When the winds blow....

 ¡Hola!

I hope you all are doing well! Happy Valentines Day to you all ! And Presidents Day too I guess... This week was pretty wack. Lots of totally awesome and weird stories to tell! Unfortunately, I didn't take a lot of pictures so that's kind of sad. 

Valentine's Selfie

Playing frisbee golf on P Day

Spanish Language Study

It started off like a normal week but things slowly started to escalate in craziness. In the beginning, we spent a lot of time looking for people and we actually found a bunch of numbers to contact so hopefully that goes somewhere along the way. It's kind of awesome just walking around and having God place people in your path to run into. I can testify that it's real. 

This week we have been spending more time with the youth and it has been pretty awesome. We got to play capture the flag in the desert and that was the most fun I have ever had in my life. We got to play with a bunch of young men and their leaders in the ward. The desert wasn't a sand desert like you would think but rather a rock desert. There were washes of hills and rock formations which lead to a lot of hiding places. I wish I took pictures because it is so hard to describe. The whole playable area was about a couple football fields in size. There were so many awesome caves and cliffs and I almost tripped off a 30 foot vertical fall. That was pretty terrifying. The 'flags' were literally flags and we got to hide them wherever. My team actually won and I even scored the first capture! I had a couple guys chasing after me as I was running up and down dunes holding this massive flag over my head. It was so fun.

On Thursday, Elder Rehkow and I had a pretty weird experience. We had a dinner setup with a family we haven't met yet and unfortunately they canceled. They weren't feeling the best that day but they still wanted to buy us dinner so they bought Chick-fil-A and gave it to us as we stopped by. As we walked away from their porch, gripping the enormous bag of Chick-fil-A, we made eye contact with a gentleman leaning up against a tree. We said hello and he approached us. We spent a minute or two talking about the weather and stuff and then moments later, he started trying to convince us The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was completely incorrect. He was pretty anti which is totally fine. We all have our free agency. He was actually pretty nice but... he definitely was trying to slam us. 

Elder Rehkow and I just stood there as he just went off. He never even let us talk and we ended up listening to his rant for basically 20 minutes. By then the Chick-fil-A was probably going to be cold. I remember Elder Rehkow having this glazed look over his face, he was so bored. Basically after 5 minutes we both spaced out and weren't listening to anything he said. His main point was that we need to not listen to what people tell us and find truth for ourselves. Which, ironically, is a huge thing in the restored church. You can't just go off what other people and your parents tell you, find truth for yourself! Everyone is on their own journey of conversion. Eventually we wished him well and asked if we could serve him in anyway. He said no and walked off. By some miracle however, the Chick-fil-A was still warm! Oh yeah!! If anything, that experience actually strengthened my testimony!

Later that week, Elder Rehkow felt prompted to go by an investigator (that's just a fancy vocabulary word for an interested person were trying to teach) and see if he wanted to play basketball. When previously talking to him he mentioned he loved basketball. Fortunately, at that exact moment, he had 20 minutes to spare so we played HORSE in the street. It was actually a lot of fun! We got to know him really well and we hope we can share a message with him soon. 

What's interesting is that all day it was supposed to be a huge storm. But the storm only rolled in until Justin, our new basketball friend, left to go back inside his house. Not even a couple seconds after he closed the door, a massive storm started. It rained like crazy and there were some insane winds. It literally came out of nowhere! Either that was a coincidence or the Lord held back the storm for just a couple minutes so we could get to know Justin. I like to think the latter. The winds were so crazy that it blew over a whole tree onto the road!

Seeing that tree in the road made me think of myself and my testimony. Testimonies can be like a tree sometimes. The tree appeared to be really strong, however, when the winds blew, the whole tree uprooted. We need to plant our testimonies firmly in the soil so that when the winds of the adversary blow, we can remain planted. Unlike the tree, my testimony is firmly planted in the rock of my Redeemer and it cannot be moved. 

"And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall." - Helaman 5:12

I love all of you and am so grateful you read my emails! This journey has been really incredible and I look forward to writing you next week!

Sincerely,

Elder Pack