A Tornado & A Miracle! 🌪
From: Seth Gifford
Date: Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 15:02 PM
Subject: A Tornado & A Miracle
How goes it? Sorry this email is kind of all over the place. Good luck 😘
This past week was insane. We woke up last Tuesday with an emegency text from our mission President’s wife telling all missionaries to get to their churches right away and work from there because of some bad weather that was going to happen. It threw a wrench into literally everything that day and it was so hard to stay focused. We were at the church all day keeping track of the weather and the storm went right around us. The weather for us was so nice the entire day while some misisonaries up farther north got a tornado apparently. It hardly even rained where we were. We were super mad that we had to be at the church the whole day, but it’s okay because it was a weird day for everyone, not to mention, some really nice members got pizza for all the missionaries there. That same day was Elder Walker’s last day 😥 We said goodbye and he was dropped off at President and Sister Adler’s house to fly out the next morning. Now it’s just 4 of us in our apartment.
Anyway, we also accidentally slept in super late last week because we didn’t get to bed until 12ish. Elder Espinoza was flying home from the consulate in Utah and it got super delayed and so he had to be picked up super late from the airport. Then all of us totally forgot to set an alarm. Oopsie!
Well, this past Sunday, me and Elder Jensen woke up super sad because we have been trying to get back in contact with Milton and Carmen. We needed them to start coming to church in person but they didn’t answer any of our calls or texts and we kept having to cancel or reschedule lessons. We were super sad because we didn’t think they would be coming to church but about 10 minutes in, I got a text from Milton that they were almost at the church. Me and Elder Jensen were just in the back freaking out and trying to contain our utter relief and joy. We ran out into the foyer to wait for them and sure enough, they came! It was so happy! Huge miracle!
We also had Zone Conference this past week for all of Spanish Land Ole’ and it was awesome! Brother Donaldson himself came and spoke to us. For those of you who don’t know, Brother Donaldson is the mission President in “The District” and he works in the missionary department. For you missionaries, he is where the Donaldson papers come from. He is super knowledgable about the gospel, and he has also been a big part of studying the Latino culture and gave us a lot of awesome information to help us in our missionary work amongst Spanish speakers. Brother Donaldson also talked to us about this upcoming General Conference and told us that the theme is going to be “Love, Share, and Invite,” so if you’re looking to prepare for it, that’s what it will be on. We also heard the Sunday morning session will be exciting! Not sure why, and I doubt there’s gonna be any crazy changes, but it’s probably going to be spiritually exciting. All I know is that if we prepare, we will find answers, hope, peace, and the inspiration we seek!
Anyway, I guess to end I want to share a spiritual little thought with all of you. Something I’ve noticed is that the divide between Jesus Christ and His church, and the world is getting bigger and bigger. We are literally living in the times when that was prophesied to happen. But we are going to need to make that choice of whose side we are on sooner or later because pretty soon there will be no middle ground between the two. You won’t be able to hold on to both “Zion and Babylon”. I hope I can make tbe right choice and I hope when all is said and done, I will be on the Lord’s side because through Jesus Christ, we can return to live with our Father in Heaven again, with our families, and receive a fulness of joy. Imagine that!
I love you all!
-Elder Gifford
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