7-19

"The Future is as bright as your Faith." ~President Thomas S. Monson

Hi everybody! I hope you all had an amazing week! This week was really good for me - haha, right after my last weeks emailing session with you one of our member families that we have been working with (John & David Fotheringham) called us to come and help them get their car out of the sand. Elder Jensen and I laughed and thought that it was going to just be a simple push of our strength... but when we got there to their house... huhhmm, boy were we wrong - the car was laying flat on the sand and the wheels sunk into the sand. We spent minutes digging the sand out from under the car and tires; enough to get sticks and logs to make traction so the wheel could grab hold of the log and lift out from the sand... NOTHING worked! After about an hour and idea came into my head...PRAY!! Everyone was sweating and we were all tired and I said.. "I think we should pray guys." So we hudled together and offered a prayer of guidance and for a miracle to help us out. after the prayer David got in the car, turned it on and pressed the gas - and we started pushing with all of our might on the back of the car... and ... within 15 seconds it was out of the sand. Isn't it funny how sometimes we forget the things that are going to help us out the most in life - no one thought of prayer till about an hour of hard work. I know that Heavenly Fathers plan for us is perfect. I think back to Lehi when he was talking to Jacob, "There is an opposition in all things..." if we would have never had that opposition (an hours plus of pushing and shoving and the car just came out right as they pushed it and if life was just perfect and we never had trials - what would we learn ---- NOTHING, remember, for testimonies to grow we need to have opposition in our lives. I know my testimony of prayers and miracles has grown simply from a couple of hours of opposition and sweat - but in the end giving me a memory I'll never forget.
I think a lot of our trials and really just life in general depends on our attitudes and our perspective on how we view our trials. On exchanges with a missionary in my zone I came across a quote in his house it said, "We can look at thing like: Every rose has it's thorn OR Ever thorn has it's rose." I hope we can all chose to look at things that way - Lets be HAPPY.
I am doing good in Palm Desert/Indio. Elder Jensen & I are making a sweet companionship.. haha he is pretty funny :) - - I told him that I am going to put him on a diet and he laughs and says he is going to eat me.. aahhhhh. This past weak has been a heat wave - seriously it has gotten like 10 degrees hotter! The good thing is that this upcoming week (from Tuesday-Friday) I get to go up to Riverside to a Leadership meeting that they are having up there. They have never done something like this [where we go and spend the night somewhere for this long] so it is going to be quite the experience! I think I am going to be tired out from learning and sitting in class... ahhh
I love you all so much! Stay safe and be happy - remember that we all have trials to mold us into the children our Heavenly Father wants us to become! -- Love, ELDER PATRICK McBRIDE