WEEK 73 - Jean Valjean The Penguin

Howdy everyone! I hope yall's Christmas was glorious and that you felt a lot of love just like I did! "whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also" I have heard that verse many times in my life and I've always been like "oh cool ya I can do that." I don't think I've really ever truly had to do that until this week. It is a very painful thing to be smitten. When it happens all you want to do is get revenge and make that person feel the pain that you felt and smite them back, the last thing that you feel you want to do is turn to them your other cheek. In life we have all been the smitten or the one who is doing the smiting. Sometimes in life we will be in a situation where someone smites us, so we smite them back, and back and forth over and over again. After a while you become numb and you stop feeling the pain of the smite, and your soul begins to take the pain of it. I think that is the problem with the world today. We are all imperfect people, therefore we all at one point will be smitten. The question is will we smite back or turn the other cheek? Like I said earlier, I had never really been in a situation before where I had to turn the other cheek back and forth over and over till this week, and it definitely hurt. But I know that one day I will see my Savior again and "it shall be well with [me]...for [I] shall be like him" smitten. "blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Watch out father, they might just crown me Bishop of the Draper 8th ward after that spiritual thought, cause that one came straight to me from the Lord. I am coming for the throne. But in like all reality I hope that helped someone, cause it helped me. Here are the neat things from the week: - I've been putting down like 15 chapters of the BOM a day and judassss, those gadianton robbers are no joke. The footnotes are my opposition though, it takes me like 2 hours to read 15 chapters because of those boys. I'll be reading about why we should serve someone or something, then BOOM, I'm like knee deep into 1 Chronicles chapter 23. But I have felt an indescribable peace reading it during this hard time - I've sadly fallen victim to 7/11 slurpees - We were at district council and we had the service missionaries with us. I love the service missionaries, they're legends. One of them got an impulse to go up to the whiteboard like 35 minutes into district council and he started drawing "GATOR-HORSE" which was too sacred of an artwork for me to attempt to describe. It was very wholesome though cause he kept getting up to make edits on it, and we were all just hyping him up. I felt the Spirit very strong during that - There is frankly nothing better than having a bunch of your friends pull up to church and you find out it is an emergency preparedness class Sunday. I think it is just a requirement if you want to be the emergency preparedness teacher, that you have to subtly drop little nuggets about how prepared you are for the entire class, it would be my honor to teach one of these one day. I love seeing the elderly people take every emergency prep class as a glorious opportunity to come out of their shell and SHARE what they known, it's a wonderful thing - Elder MacDonald bought a Christmas blow up penguin and I named him Jean Valjean (shoutout mom). After like 3 hours he decided he just couldn't justify this purchase, and we returned Jean Valjean. May he rest in peace - I got the amazing opportunity to go back to the Chinese branch for church this week! I cannot write my love for them. I get there and this is what was spoken to me: "ah it's good to see you Elder Horsley! Can you translate today?" (again I'm a willing dude, so naturally I obliged) "Wow you are skinner" "Elder Horsley when are you coming back? "Ummm I am not sure, maybe 6 months?" No. Too long." "Elder Horsley you might have Chinese offspring" so pretty usual. I saw my most beloved Peter Chen and heavens, what an experience it was. I greeted him and Peter instantly starts grinning, strokes my hair, puts his hands on my cheeks, and told me "It is wonderful to see you! Thank you for my faith!" So it was an extremely wholesome Peter encounter, what he said almost made me cry, I won't go into it, but very wholesome. Not a whole ton of new Peter Chen news other than he got himself like a Jamaican phone case that is perfect for him. The church was so spiritual, I am so proud to see what they have become. I love it, but at the same time I long for what the branch used to be. All the spirituality kinda takes away from the integrity of the whole experience, but no matter who they are, or where they go, my heart will always be with them. That is all from me this week! Don't be like the gadianton robbers and "infest the land" this week, be a light instead. I love you so much! Have a great week! Pics: 1. Me with my legendary sisters 2. Me and Jean Valjean 3. Great news 4. Elder Sass slamming a hot honey pizza 5. Exchange pic 6. The dragon warrior 7. A legend who goes by the name of Rodrick

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