Cups and Knives

I asked Chris in my email about an object lesson that the Elders here in Tempe gave to us the other night. It involves 3 cups and 3 table knives. They talked about how to strengthen your testimony with 3 important parts; prayer, scripture study and church attendance. This is Chris's response...

It just so happens that I have/carry 3 cups and three knives so that I am always ready to teach that lesson. The first time that I saw that my trainer didn't tell me how it was done so I was kind of doubting that it was possible, but I knew that he wouldn't do something impossible for an object lesson. Another cool object lesson that we do to teach by small and simple things great things can come to pass is we balance 12 nails on the head of one another. It is pretty cool, you should go try to figure it out. One hint put the one nail that you are going to balance the rest on, in something stable. None of the other 12 should be touching anything.

So this past week we saw a 50% increase in lessons taught. It wasn't super busy and successful but it was better and that is all that we ask for.

Sometimes it is hard to keep positive and wanting to work when there isn't a whole lot happening, and we aren't seeing the fruits of our labors(2 nephi 26:30-31), but when we keep going the Lord blesses us and helps us.

Last night we were teaching an investigator named Herasmo (silent h) and we started out teaching why reading the scriptures is so important. We ended up teaching more about faith. He said sometimes it is hard to understand the scriptures and that it gets him down. So I shared with him how we need to start with blind faith. That is how it was with me. Many of you know that I am not the best reader and when I first started to read the scriptures I would have to read it 2 or 3 times to understand what I was reading. I knew that it was very important to read and that I would get help from God as I kept at it. Now I can read in Spanish and usually only read things once and understand what is going on. All of us can apply this to everything that is going on in our life. If we are scared to do something or even just don't know how to start, if we just put our trust in the Lord we will get his help in all things and all will be well.

I read a quote somewhere that said "two men (people) can do anything, if one of them is the Lord" that is true doctrine. We also taught last night that God created everything, so we talked about how all things are possible if we have faith.

I have seen the Lord bless and help me and so many others and I know that he will help all of you with absolutely everything that is going on(even dad getting back into the car biz).

Love,

Elder Paxton