Week 53: Tarantulas

This last week was a hit or miss. All of our lessons would go through one day and all of them would cancel the next. But we're still plugging away!

On Saturday we did service for 4 hours straight at the Coaltion Center and it was so fun!... and kinda stressful. I basically know how to do every job now except for translating haha. 

We've started teaching a guy named Jonathan and he's cool but he smokes too much weed so he's not always all there when we talk to him. He really wants to come to church but he wants to stop doing drugs before he does. So pray that Jonathan can get over his weed addiction!! He has so much potential.

Earlier last week we were stopping by people that live near the Amistad Reservoir. We went to stop by a woman who was previously taught, but when we knocked a guy answered and told us to come in. He was pretty nice but he would also make little jabs at our religion and told us that we're wrong. He also said this, and I quote: "Yeah that guy Joe wrote some nice things and had some cool dreams". I really didn't know how to respond to that hahaha. We gave him a Book of Mormon and testified of it and he said he would read it. Fast forward a few days, we were talking with a recent convert and she told us she knows him and that he's a cult leader. She said he's possessed too and she's seen the demon in him come out. I'm not really sure what that means but I'm not about to mess with that. So yeaahhh that was interesting. 

Um so the other day we were street contacting and I almost stepped on a TARANTULA GYIEHTIDTBWJFB. If you know me, you know I hate spiders so I was outta there hahah. I realized it wasn't moving so Elder Anderson checked to see if it was alive. Luckily it was dead but then Elder Anderson grabbed it and acted like he was gonna throw it at me. I may have shouted a few death threats but he didn't throw it at me so we made up. Then a few days later we were talking with some people we're teaching and they told us that tarantulas can actually run pretty fast and they're capable of jumping??? They said they come across them all the time so I guess you could say I'm a bit paranoid now. 

In Sunday school yesterday, we were talking about the story of David and Goliath and Sister Sharp read this quote that I wanted to share. It says: "David's life gives a window into the life of Jesus – a boy from Bethlehem, anointed, sent by his father to the front line of the battle, a battle where everything hung in the balance, where everything mattered in this particular battle and this unassuming (meaning you wouldn't have picked him) person walks into this battle as the champion of the camp (someone who fights for and in behalf of everyone else). That's exactly what Jesus did. He won the victory in unexpected ways. Whatever our battles or Goliaths temporarily look like, we can always look to that victory of Jesus over our enemies – the battle is the Lord's and it's already won and it's already happened and our Goliaths have been defeated. They don't own us. They are dead and have no resurrection power. Our champion, Jesus, fought the battle for and in behalf of us and He won – we can carry that into our smaller battles." 

Knowing that Christ has already won our greatest battle has given me so much comfort. And just like David, we can defeat the Goliaths in our life when we have faith in Christ. He will give us strength to overcome and endure well the trials we face if we put our trust in Him. 

- Elder Christensen

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