Under Attack

Good day everybody! This was a tough week, one of those lows on the old roller coaster of life. We did have some way cool miracles which really helped to make us feel a bit better about ourselves, but also just a lot of things went a little sour.

I'll start with some good things, we had a real cool thing happen at our Preach My Gospel/Basketball class. We showed up and there was only one youth from our ward, but a ton of youth from the Gleneagle ward who had just come to play ball that night, not for the class as they didn't know about it (we don't have the building booked so it's basically show up and cross your fingers) so we got there and we were debating whether or not it would be effective to stay and play. But we decided that the youth from our ward that was there hadn't been to the last class and figured everyone can use a boost so we went with it. Played ball for a little bit and then started our class. Well one of the guys with the Gleneagle kids was a recent convert of a couple months so we invited him to our class and he sat in. We were talking about the First Vision and demonstrating the sharing of it and then Elder Robledo invited the Recent Convert to bring his non-member brother to the class (he was just hanging out outside in the hall) So he brought him in and we had the youth from our ward share the First Vision with the non-member. It was a great experience and it really helped the youth from our ward. He's super good at hockey and hoping to play in the NHL so for him a mission is something he's struggling with. But this was something that really boosted him and us up. A very powerful experience for sure.

Something else that was powerful but didn't end as well was teaching our investigator who was supposed to get baptized next Saturday. They have a problem with one of the commandments and we were trying to help them understand and we followed the spirit completely, sharing personal experiences, testifying, scriptures. But ultimately it came up against the wall of their agency, and they chose to exercise that in a way we would have preferred them not to. It was super powerful though, and I remember how depressed me and Elder Robledo were as we drove home that night. This wasn't one of those things where you teach someone off tracting, and then go back and they dodge you and you never see them again. This was someone who knew what they had to do but didn't want to do it right now. Tough to see.

And if that wasn't bad enough, I got a call from Elder Park the other day asking me a question about where someone lived in Sanford and then he dropped a bomb on me, that Steve has chosen to stop investigating the gospel. Now THAT was tough. My heart really broke in a way I'd never experienced before. See he was reading and praying every day, coming to church every week, keeping the commandments, bearing testimony and then Boom. Done. He dropped them. It was a time of a lot of self reflection and prayer, trying to come to terms with it all and for sure it brought me to my knees. I will share one thing from it with you, as I learned a lot of sacred and personal things that night. But I did feel one thing, that God has a plan for Steve, and I got to be a part of that plan. And it really struck me and helped comfort me a lot. I really have gained a testimony of the "enabling" power of the Atonement this week, the power to lift and strengthen us through times of adversity.

And icing on the cake, some of our wonderful friends decided it would be cool to put anti-mormon DVD's on all the cars in the church parking lot last week during Sacrament meeting. So then halfway through the week I get a call from one of the elders in my district asking me all these weird questions and then I'm like "wait, where are you getting all this" and the beans were spilled. I was just kind of like "come on, seriously?" We don't do that to you. We could and probably do a way better job than they did, I read a few reviews of this particular DVD before my mission, and the claims are pretty laughable. But they made it very compelling if you didn't know anything about the claims they were making. Oh well, I have also enjoyed it because I know that Satan is upset with the work that we're doing and throwing as much as he can at us. I enjoy knowing the fact that he's afraid of what we can do. So it's something that after we heard about it, we went tracting and boldly declared our testimonies of the gospel to everyone we came in contact with (in a good way. Not like creepy or pushy or overbearing). No success, but we felt awesome.

We also went by a member of the ward and we were talking to her and her daughters about the church, and some of their concerns, and then they went and got their friend to come meet us. We had gone over to this particular members house to ask about a potential that we'd tracted into that was friends with her. Well the girl her daughters ran out and got turned out to be the daughter of this particular potential investigator! So that was pretty sweet. They are all best friends I guess, and she wasn't able to make it to church and she felt optimistic about everything we shared. She was agnostic, but she really felt the spirit and you could tell it had an effect on her. Way cool!

AND the Broncos beat the Steelers last night! Everyone down here is flipping out. It was like the time Edmonton beat San Jose in the playoffs in 2006 I think. Huge upset. Cool though.

Love,
Elder Gibb