week 14

Salut!

Okay news from Guyana....  I saw my very first Anaconda and it was massive! It is one thing to learn about them in elementary school but when you see one in real life…Oh. My. Goodness.  A man had just captured it and he threw it over his shoulder and got on his scooter and rode off.  It was easily 10 feet and its body was the size of a tree trunk in diameter. It was nuts!  I was super bummed I didn’t have my camera to capture a picture of it. 

The worst contact ever happened this week.... Background: first a Haitian grandma is called a Mami and mamis agree with whatever you tell them…it doesn’t matter if it’s about God or anything else, they just love it.  So they’re kind of useless to contact because they’ll get baptized, and then when a new religion comes along they’ll just convert to that.  Anyways, back to the story, we must have been in Mami-ville because every house we contacted a mami or a papi (male mami) would come out.  It was funny, but kind of annoying because we were looking for people to listen to us.  So I contacted a house and instantly I saw a papi.  But he wouldn’t even talk to me.  All homes with mamis and papis have younger people in them as well, so I wanted to see if I could find out if his kids were interested in hearing our lesson… but this guy would not come out.  So I’m just waving my arms and dancing trying to get him to notice me but he wouldn’t come to the door.  That’s when I realized he was in a wheel chair.  So I just feel crappy cause I’m trying to get this handicapped papi to come outside.  So I run up to the house.  I got about 10 feet away when I realized he was about 80 and completely naked sitting in his wheelchair.  I blocked my eyesight with the book of Mormon, and then apologized and wished him a goodnight and took off running/crying. It was horrible!

          So on Friday we had probably one of the most difficult day as far as work goes on my mission.  We had all appointments cancel, and then all our backups fell through…honestly nothing was working out.  We worked and worked but we just got rejected over and over again.  The only people who talked with us just wanted to bible bash hard core and so we ended up leaving even those situations.  Nothing. Literally nothing for a whole day was working out. I felt like we were just sweat and wondering where everyone was.  I didn’t get it; we were working our best and trying our best but nothing but sweat and failure.  The next day we were reading in 1 Nephi 8 during studies. This is where the Book of Mormon talks about Lehi’s dream.  It talks about how initially Lehi wandered through darkness for hours and it was not until he prayed and called upon the Lord that he received help and the dream unravels into the tree of life.  Thinking of Friday, I realized we wandered through darkness for hours and not once did we call for help. Because of this realization, on Saturday morning we decided to make fervent prayer a part of our day.  After saying a fervent prayer on Saturday the change in our luck was complete night and day from Friday to Saturday’s work. We had tons of great lessons and contacts all day long.

In life you can work and work as hard as you can…You can give it your all, all day long and still gain nothing but sweat.  We cannot overcome trials or accomplish goals until we call upon the Lord for help.  Always remember that the most powerful being is just a prayer away and do not hesitate to ask for help.

Love,

Elder Logan Robert Sackley

STACKS

lazer tag for a branch activity-team missionary wrecked