2/3/14: Times of Trouble

That's now! You know you're brain is turning ridiculous when you look forward to all your trials and can laugh at them as soon as you're away from them. Sometimes I laugh to myself when I'm in them. Is that levity? Bah.

It's probably just the stir-crazy.

So the early part of this week was pretty decent. We had swedish pancakes and homemade donuts at the Thompsons. We had a few good lessons, although pretty much all of our lessons consist of "lets read the BoM with them!" because my comp doesn't like to talk about things and really plan our lessons. Our service for this week came in the form of painting some signs for a ward member, which was really fun and kinda therapudic, when the fumes didn't give me a headache :)

What do you do when someone really needs the gospel but even talking to them tears their family apart because their husband is anti? Man!! It sucks!! We probably just have to leave it alone for now, though :(

So Thursday our companionship went up in a mushroom cloud--with lightning--and we haven't communicated since. It's been the longest four days of my life. The Lord cancelled pretty much all our appointments, which I was glad for, because I don't even want to go out and try to preach the gospel when I can't do it with the spirit. "Preach my gospel by the spirit", right? Maybe that's bad of me, but it's true.

So the missionary work has halted to a complete stop. For now. I will be very surprised if we're still together at this time next week. I'm surprised she made it this far. It's pride that's driving her, she told me as much before all this happened, which is a really bad drive...I don't even know what to think. Maybe I'll just refrain from trying to figure it out, but I'm an analyzer! I can't help myself!!

The Lord answers prayers! Even the kind we didn't think we were praying...so after things blew up, I kinda stopped eating cause we hardly have any food in our house and my comp bought most of it anyway and I didn't want to make her madder. So for like three days, we hardly ate anything. And I was thinking about it, and remembering the many times in the past in my mission when we were almost out of food and out of money to buy more and, every time, someone gave us a ton of leftovers or something and we were provided for. It's a little thing, but I saw that it had become a pattern. So I just thought, "I know that before this gets too bad, you can do that again, if you will." It was a super passing thought, but I was confident in it. I'd seen it a dozen times. I went back to studying.

The next day, several members loaded us up with enough food to literally last us several months. We gave a lot of it away cause it'll go bad before we can eat it. I was kinda astounded. But I know that the Lord loves me very much and He is watching over me :) And that is true even when it doesn't have to do with food :)

Sister Neal

PS if you ever have like 10 hours to study a day like I've got, read the Bible Dictionary. It's sweet. So much information!!