In The Belly of The Whale‏

So that´s cool that Tyson is goin on his mission! Rock on.

Channing, David sounds like an interesting place and your compañera sounds charming. Enjoy that crap!

So I am now in a trio! Us three missionaries have total the provincia de Bolivar. Tengo la toda provincia, in mis manos! Our District Leader se fue and now we´re here us three. We´re not even a district now so we have to go to Riobamba for our district meetings. And it´s gonna be hard balancing two sectors with three elders. But we´re gonna be doing a lot of divisions. With members. I hope.

But yeah it´ll be cool! Elder Bloxham is a good missionary so we´ll be fine. And he´s color blind too!! There are others!!

But I decided I hate holidays in Ecuador. I have never seen so many drunk people. In the streets, in the parks, laying on the sidewalks, in their houses, holy cow it´s terrible. And so we had some really crappy days there. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday all were terrible for trying to find people. All our appointments fell, nobody wanted to talk with us, and we walked. Whew. No fun. So yeah we had three days of just walking around and I got pretty discouraged. I started doubting. I was thinking, man does God even help us out here? And I started feeling that I don´t even know if these things are true. What the heck am I doin out here? Chya it was pretty grim.

So Thursday, it started like everyday but I was kinda grim. Bleh. And then we had personal study. I prayed, asking to know if God was really there or no. Then, as I started opening to the Book of Mormon, for some reason, I decided to go to the Bible. And not even trying I opened up to Matthew 26. (I think) Here was the story of the Garden of Gethsamene. That was good, but then I kept reading.

Right after, He was betrayed by one of His disciples. Then the other apostles ran away when it looked ugly. Then Peter denied Him three times. Then he cried bitterly when he realized what he had done. When times got hard, even his apostles fled, even when they knew who He was. And I was doing the exact same thing. I was denying, or running, from what I knew to be true because times got hard.

Then even more, not even trying to, I came to the story of Jonah in the Old Testament. Here, Jonah was called to preach, but he tried to run away from his calling, from the Lord even. Then on the boat, the great storm came, and I love the advice of the ship master in verse...6 I think. He says WAKE UP!! And call to your God that he might remember us and we won´t perish. I thought of that.... WAKE UP!!

I needed to pray to God, if I wanted to be remembered, maybe I needed to put the effort into my prayers and show that I really want His help. Then in Chapter 2 is the prayer of Jonah in the whale, in verses 8 and 9 (I think) is Jonah´s promise to remember his promise, to do what the Lord commanded. Just like I made a promise to serve with my heart, mind, and strength.

Maybe I´m scared to give it my all. I´m too proud or too unfaithful. But I think it´s about time I start doing my promise to Lord. It took 3 days in a whale for Jonah to realize what he needed to do, and in a metaphorical sense it´s the same for me. When we have these hard times, it´s the times that the Lord humbles us and makes us remember what we need to do. Jonah went later on to preach to the city, and the city accepted him and they repented and were saved. He finally did his mission. So why not me?

So what I´m saying is, that sometimes we all need some time in a whale. It´s when we have these hard times that we can strengthen our testimony and gain the experience we need.

And time is short so I gotta go!!

Love you all, thanks for listening to my whining, I´ll improve, I´m gonna go work now, till we meet again!!