The Inconvenient Messiah

      Hello everyone, hope you all had a great week.  Well, we finally got some snow.  It snowed all Friday night, but it wasn't too bad.  It's warming up again, and it's been a warm winter.  Even Saturday with all the snow, it has been crazy.  So a couple of stories from this week.  First of all, we met this guy at church two weeks ago named Jesse Cross.  Well Jesse visited church with his buddy who is from California.  He invited us back the following Saturday to visit with him and tell him more about the Book of Mormon.  He wasn't home when we went over.  So Sunday we went over and he was there.  He is super nice, and we taught him the Restoration.  He invited us to come back Saturday and we taught him more about the Book of Mormon and asked him to prepare to be baptized on March 3.  He said yes, and he wants to find some time where we could sit down for a couple of hours and read the Book of Mormon.  Golden!  Him and another investigator named Kathy who is supposed to be baptized on March 24 were going to come to sacrament meeting yesterday, and we were so excited.  But then our branch president called and said church was cancled because of all the snow.  Yeah!  But we'll just have to work on getting them here this next week.  Another funny experience was we went to help Kathy with a fundraiser they were having for a homeless shelter that her and a couople of other people we know are trying to start here.  It was at a Lutherian church and we helped serve the soup.  It was really weird to be in another church.  And they had this woman pastor, which was really weird as well.  But it was nice to show that we care and we're not just out to shove Books of Mormon down people's throat.  So right now we have three people with a baptism date.  There's Jesse and Kathy, and then we also have Tina . Tina has been investigating since before I got here, really long story, but she is super ready to be baptized.  She is supposed to be bapitized on Feb. 18, but she has been sick for about the past month, and we haven't been able to see her.  The last time she let us see her we gave her a blessing, and she is still sick.  Along with that she has a Word of Wisdom problem that she has to quit by this Saturday.  We are super unsure of what is going on with her, so yesterday and Friday we had a fast for her. We're supposed to call her today and see how she is doing, so fingers crossed.  Praying for a miracle here, but she is so ready.  Anyways, there's a little glimps into our week.        So Spiritual thought of the week comes from an essay I read by Elder Holland.  It's titled "The Inconvenient Messiah" and I really liked it.  We have a lot of people say to us that all you have to do is accept Jesus and you are saved, which is partailly true, but they don't understand how we show that we accept Him.  If we truely read the Bible, we see that Christ asked all of His deciples to do really hard things.  That had to give up the things they loved most in order to follow Christ, and show Him that they loved Him the most.  When Christ was tempted by Satan, it was all about convenience.  It would have been convenient for Christ to be able to turn the stone into bread to fufill His appetite.  It would have been easy to throw Himself from the temple, have the angels save Him, and everyone would have believed He was the Savior.  But that is not what He did. Lastly, He could have claimed all the kingdoms of the earth as His own, which they eventaully were.  But He decided to do it the right way, not the convenient way.  So let us ask ourselves, are we doing things the right way, the way the Lord would have us do it, or are we taking the easy way, the way Satan would have us go.  Even though the right way may be difficult, in the end the reward is far greater, and Christ will be with us every step of the way.  I love you all and hope you have an amazing week.  Godspeed, Elder Chandler Kendall