Breaking and entering

Hey Ya'll. 

 "4 Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God."  Ether 12:4

I love this idea that if we just have hope in God, it turns to faith and when we exercise that faith it becomes an anchor to us. Even though life gets really rough and hard, as long as we anchor ourselves in Christ and live a Christ-centered life, everything will be alright. There's really nothing to worry about because in the end Christ has our back. I love the line in the Hymn 'I Believe in Christ' that says "I believe in Christ, so come what may." God rarely does what's easiest for us, but he'll always do what's best for us and if we just live the gospel of Jesus Christ (faith, repentance, baptism, receiving the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end) our burdens are lightened, and life is good. 

Speaking of life being good, this week I was chased by a pitbull, met a lady who claimed she was the resurrected Christ, and had someone try and break into to my house. Pretty normal week....

At 3 AM this morning I was awoken by a pounding at our front door. It was like a violent pounding and super loud. I was really confused why someone was 'knocking' on our door at 3 AM and pretty freaked out. I just kinda pulled my blanket up over my head and waited for it to stop, but the person (aka Sasquatch) kept pounding on our door. Then they started turning the door knob back and forth like they were trying to get in. At this point my companion was also awake and I was like "what do we do?" and he was like "I'm calling the cops." So he calls 911 because some insane person is pounding on our front door and violently twisting and turning our door knob. He told me later the lady on the other end of the line told him they had a unit on Claiborne, Washington, and 3rd ave which all are right next to our house, basically they've got a ton of cops patrolling our neighborhood every night cause it's super sketchy, so it only took like two seconds and then there were eight cops and three or four cop cars in our front lawn. Sometime between when we called 911 and the cops showed up the person stopped knocking and left our door step. As we told the police officer on our door step what was going on, I noticed that for some reason our car's lights were on and that two other cops were talking to these people in a truck right up the street from us. The people in the truck were our neighbors, a crazy old lady named Sister Crochier who goes to church with us and some other weirdo that lives with her. The two cops talking with our neighbors come over and tell us that Sister Crochier noticed our car light was on and wanted to let us know so that our car wouldn't be dead in the morning. I'm baffled as to why she chose to do this at 3 in the morning and even more confused, and slightly concerned, at the fact she tried to open our front door. Long story short, someone tried to break into our house so we called the cops and it turned out to be Sister Crochier telling us our car light was on.

We also have a stalker named Berna. She's an insane old woman who thinks she's the messiah, speaks in tongues to birds, and can read palms. She was a referral from a minister we talk with sometimes, and I'm pretty convinced he set us up. This lady calls us about 30 times a day and sends us really creepy text messages. Also she saw a demon at Walmart. 

To say this week has been interesting is a bit of an understatement, but we've also been super blessed and have more people to teach than we have time for! One of our investigators is on date for baptism and another one is getting pretty close. It's very exciting. 

I went on an exchange to Caswell this week (and got chased by a dog that probably weighs twice my weight)  and met Brother Batten! (Note:  Brother Batten is Sam's uncle's father who lives in North Carolina.)  He gave us a ride to district meeting, very nice guy.

I'm on my way out to Eden to go fishing for a district activity, but I hope ya'll have a great week and keep writing to me! Love ya'll! 

Elder Earnest