August 26, 2018
Now that school has started, I was looking forward to an entire week with nobody in the house and I could get some computer work done. Mom agreed to serve as a volunteer at Education Week so the house would be extra quiet, at least during the day. But it occurred to me that I have lived in Utah for 24 years in my life and I have always heard amazing things about Education Week at BYU but I had never attended it myself. I thought, I have the money and the time now so why not do it? Better to go and have a terrible time than not go and continue to wonder and regret what it would be like. So I went to classes Tue-Fri and it was really cool. I went to 24 classes in all and some were lame, some were okay, and many were amazing. I'm really glad I went.
On Friday night mom and I had a date night at Sundance where we attended the Bluebird cafe concert. They had 3 songwriters who had written 50 #1 country songs between them and had won 3 grammys. It was an amazing concert - I knew all of the songs and they were all huge hits. On Saturday we drove to Sandy to attend an EF picnic and then I took Javi and Aimar to Deer Creek to go kayaking.
Rebecca Eyring returned from her mission in Taiwan this week and had her homecoming talk today. President Eyring attended Sacrament Meeting with us and spoke for the last 10 minutes. It was really awesome. Josh Carr sang with 3 other guys (all really good singers) a song called "I will be ready" which talks about being ready to serve a mission. It was great.
That's all for my update and travel log and I thought I'd finish with a scripture story for you. Usually when we read 1 Samuel we focus on the story of David and Goliath which is really cool but I want to share a story from 1 Samuel 14 which often gets overlooked. It's the story of a guy named Johnathan (hint, hint) who does something pretty amazing with his companion (hint, hint).
The story begins with 2 armies camped on two hills with a valley between them. The good guys have 600 men and the bad guys have 30k chariots, 6k horsemen, and more troops than "the sand on the sea shore" (per 1 Samuel 13:5). So what kind of chances would 600 good guys have against probably 100k or more bad guys?
To make things more interesting, forget about the 600 good guys and imagine just two good guys - Johnathan and his armor bearer. Johnathan says "Come, and let us go over unto the garrison of these uncircumcised: it may be that the Lord will work for us". Johnathon and his companion decide to attack the bad guys by themselves and just that simple act of faith allows them to kill 20 bad guys even as they are ascending a hill to get to the main Philistine army. And after the Lord saw these 2 faithful men with so much faith, He performs a miracle where he sends an earthquake and then all the bad guys start turning on themselves and fight each other.
The reason I wanted to share this story with you is that your mission is like an army of 600 good guys - probably a lot less than that. And you're up against all the people in Mexico - thousands, right? Then there's you Jon and your companion. What chance do you and your companion have against all the people in Mexico? Well the Lord never intended just one companionship or even all 600 Israelites to be able to beat a 100k person army without help. All that was required was for one companionship to show faith and storm the hill. They could have been killed very easily but they weren't. They had the Lord's help just like like you and your companion have the Lord's help when you wake up every morning and "storm the hill".
You're not alone. This isn't your work. It's the Lord's work you are doing and the more faith you have, the more the Lord will send earthquakes and infighting and whatever else you need to accomplish His work.
I love you. I am very proud of you. We pray for you every day.
Love,
Dad
On Friday night mom and I had a date night at Sundance where we attended the Bluebird cafe concert. They had 3 songwriters who had written 50 #1 country songs between them and had won 3 grammys. It was an amazing concert - I knew all of the songs and they were all huge hits. On Saturday we drove to Sandy to attend an EF picnic and then I took Javi and Aimar to Deer Creek to go kayaking.
Rebecca Eyring returned from her mission in Taiwan this week and had her homecoming talk today. President Eyring attended Sacrament Meeting with us and spoke for the last 10 minutes. It was really awesome. Josh Carr sang with 3 other guys (all really good singers) a song called "I will be ready" which talks about being ready to serve a mission. It was great.
That's all for my update and travel log and I thought I'd finish with a scripture story for you. Usually when we read 1 Samuel we focus on the story of David and Goliath which is really cool but I want to share a story from 1 Samuel 14 which often gets overlooked. It's the story of a guy named Johnathan (hint, hint) who does something pretty amazing with his companion (hint, hint).
The story begins with 2 armies camped on two hills with a valley between them. The good guys have 600 men and the bad guys have 30k chariots, 6k horsemen, and more troops than "the sand on the sea shore" (per 1 Samuel 13:5). So what kind of chances would 600 good guys have against probably 100k or more bad guys?
To make things more interesting, forget about the 600 good guys and imagine just two good guys - Johnathan and his armor bearer. Johnathan says "Come, and let us go over unto the garrison of these uncircumcised: it may be that the Lord will work for us". Johnathon and his companion decide to attack the bad guys by themselves and just that simple act of faith allows them to kill 20 bad guys even as they are ascending a hill to get to the main Philistine army. And after the Lord saw these 2 faithful men with so much faith, He performs a miracle where he sends an earthquake and then all the bad guys start turning on themselves and fight each other.
The reason I wanted to share this story with you is that your mission is like an army of 600 good guys - probably a lot less than that. And you're up against all the people in Mexico - thousands, right? Then there's you Jon and your companion. What chance do you and your companion have against all the people in Mexico? Well the Lord never intended just one companionship or even all 600 Israelites to be able to beat a 100k person army without help. All that was required was for one companionship to show faith and storm the hill. They could have been killed very easily but they weren't. They had the Lord's help just like like you and your companion have the Lord's help when you wake up every morning and "storm the hill".
You're not alone. This isn't your work. It's the Lord's work you are doing and the more faith you have, the more the Lord will send earthquakes and infighting and whatever else you need to accomplish His work.
I love you. I am very proud of you. We pray for you every day.
Love,
Dad
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