Glutes and Gospel

Happy Halloween! 

Lots of good stuff this past week. On Monday we went out to Crawley's Ridge State Park with our district for pday. We hung out and enjoyed nature. Arkansas is so pretty. The weather has been perfect again this week. Starting Tuesday we were on bikes. Man, my legs are SORE. Glutes and gospel people, glutes and gospel. I feel like a real, hard-core missionary during bike week. We've been grinding through the hills and ghetto of Paragould. Multiple times this week I thought to myself, "it's a good thing my mom can't see where I am right now". We are still preparing Norma for baptism and she impresses us every day. This week I have been reading in Alma. In chapter 8, Alma the younger is on a mission and tries to teach the people of Ammonihah but is rejected. He starts to leave town when an angel appears to him (the very same angel who appeared to him as a lad and told him to stop trying to destroy the church). So first of all, that's cool. This time the angel tells him to go back to Ammonihah. So, Alma heads back (with some reluctance and worry I'm sure)  and enters into the city. He's been traveling for a while so he's hungry and tired. Alma sees a man and asks the guy to help him out. This guy ends up being Amulek, who already knows that Alma is a prophet because an angel told him so in a vision. So Amulek receives Alma into his home and takes care of him. Reading this story lead make me think of D&C 84:88, "And whoso receiveth you, there I will be also, for I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up". How applicable is that verse to this story? I've always loved that verse but relating it to Alma being received by Amulek has given it even more meaning. There are people out there prepared to receive you and I. They are ready to hear the gospel and they are ready to join us. That gets me pumped to be a missionary. 

On Thursday night we ate dinner at Brother and Sister Mayfield's home.

They fed us fried catfish, fried cornbread (hush puppies), fried green

beans, fried okra, and french fries. I'm officially a missionary in

the south. On Saturday we had the branch Halloween party which was

really fun. Norma and I dressed up as each other. She wore her best

dress and my name tag and carried around her Book of Mormon and Bible.

I wore a dress from the Marshall Islands and a flower in my hair and

carried around a Bok In Mormon. 

Overall, this week has been a lot like

every other week of my mission so far; full of disappointments,

outweighed by miracles and blessings. God is good. Arkansas is the

bomb. My good friend Brother Les said something yesterday during

gospel principles class that pulled on my heart strings. He said, "you

venture out and you realize there's nothing else out there. So you

come home. You come back to Christ, because He is the only way". I

love that. Shout out to my fellow "prodigal sons" who made it back

home and back to Christ.

MUCH LOVE,

Sister Guthrie

913 S. 22nd St. #6

Paragould, AR 72450