A furious wind upon the face of the waters

Mom that email was amazing. It brought happiness to me so thank you so much. And yes you are right about Jr. He will come when he comes. That is really exciting. 

So we got transfers this week and Elder Leithead is going down to Roseville and I'm getting Elder McMurray from Canada. It will be good to get some new blood in the area. It will be good. Not much changed in the zone. Another missionary is training so that will be good for him and the whole zone. Add some greenie fire here. 

Life is amazing right now. We are still struggling to find new investigators but we know they (like Jr.) will come when they are supposed to. It is a trial of my faith. It reminds me of Gridley... well the work does. Kinda slow but with some good work, great things will come to pass. 

I have been pondering lately trials in my own life and why we have them, and I may have mentioned this before but let me take you back to Ether and the ships they make and in some of the verses it says that the Lord is going to send waves and winds and storms against them. And I just sat pondering. Why in the world would God do that? Why couldn't he make it 80 degrees for them and give them a nice breeze to the promised land. It would have been so easy! They would have been able to make it no doubt with no hiccups right? And I prayed about it and pondered some more for a couple days and I couldn't figure it out until a couple chapters later where it says "And it came to pass that the Lord God caused that there should be a ^afurious wind blow upon the face of the waters, ^btowards the promised land; and thus they were tossed upon the waves of the sea before the wind." That is when the Spirit and the answer came flowing to me. The Lord sends forth these trials to push us closer to the promised land or in other words eventually heaven. It almost never seems like our trials can benefit us,  but they do. They send us and teach us what we need to know and do to return to live with God once again. If the Jaredites didn't go through these trials they would have done the same thing they did while on the beach. They would have forgotten to call upon their God for help. But while they were buried it gave them a chance to rely upon God. I love the Lord and I love how He works. He is there for us and He cares more than we know. Let us call upon our God daily for every thing that we and our loved ones stand in need of. I love you all so much!

Elder Simons