August 20, 2017

Hello to all of you out there in blogger land who love us enough to read this,

This week was very busy in the temple.  I think many people were making up for the lost time when the temple was closed for the maintenance break and then again last week for our emergency A/C break (pun intended!)

Thursday there was a couple from Guyana (South America) at the temple.  They attended a session that I was in and later they were sealed.  They were completely bilingual.  I had the opportunity of visiting with the husband later while he was waiting for his wife.  In Guyana he was an Evangelical Pastor before joining the church.  He also drove taxi and that is how the missionaries met him.  He loved the Lord and His gospel so he was very interested in knowing what the missionaries had to say.  It didn't take long to be converted.  I inquired about how his congregation reacted to his conversion.  He said that was a very difficult day in his life.  He still demonstrated a lot of emotion when he talked about it.  He loved his little flock and it was hard to tell them goodbye.  He bore testimony to them and explained that once the Lord testifies to you, you have to listen and obey.  He went from being the "head honcho" of his own congregation to being the least experienced and knowledgeable new convert in the Lord's church.  It was a truly humbling experience.   A few members followed him, but not many. 

We all need to be humbled in life.  For most of us, it is not that dramatic.

For King Lamoni it was being taught by the Spirit and for his wife it was falling beside him and learning also.  
For Enos it was praying in the forest for many hours when he went to pray.

For Helaman it was discovering that NONE of the stripling warriors had perished in battle--in spite of serious injuries.

For the young stripling warriors it was going to war to defend their adopted country and putting the teachings of their mothers to the test.

Sometimes I think that for parents of adult children it is "letting go" and realizing that you are extremely limited in how much you can do for your children who have special challenges and struggles.  As parents we would like to "kiss their hurts, and make it all better".  But we all have to use our agency and we all have to suffer the consequences of our choices.  We pray that you will make correct choices.

Living in NYC, we see the consequences of the choices of others all the time.  It is really heart wrenching at times and almost annoying at other times.  Here is the camp of some homeless guy less than a block from our apartment.  He has two cats and spends the day combing them.  Then on Saturday, he doubled the campsite when another guy "moved in" with all his junk and his dog.

It makes me wonder what choices they made that led to them living on the street like this,

On a happier note.  We love working in such an international temple.  I already told you about the couple from Guyana.  The day before within about 1 1/2 hours I worked with two couples visiting from Paris, France, (speaking French) two sisters from Brazil (speaking Portuguese) and of course Spanish speakers and Mandarin speakers.  It definitely keeps us on our toes.

We love the Lord and we love His temple.
Spencer and Jeanine