Spiritual Lessons & Some Looney Toons

My companion and I love our little Christmas tree!

Not many people were available to teach so we spent a lot of time driving and biking to find people.  But this week we also had a lot of super spiritual lessons that were super good! 

Like one we had with this lady named Maria and her daughter named Mariana.  Maria is probably 50 something and Mariana is like 25 with a 4-year-old son.  The lesson was a little hard because the son was super loud the whole time, but then I was able to give him some of the hot wheel cars MaBecks sent me to hand out.  Then a less active that was there, Hermano Linky, gave his conversion story and he started crying and same with Maria and Mariana.  And then we were able to share our testimonies, mine about my experience getting my answer to serve a mission.  It was super good but then we couldn’t get a hold of them for the rest of the week and they didn’t come to church, so I don’t know how they are. But this happens all the time here. We will have a good lesson and then they either don’t come to church or we can’t get a hold of them for a while...

We also talked to a lot of crazy people this week!  This one black guy kept reassuring us that he has never done anything that would send him to jail.  No drugs, or domestic violence, or weapons.  And then he kept trying to get us to buy him stuff because he thought we could just "swipe that card" and get everything we wanted.  He was a funny guy. And then this cop drove by.  We waved to him and then turned back around and the black guy was running away as fast as he could!  Haha!

And then we talked to this straight up Native American.  He was super tan with crazy white hair and a huge beard and he had his beaded moccasins. He was such a loony!  He told us he didn’t speak English, only Spanish; but then he didn’t understand our Spanish and yelled at us in English!  I think he was a little confused.  And he kept saying our church was a bunch of liars and witches even though he couldn’t tell us what church we were from because we would just lie about it!  And finally he told us if we didn’t leave he would shoot us with the gun he had in his front pocket!  But all he had was a bunch of change, I could hear him jingling them.  And the best part was he was waiting for the bus, but he was just standing in the middle of some random neighborhood street.  Loonies...

But something a little spiritual for the week: We had Zone Conference and President Ashton told us about one of his experiences with his company.  It was really struggling and he was doing all he could for it: working all the time, using personal expenses, everything possible, but nothing helped. And Christmas was coming up so the night before his break he prayed super hard and just said, Heavenly Father, I’ve done all I can do.  I can’t do anything else.  If my company fails or comes back is up to you.  I will take any option and know it’s for the best, but now I’m leaving it all up to you. And then he turned off his phone and enjoyed Christmas with his family.  When he came back, his company had fully turned around and he had his best year yet.  So he related it to us that we must do all we can until we can do no more.  And then if we turn it over to the Lord, and be willing to accept whatever happens, everything will always work out.

Till next week,

Elder Parks