Well this week was pretty uneventful, except for when the husband of Barbra almost died, so she couldn't come to her baptism, so it is going to happen this Saturday! I made some cookies. They were pretty good. So.....straight to the meaningful story for the week.

On Friday I went on exchanges with Elder Fauatea. We went up this dirt road to see if there were anyone living up there, and there wasn't, so we began the process of turning the car around on this tiny dirt road on the side of a cliff. Then it got stuck. Then we got it unstuck. So I was backing him down to a spot where he could turn around, when he drove back up and tried to turn back around at the spot we got stuck in the first place! Except this time it was way worse. The car was almost sideways and the wheels were just spinning and digging deeper holes. We tried for nearly an hour to dig it out and get things under the tires to give them some traction. A perfect quote to illustrate is from Elder Richard G. Scott.

"As you walk to the boundary of your understanding into the twilight of uncertainty, exercising faith, you will be led to find solutions you would not obtain otherwise. With even your strongest faith, God will not always reward you immediately according to your desires. Rather, God will respond with what in His Eternal Plan is best for you, when it will yield the greatest advantage. Be thankful that sometimes God lets you struggle for a long time before that answer comes. That causes your faith to increase and your character to grow."

I certainly felt like God was letting me struggle. We were not getting anywhere with the car, our tank was on empty, and it was hot and dusty and miserable and we were on the side of a cliff in the middle of nowhere. Pretty hopeless. Finally we just stepped back, looked at it, realized we would get nowhere by trying to drive out. So we manually moved the car 45 degrees from the awkward angle it was at to the angle we needed it at to back down to the spot we could turn around at. It's interesting how God let us struggle before we found a solution. And even then, the solution wasn't particularly easy! We've all heard the phrase 'hindsight is 20/20.' This is ridiculously true with me. God seems to be telling me, "Hunter you do these stupid things, jeez, can't you just learn what I'm trying to teach you already?" This particular lesson is to recognize and follow the promptings that the Holy Ghost gives me. President Boyd K. Packer said that we would never make a serious mistake without being first warned by the Holy Ghost. Before heading up the dirt road, I had a very distinct uneasy feeling, but I ignored it. After talking about it afterwards with Elder Fauatea, he told me when he drove the car back up to turn it around, and ended up getting it stuck, he had a feeling when I was yelling at him to stop, that he should listen to me. In my instance, ignoring the promptings of the Spirit led to getting the car stuck and about an hour and a half of 'O crap, how are we going to get out of this?!' And the same thing resulted from Elder Fauatea's point of view. I promise the Holy Ghost is real, and if we look for its influence in our lives we will see it. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. I love you all so much! 

Elder H. Johnson

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