Happy Easter Family!
That is super exciting that Steve said Braden is finishing his mission papers. i'm stoked! We had a pretty good Easter here. I was hoping to find some more people to teach with it being Easter and everything but i found that it usually just means that they get more involved with the church they already belong to, even if they never attend during any other part of the year. We had a really good meeting on Sunday though and it's been really cool to focus on the real meaning of Easter. We went over to a members house for Easter dinner and then had a big family home evening with them and some other families about the resurrection using Easter eggs so that was fun... especially for the kids. I got Grandma and Grandpa Pete's package (Thank you thank you if you are reading this).
We had something super crazy happen to us this week. Well it didn't really happen TO us but we saw it happen. We were on exchanges with the Davenport elders and we went to the mall to get dinner. We were at panda express eating and all of a sudden this big black guy picks up a chair and is like yelling at another black guy and threatining to throw the chair. Then a mom with two small kids stands up and is telling them to stop because they are scaring her children and what not. So the guy with the chair throws it over the moms head and almost hits the other guy. So they get into a fist fight and like out of nowhere like 8 other black guys just come running in and start wailing on this guy. I seriously don't know where they came from. Then all the mall cops come running in to try and break it up and stuff and it's just crazy. Then the one guy who was getting beat up starts to leave and someone else throws a chair and just misses him and it ended up shattering the glass window display for Barnes and Noble. All of this is happening in the food court at the mall. During all this was happening we just boxed up our panda and left because we didn't want any part of it but it was super crazy.
Mom and Dad I don't know if you know this, but I got a letter from Rachel Erickson this weekend and she said the Melanie Weitzeil is engaged and so is Amy so that's pretty crazy. That's probably old news to you by now though. Well today we qualified to have a zone P-Day because we reached our baptismal goal as a zone of 19 baptisms for the last 3 months. We are going to have a picnic and play some games and stuff so that should be fun.
Something that I've learned this week has to do with the story in 1 Nephi chapter 7 Verse 17. This is where Nephi gets tied up by Laman and Lemuel and he prays to have strength to break the bands. But what i've learned from this passage this time is that when we really understand the enabling power of the atonement we begin to pray not that our surroundings or the situation will change but we pray that we will have the strength needed to get through. I firmly believe that Nephi had experienced that power already in his life and he knew what he needed to do to turn things around and it wasn't praying that his problems would change, but that he himself would change. It also reminds me of a pioneer story. I can't remember exactly who it was, but as they were coming across the plains they didn't have any food. They ended up having to eat their starving and sickly cattle and it just made all of them sick. Then all they had left were the hides. They prayed to know what to do and the Lord showed them how they could make the hides into a sort of jelly type thing. It was a long process but they didn't have any other choice. These pioneers prayed that their stomachs would adapt to the food they were eating. I know if I were there I would probably be praying for a buffalo to walk into camp or something. But these people knew the enabling power of the atonement and prayed that they would change and be able to survive. I know that the atonement of Jesus Christ has the power to change us. I only wish that we would all use it more in our lives. I know that this church is true!
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