Sixteen Stones and a Bee Sting

 

 

  

 

Hey Mom! Well this week was incredibly tiring for the most part. Lots of stuff happened, like how Elder Corn and I had to go to Urgent Care earlier in the week. When we went to the beach last Monday, he was stung by a bee in the hand and it swelled to the size of a catcher's mitt. We then made the mistake of informing our Mission Nurse who told us to go to Urgent Care in San Rafael as soon as we could. So after sitting an hour and a half in the waiting room, and an additional hour in the doctor's office waiting for him to come see us, he asks a few questions, looked at Elder Corn's hand and told us to wait a week for the swelling to go down because it's just a normal bee sting. All this for the low, low price of $130 dollars! It was mildly frustrating since both of us knew the entire appointment that we were wasting time, but we still managed to have fun while we were there so it wasn't all bad. After that we walked around San Rafael looking for a place to eat, since at the time our car was still being repaired and we had to miss dinner to be at the doctors, so we settled down in a cozy little Panda Express while we waited for the other Elders to pick us up! We had a fun time overall because we made it fun, but from that experience I'm losing my faith in hospitals, so hopefully my doctor's appointment in Santa Rosa will go better than this one did. Also, to add to the craziness level, we accidentally flooded our kitchen during comp study! Elder Corn filled the sink up to defrost some chicken and then joined me to finish companion study.... But he forgot to turn the sink off.. So 30 minutes later I go to the kitchen for one reason or another and the floor is soaked and the sink is overflowing! Never a dull moment. So we had some good success this week! We had some really good contacts, one of which offered to feed us dinner later in the month,and that never happens so we were pretty excited about that! We also went and contacted a media referral we received and she was super cool. Her name is a Shantara and seemed really interested and wanted us to come back and teach her. We're going to attempt to stop by and teach her this week. She was even talking about wanting to come to church, which is normally one of the hardest commitments to have an investigator do, so hopefully she will be able to make it Something really funny happened at dinner a couple of nights ago. We were eating with a family, the Cooks, a couple of nights ago and they have a little boy who is quite energetic. Well he happened to be a Thomas the Tank Engine fan, and has tracks and trains for days! So,being the nostalgic mess I am, I started playing with him. I started quizzing him on all the Train's names, I was Henry only because he didn't have Percy, and helping him to make cool train tracks. Let me just say that I completely schooled him in track laying, he hadn't realized he was dealing with a Thomas the Tank Engine champ! Although Sister Cook told me how expensive the tracks and trains are, so now I feel bad for being such an expensive child! We had the San Rafael Stake meet-and-greet last night like we do every transfer. The members of the stake presidency alternate each transfer-in meeting with all the missionaries in the San Rafael north and south zones. Each one of them likes to do it in different ways, like the Stake President, President Gibson, likes to play a big game of Jenga with us all, and have each one of us introduce ourselves with certain questions. His Counselor, President Dennis, likes to have a big testimony meeting and get to know missionaries by them sharing their testimonies. And his other Counselor, President Kurtz, likes to talk about his own mission and drop some wisdom on us. He said something that really stood out to me. He shared his favorite story in the Book of Mormon about Mohonri Moriancumr, or the brother of Jared, and how he was consulting with the Lord on how the Jaredites will reach the promised land. The Lord gives him precise and detailed instructions on how to build barges that will carry them there. After the barges were complete and ready for travel it occurred to the brother of Jared that they didn't have any source of light! So he inquired of the Lord what to do, and I really loved the answer that was given. This is how it happened in my head, which I shall translate in modern vernacular:"What do you want me to do about it? I just told you step-by-step how to build a prehistoric submarine and you want me to be its electrician too? I want to see you come up with some ideas." Of course the Lord put it much more eloquently than that in the scriptures, but that's just the Elder Ellis Translation. The Brother of Jared was told to come up with an idea, then bring it to the Lord for approval, which shows how much trust He had in him. This can be applied to our own lives. The Lord wants us to consult Him and Heavenly Father in all things, though He also wants us to be proactive and make our own decisions as well. We can bring our ideas and plans before Him, tell Him this is what we're going to do, ask for his approval and assistance with it. The Brother of Jared had the idea to make 16 stones to light the boat, but it wouldn't have worked without the Lord touching them. We can also come up with solutions to our own problems, but ask of the Lord to make it possible. I know this is true, and how he wants us to solve our own problems, but he will pick up the slack we can't carry. Love, Elder Hayden Ellis