Throat of the Sun

From: Seth Gifford
Date: Mon, July 12, 2021, 3:58 PM
Subject: Throat of the Sun

Hello! Greetings from Mexico!

Today’s email might be a tad long. I apologize to those who do not like to read long emails…I also apologize for any errors that you may find (I did not proofread this before sending it).

This week I found out the meaning behind the word “Calkiní,” and it means “the throat of the sun.” Yep. That basically sums up Calkiní…. It is blazing hot and very very humid. Our house is literally an oven, and by the time I come home I think I’ll be over-baked and very hot…

Haha that was a joke 

This past week has been good! My son was born and he is from Utah! Buuuuut, he doesn’t speak any English. He moved to Mexico when he was younger and doesn’t remember a thing. But it’s okay because I’m helping him learn English and teaching him the ways of the force. He’s pretty timid but by the end of the transfer he will be a full fledged beast, I have no doubt.

Yesterday, we had a heart wrenching ending to our day. We were grinding hard and had a ton of lessons with a special lesson planned for the end of the day. We were going to put our friend “Matt” (name changed) on date for baptism! The last time we had invited him to read none other than the most powerful chapter in the Book of Mormon when Jesus Christ himself comes to the Americas; 3 Nephi 11. I felt strongly to invite him to read it and we were super excited to talk to him about it because it talks clearly and powerfully about baptism. We also invited him to pray to know if the Book of Mormon was true and were excited to hear about his experience.

Well, the time came and we said a prayer so that we could have the Spirit with us and called his number. After answering he immediately started talking about how he read the chapter and we took it as a good sign. We said a prayer and jumped right in talking about what he read. We explained how the Holy Ghost works and were able to testify that the good feeling he felt was the influence of the Holy Ghost giving him an answer to his prayers. We asked if he believes the Book of Mormon is true and he said “well, yeah.”
Well, yeah that’s when Satan comes into the picture. Ready for this long explanation? 

Our phone, which had 25% battery randomly died and cut the call short. Our computer also randomly shut off at the exact same time and we couldn’t send him a message to tell him what happened. We rushed to remedy the problem but it took a long 5 minutes to get things up and running again. Our phone said it had 0% battery, which was extremely strange. But as soon as we had 1% of battery, we called “Matt” back and we explained what happened. But as soon as we started talking about Jesus Christ again, he seemed way different and started telling us all these doubts he had and asking us a million questions about weird topics. We tried to answer his questions and bring the conversation back to Jesus Christ but he just kept going off about weird “anti stuff”  (The thing about “anti” people is that they always ask a million questions and while you try to answer one, they ask another one before you answer it to make it seem like you couldn’t answer it. It’s so annoying). Anyway, we heard voices in the call with “Matt” and upon asking who was there with him, he said he was just cooking…At this point we were so confused, but I knew exactly what it was. 

Matt’s in law is a pastor for his own little church and I was 99% certain that he was there with Matt feeding him what to say against our church. I was literally so mad. We were going to put him on date to be baptized! We were going to invite him to change his life! Not only that, but I had been praying so hard for the past 2 weeks that Matt would receive an answer to his prayers and accept our invitation to be baptized! I had to pull myself together in order to end the call because I knew that now that the Spirit was long gone, there was no point in trying to argue with him. I testified to him that I knew the Book of Mormon was true, and invited him to turn to God for answers to his questions, and told him we had to go. After we hung up I literally ranted to my son all the way home and maybe another 30 minutes once we got there. It felt like a piece of my heart was ripped out. But after calming down, and having time to think about what happened, I learned an important lesson; God gives us opposition for a reason.

We read in the scriptures; “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things.”

But why? Why do we have to pass through such hard things and so much opposition? Why can’t God give us a break sometimes? Why can’t the pathway back to our Heavenly Father be a little less rocky and a little less steep? Why can’t there be just a little more light on the pathway in front of us?

Well, I really like the comparison of a muscle. In order for a muscle to get bigger, it needs to break. Only then can it grow. We need opposition to help us grow. 

Second, a tree that faces strong wind and opposition will have roots much deeper than a tree with no wind whatsoever. If we want our “spiritual roots” to be deep, we need wind. We need opposition!

I love what President Nelson said in the last General Conference: “The Savior is never closer to you than when you are facing or climbing a mountain with faith“. Jesus Christ will be with us as we are wading through opposition, but only if we have faith in Him!

Remember, that if we didn’t have opposition, pain, sorrow, or heartache, we would not be able to experience joy!

The takeaway? If you’re passing through some hard things, keep your faith alive, and you can be assured that the Savior is with you, and that one day, your hardship will allow you to experience even more joy in the world to come.

WELL FOLKS, that’s it for today! If you made it this far, congratulations, you can have one of my pesos. 
I hope you have an outstanding week 

Love,
-Elder Gifford

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