Summer is Here

"I have faith it will start!" yelled Elder Noriega yanking on the cord to start the lawn mower. This would be his millionth attempt and my millionth attempt too. We had checked everything fifty times and my nature lack of common knowledge was not aiding the situation. He pulled it again. Nothing. Again. Nothing. It looked like we had both been out in the sun for days based on how sweaty our clothes were but we had only been outside for less than 30 minutes. The Argentinian lady inside needed it mowed desperately and we came to help out. The lawn was unruly and it needed to be done soon. I tried with the mower. Nothing. We flipped it over, looked at everything and then tried again. Nothing. Elder Noriega, who had that week studied about faith said again with hands clenched on the mower in war cry like scream, "I have faith I can start with mower!" Nothing. Faith is a principle of action and power. However, no power was in the mower and it didn't show any signs of starting. In my head I prayed what we needed to do. With a full day ahead we were running out of time. Elder Noriega grabbed the mower again and then we heard, "Don't start the mower!". For a second I thought we both had just received revelation about a lawn mower but then I saw a Hispanic guy trying to open up the fence at the end of the yard. He told us he always drove around and helped the older people with their yards and he had the legendary zero-turn lawn mower. He took over and we were saved to go visit some people. 

We had three appointments in a row that were in three different cities. It was inevitable that we would be late to something. Due to several factors we were 40 minutes late to an appointment. After knocking on the door, the lady threw open the door and said "Why didn't you come sooner?!" The words 'I dun messed up' could not describe the situation more. She said that she had no time now but we felt like we needed to talk to her, and we asked if she had two minutes. She said yes and we shared a video with her and her husband. The two minutes quickly turned into a 45 minute discussion. The angry comments from her changed nearly immediately and she and her husband were interested to hear more. I am really grateful for the grace that makes up for our weaknesses. I have seen mine a lot out here and hope that I will continue to be able to improve. 

Thanks for your prayers and support.

adios

Elder Thomas