I Can Sleep When the Wind Blows
Hello Everybody!
Sorry for my two week adsense. Transfers sure make me lose track of time and writing emails usually gets lost in the mix.
As I said before we had transfers this week! Which is always a hoot. We sent the transfer board out Sunday night, and it gets crazy Monday morning. Tuesday we had 10 new missionaries arrive to the mission. What we call "In-Coming Day" is one of my favorite days of the transfer, except for zone conferences. It is always fun to see the new missionaries and see how excited, or terrified, they are coming to the mission. The next day was "infield transfer" which is when everybody moves areas, and definitely is my least favorite day of the week. It is so hectic and everyone leaves stuff, anyway we made it through!
The rest of the week was great! We started to teach a part member family in some townhomes in the south end of our area. The wife grew up in the church, and the husband didn't. Recently they had a "come to Jesus moment" as most say, and have both actively been attending the ward. We got in contact with them and were able to have a lesson. In the lesson we asked why they decided to go back to church. And they shared it because they know the teachings of the church would bless their young children. It is pretty cool to see how aware people are of those blessings when they live the gospel.
We also found mice in our apartment! We keep our place spotless, like it is never not clean. And one day Elder Black and I were planning a leadership training and heard mice in the cupboards in the kitchen! Turns out they chewed through the plywood at the back of the cupboard and made their way under the cupboard. We placed a few little traps down. We ended up calling in the big guns (our landlord got an exterminator). Let's just say that the mice are gone, and we are ok again!
This week we will be planning a zone conference with the MLC (mission leadership council), and have about 10 nonmember lessons. It should be an amazing week! I love you all. Thanks to everyone who responds. Sorry I'm not always the best at replying.
Elder Glenn
Unfortunately I won't have any pictures this week. All the pictures I had before were ones I got from our missions facebook page. But I decided not to have facebook for the rest of my mission! I will try and take more this week!
Spiritual Thought
Many years ago the old country fair in parts of England was, besides being the place of exhibition for farm products, [the place] where employer and employee met. . . .
Farmer Smith wanted a boy to work on his farm. He was doing some interviewing of candidates. A thoughtful looking lad of about sixteen attracted him. The boy was confronted with a rather abrupt question from the gruff old agriculturist. “What can you do?” The boy swung back at him in the same style, “I can sleep when the wind blows.”
. . . Notwithstanding he didn’t particularly like the answer to a civil question he got from the teenager, there was something about the gray eyes of that fellow that got under his skin.
He approached the lad again with the same question, “What did you say you could do?” Again the same answer bounced back at him, “I can sleep when the wind blows.”
Mr. Smith was still disgusted with such an answer and went to other parts of the fair to look into the faces of other youngsters who might want a job on a farm, but there was something about that answer he got that stuck to him like glue. First thing he knew his feet were carrying him back to meet the steady gaze of those deliberate eyes of the boy with such strange language.
“What did you say you could do?” for the third time he thundered at the farm help. For the third time, too, the farmer got the same answer. . . . “I can sleep when the wind blows.”
“Get into the wagon—we’ll try you out.” . . .
One night Farmer Smith was woken about 2:00 a.m. with what might be a cyclone. It seemed that gusts from the north in only a few minutes developed with intensity to threaten the roof over his head. The trees cracked and noises outside turned the nervous system of our friend upside down. The speed he used to jump into his trousers was only outdone by the lightning as it broke up the darkness outside. With shoes half-laced he rushed out into the farmyard to see if anything on the premises was still intact, but he would need the services on a wicked night like this of that new boy. He called up the stairs of the attic where the latter slept, but the response was the healthy lung heaving of a healthy lad. He went half the way up the stairs and thundered again, but only a snore echoed back. In excitement he went to the boy’s bed and did everything but tear the bed clothes from the youth, but the lad slept on.
With a mixture of desperation and disgust he faced the gale, and out into the farmyard he plunged. He first approached the cow barn. Lo and behold, the milk producers were peacefully chewing their cuds, and the inside of their abode was as snug as a mouse under a haystack. It didn’t take him long to discover how the boy had chinked up the cracks of the cow abode and reestablished the locks and hinges. In the pigpen he found the same tranquility, notwithstanding the forces at work that night.
He turned to the haystack. As he felt about in the darkness, it didn’t take him very long to determine again the preparation of the lad with the gray, steady eyes. Every few feet on that feed stack wires had been thrown and weighted on each side. With this construction the alfalfa was peacefully under control and laughing at the elements.
Our farmer friend was stunned with what revelations he had in a few minutes of that cyclone night. He dropped his head. His mental maneuvers shot like lightning to the boy snoring in the attic. Again, the peculiar answer of a few weeks ago slapped him in the face: “I can sleep when the wind blows.”2
