided forgiveness is one of the most difficult commandments to obey.  Woke up with this:  If what we want is justice, Christ already paid the price (why would we want to extract more than that?).  Forgiveness is trusting that God will do what He says He will do.  First, if the offender does not repent, he will pay for his own sins (how hard to bear we know not).  Second, if an offender does truly repent, he will receive mercy and be cleansed of all sin (which is what we hope for ourselves).  And third, Christ will heal all wounds and restore all losses to the innocent (if we don't believe that, are we innocent?).  Forgiveness is not absolving someone of their offenses.  It is absolving ourselves from unnecessary suffering over the past

I reread 2 Nephi 31 and had these questions & thoughts for you: 

Why is baptism necessary? V5,7

What evidence do you have that you are speaking with the new tongue of angels? V13

How do you feast on words of Christ? V20

How do we preach no other way without coming across arrogant? V21

Love you SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much!!