A Story

I always feel that it is a little presumptuous for a missionary to send home a sermon, but this story hit me pretty hard and I would like to share it. Yesterday, we had stake conference and the Temple president from Madrid came and he gave this talk. I was actually zoned out by this point because the meeting had already been an hour and a half(And it was all in Spanish! I have a hard enough time paying attention in English!) so when my companion asked me what I thought about it afterwards, I had no idea what he was talking about. haha, so he told me the jist of the story and I re wrote it in my own words last night into my journal. So here is the story and commentary in my own words taken out of my journal.

"There was once a supply depot that was located very far away from the stores of which it supplied. An order came in from one of the stores and they requested an order of 2 items: Sponges and logs of firewood. The owner of the warehouse loaded up two horses, one with the light weight of the sponges and the other carried the full weight of the wooden logs. The long journey began and as time passed, the horse carrying the logs began to show its decrease in strength and symptoms of fatigue. However the other horse, was the complete contrary, he had hardly been effected by the weight of his cargo. The horse with the wieght of the logs was forced to walk in a strait path while the other walked, trotted, galloped and ran around as freely as he willed. After much time had passed and a lot of distance covered, the caravan was stopped at the bank of a river. At this point, the horse with the logs was shaking and sweating because of the burden he carried while the horse with the sponges walked unaffected. The travelers had to cross the river so the horses entered the water began to swim across. As the horse with the sponges crossed, he quickly realized that the weight of his cargo was dramatically increasing. The sponges absorbed the water and the weight became unbearable. The once free roaming horse with this light load could not keep above the water due to the extreme weight of his now soaked through sponges, and then, he drowned. As for the other horse, the one who had carried the heavier load now found that his load of wooden logs was helping him stay afloat and carried him to the opposite bank of the river.
Often times, we view obedience to the Gospel as a burden weighing us down. We see keeping the commandments as a means of limiting our freedom. We witness our friends and even loved ones participating and choosing to do whatsoever they please, while we are pushed down by the weight of obedience. But this is not so. It is our obedience to the gospel, holding to the rod, that will keep us afloat when adversity comes. The wonderful thing about all this is that, unlike the horses, we can choose which "burden" we want to carry. We can take a burden of light sponges through our journey of life and do as we please, but when we have to cross the river, when that last day comes, we will not be able to support the weight, and we will drown. OR we can choose the path less traveled and walk in obedience.. We will still have our opportunities to lean, grow and progress, but at the river, it will be our obedience to the commandments of God that will carry us safely across the dangerous waters and help us finish the task we initially started out to do. Remember, the horse with the sponges did not fulfill his purpose of delivering his cargo.

So the choice seems very clear, we can walk, trot, gallop or run in a path of our own design, but drown at the end, or we can put ourselves on a strait and narrow path that was designed before the world was and be carried to safety."

ok that took me way to long too write so I´ll briefly explain what we did for the week.

We dropped everyone. All of our investigators are not progressing, all 6 of them, so we met with them and asked where we were going. They all had baptismal dates but they said they no longer have interest in continuing with the lessons. So it is back to the grind for us. We don´t have any investigators but we are actively looking for more! We found out recently that we have 263 registered members here in Alcalá but only 60 of them are active. So we are out on the search for these less actives!

Last Pday, we went to the Oldest Bull fighting stadium in Spain and took a tour. It was way cool! I really want to see a bull fight now!

Today we are going to have a relaxing Pday and stay in Alcalá. But we will probably go bowling. Love bowling.

But that is about it for me!

Os quiro!

Jason