Week of May 4-10, 2015
The week flew by again and now here we sit reporting on all those wonderful things that took place this past week. We have been blessed with many spiritual experiences. On Saturday one of our wonderful investigators committed to be baptized. That is so exciting that they will be able to have the blessing of the gospel in their life. We make decisions each day as we face the challenges of life. What do I wear, should I go here or there, should I buy this or that, ..... the list continues. Many of those decisions carry very little weight by themselves but all added together they make up who we are. We must each look at our course and decide if we are on the strait path. Notice the word is STRAIT not "straight". The second one denotes a direct undeviating path that we just walk down. The first STRAIT represents a path that may have many twists and turns. Boats must travel through straits all the time and it is a very tedious navigational task that requires constant vigilance by the navigator and course corrections by the pilot. We too in our journey need to make sure we are navigating the "STRAIT" path of life with great vigilance and that we are piloting ourselves very carefully by following the directions of the "Navigator" even Jesus Christ.
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| This is a river tour boat that we pass by everyday |
As we pray each day we are opening that communication line and we need to listen for the course changes as they are whispered to us. For instance this week we traveled to Kyiv to have interviews with President Packer. What an amazing man! He gave us several course corrections for our mission ship and now we are making course corrections to be on the correct heading for success as a mission couple. One of the assignments I have been given is to assist the members in improving their teaching practices. At first I had all these grandiose ideas of things that I could do to teach wonderful, inspirational lessons. I began to prepare for Sunday's lesson and then in the interview with President Packer he said something that hit home. He said that these wonderful people are doing all that they can and it is not our responsibility to add to that burden. Wow I had to go to my knees and seek for guidance in how to approach the lesson teaching concepts. As a missionary I have lots of time to prepare to teach lessons. The members are working so hard and have so many other things to do that they could not spend the amount of time or resources that I was thinking about. So the Navigator gave me some gentle course corrections and I planned a completely different lesson.
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| A little taste of home while visiting Kyiv. Notice the Ukrainian by my shoulder |
We had the opportunity to go out to the farm to work and enjoy companionship with some wonderful members. We got there and it was time to go to the other stump that is also inside the boundaries of the proposed greenhouse. Last week it was a joyous occasion when we finally got the first stump out but now we have an even larger and more stubborn stump to remove. So here is page two of the parable of the stump. In life we all have stumps in our gardens and we work so hard to remove them and when we do it is a joyful occasion. However as in this garden there is another stump that is even bigger and deeper than the last one. I think all of us in life realize that getting one stump out of garden of life is not the end of the work. We will always have other Stumps that will affect our garden and we will need to remove them also.
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| Just one more "Stump" we all have them in our life |
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| Farm wagon and springtime vegetation |
One blessing of getting the first stump out is that we know we can do it. We just need to continue to chop and dig at the other ones until we too can remove them. It's my prayer that each of us will continue to work on the stumps in our lives so that our garden plot of life will be clear and ready to receive the seeds of faith that we can plant and nurture until they spring up and bless us with a sure knowledge of the truthfulness of the gospel.
We hope you all had a wonderful Mothers Day. Janet was doubled blessed this year she had both Mothers Day and her birthday on the same day.
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| Birthday sign and balloons at 2:30 AM |
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| Same thing at 8:00 AM (It's the thought that counts) |
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Flowers and gifts Janet got on her birthday. The picture is
painted on real papyrus. |
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| This cute card turned into a bouquet of flowers. The creator is so talented! |
So in celebration we invited some people over for a good old Bunkerville-style Bar-B -Que. I purchased a small portable charcoal stove and charcoal (not the briquette things we have in USA but the real charcoal).
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| Celebration Dinner sorry didn't git a picture of the new grill. |
The chicken turned out great and we had a wonderful evening with one of the families in the Branch and our investigator. We also had the biannual phone call from Jacob in Cancun.
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| The blessings of Skype "Happy Mothers Day" |
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Oh look it's Daniel holding his new niece.
Happy Mothers day (love Skype) |
He is doing great and teaching about 40 lessons a week. It was wonderful to talk to him and all of our kids. What a blessing Skype is. It is the next best thing to being there. Well, thanks for listening to my half hearted attempts at parable writing. We pray for all of you and hope that you will will have a blessed week. I know we will.
All of our Love Elder and Sister Mikkelsen.
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This is how they cook Georgian Bread
It just hangs on the walls of the oven. |
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It was Victory day this week. There were lots of celebrations.
This is the local Victory Square. |
