[MUSIC PLAYING] The Atonement was definitely not a one-time thing.

It's something that you have to work at continually because no one has a perfect day. Every day you make mistakes, and you constantly need to rely on Jesus Christ's Atonement and be able to ask for forgiveness for those things that you slip up on. You don't want to admit to someone that you have a problem that needs to be taken care of. You want to keep it to yourself and say, "OK, I made this mistake. I'll just never do it again. And if I don't ever do it again, it won't be a problem." But then when you don't take care of it, then it ends up--you just think to yourself, "Well, it's not even worth it. I messed up, and I didn't confess to it." And so you don't feel obligated to fix anything. One guy just gave me a phone call, and he said he needed to talk to me. And I said, "Well, OK. Let's meet at a certain time." And he came in, and we talked about some issues that he was dealing with. And it takes a lot of courage to call your bishop when you know that he thinks you're perfect. All bishops know that no youth are perfect, that they're involved in different things. And the temptations that are around our youth today are very strong. For a long time I just felt like, "OK, I'm accountable to the bishop." And you make sure that's taken care of. Then you have to really think--Jesus Christ literally died for us, and so we're accountable to Him even more than the bishop. At around that time, they called me as a ward missionary. I went out with the missionaries a lot. I realized that it's just really awesome to be out with the missionaries because they have that Spirit with them all the time. They live a lifestyle that allows them to have the Spirit with them always, and I realized that's something that I wanted. "And now, O my son Helaman, behold, thou art in thy youth, and therefore--" Alma's telling Helaman about--recounting his story of when he was racked with his sins.

He felt better, and he was relieved from that the second he caught hold of that thought about Jesus Christ being able to take over and take care of our sins. And that's definitely the feeling you get when you take that first step. Each day, ours is the challenge to access the power of the Atonement so that we can truly change, become more Christlike, and qualify for the gift of exaltation and live eternally with God, Jesus Christ, and our families. [MUSIC PLAYING]