Today was an awesome Sunday. Lily and I were up until 1:00 in the morning talking about her most recent thoughts about prophets and prophetic fallibility, so it was particularly painful when Clarissa woke up at 6:00 which is her regular wake time.
Like a saint, Lily went to Clarissa, fed her and put her down which gave us another hour or so. Around 7:30, when the day was inevitably upon us, Lily went to Clarissa while I got ready for the day. Then Lily and I got all the kids ready for church. Then Lily cooked for lunch and tonight’s dinner while I helped to tidy the house. I also slipped in one chapter from Jeremiah. In short, it was a fairly routing morning.
Church was quite good. In Elder’s quorum, Brother Moon shared a story. It’s so amazing that I will summarize it here:
While in a marketplace near Machupichu, he noticed a group of women would always rush up to the tour buses to sell items to people as they got off the buses. One woman in this group was always getting pushed away, and she never had a chance to sell her items to the people exiting the buses. Brother moon felt an impression to talk to that woman. He did talk to her and it turned out she was selling a book he wanted. He and friends from his tour group all bought books from her (Marta was her name). The other women in the group were jealous that Brother Moon was buying so much from Marta, and they asked why he wasn’t buying anything from them. Brother Moon explained he wasn’t buying anything from them because of how mean they were to Marta, but said he would buy a book from each of them if they would promise to be nice to Marta. Then Marta asked brother Moon to be the Godfather of her baby, since the father left them. Brother Moon agreed, got a picture with her and got her address. At home, Brother Moon printed the picture and mailed it to her, but never heard anything back from her. Ten years later, Brother Moon was visiting Machipichu again and went to the same market and asked some in the market where Marta was. He was pointed to Marta. They talked and Marta said that she kept his picture 3 years, but took it down when he never returned any of her letters. Brother Moon never received any letters, so there must have been a problem with the mail or address. Marta said that the sons father came around and got her pregnant and then left again. When she had the new baby, her boy (Freddy) was so distraught, that she took Brother Moon’s picture out again and told Freddy that he had a Godfather that was going to visit him. This consoled Freddy. Then Marta said that they had moved, but one week ago she had a dream that Brother Moon was going to visit her. She figured he would look for her in the place where they first met, so she spent her life savings to travel to the marketplace where they were then standing, and there was brother Moon.
I had to leave class early because of Clarissa so I didn’t catch the rest, but the point is that God definitely takes care of His children in powerful and mysterious ways, and it is often by prompting those who will listen to be tools in his hands.
After church, Lily and I prepared for dinner with Jake. Jake came over tonight for dinner as a prize for a competition he won at work. We have a weekly prospecting competition with zero budget for it so prizes are simple. I especially was so excited for my family to learn more about Jake because he is one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met. He’s from South Caroline. He is incredibly genuine, passionate, kind and determined to succeed. Qualtrics has been a hard path for him so far and now he has major health challenges, but he refuses to quit. Now he’s just starting to see some great success. He is an inspiration! Dinner was a lot of fun!
After dinner, Josh and Katie came by and entertained Ammon for an hour with their different professional grade animal sounds. Ammon was so hyper with all the attention, and I felt so grateful for him to be getting so much attention!