As promised, I have some more and better material for this weeks email. I hope that you get as much enjoyment out of this as I did.
Tuesday morning we were just going through the motions, minding our own business when out of nowhere, a squirrel came right up to our screen door. Elder Champneys was in the bathroom, so I opened the door, and this squirrel just stuck his head and half his body in. I was so taken off guard that I just kind of sat there for a minute; then the realization hit and I ran into the kitchen and got some pumpkin seeds (thanks for the bait mom). My movement startled the squirrel, (for all intents and purposes, we will call him "Ricky") but after a few seconds, he was back sniffing into our apartment. We carefully layed the bait and I sat by the sliding door while Elder Champneys, now returned from the bathroom, was taking pictures. As soon as his whole body was in the apartment and he had lingered even further into our diabolical trap, I slammed the door and--pardon my French--all hell broke loose. He freaked out and lunged from the bike, to the chair (he pooped on Elder Champneys' chair) and back and forth making the most blood-curdling noise, like a small child screaming, mixed with a small dog choking. We finally got him out of the apartment and just sat laughing for a few minutes.
In this story, we are not without analogy. Satan uses new, inticing and exciting things to lure us into his trap where he can easily slam the door on us, trapping us in our own curiosity and by our own will and choice. In the Book of Mormon it talks about those who followed after the great and spacious building and how they were "feeling their way towards the great and spacious building" whereas those who were clinging to the rod were pressing foreward in a constant direction towards the Tree of Life--in other words, they knew where they were going. I love that imagery, the difference between "clinging" and "feeling" and I know that when we focus on Christ, that we don't need to feel our way, we can know exactly what we must do.
Other than that, I had an incredible opportunity to do something that I have never done before this week. The picture below explains it pretty good, but we met this guy named Antonio at the library who is really big into music. He said that if we ever wanted to learn how to rap that we could just hit him up one day and he would help us. So Friday we went into the library and found him in the sound studio there; when we first went in, he was listening to all sorts of vulgar and nasty things and as soon as we got in there, he shut it off and we started to make a rap about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm not going to lie, it's actually really good, and looking back on that experience, we were able to help someone who doesnt believe in God and who is just about one of the most worldly people that I have ever met, think about and rap about Jesus Christ for about an hour. And he let me record the chorus! I'll be sure to send you all the song when it's done but the coolest part was at the very end, when we had just finished the first verse and chorus and it was all put together, Antonio had to sit back in his chair and take a deep breath because he was "feeling something really different". We said something like, "Dude, that's the Spirit!" and he just sat there deep in thought for a minute and then got up and said, "I need to take a smoke break." Aw well. One day Antonio.
I hope that you all had a great week, mine was fantastic and my heart is so full of gratitude for the tender mercies of the Lord. I know that He is real and that He loves us.
Elder Arkoudas
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