I was scheduled to give a lesson today (lesson 37, NT - more in next post). I tried to prepare for the lesson during the week, but one thing led to another and I was left with only last night for preparation. Actually, I should take it back a few days...
I found out that one of the daughters in one of my Home Teaching families was to be baptized yesterday only in the beginning of last week. This really put me to shame, since I always considered myself as being a good and diligent home Teacher... As soon as I found out - I offered my help, but I was informed that they were "all set".
Despite this, I got a call on Thursday to ask if I could take care of the background entertainment after the baptism, while we waited for the girl and her grandfather to get dried up and return to the chapel. Traditionally, in our ward, we would have a short slideshow depicting her growth, but this time the mother said she did not have time to prepare that and would like for me to download a spiritual song that already had a general slideshow attached to it ("What Heaven Sees In You" by Doug and Sherry Walker). So I downloaded it but I noticed they used to offer a service of inserting custom pictures into the slideshow. I thought to myself - I can do this for my family, if they want it...
So I made the offer and got the pictures emailed to me on Friday. I spent a couple of hours putting it all together, and send a copy of the final thing for review. Worst case, if they didn't like it, we could always go with the original version. 8:30 Saturday morning I get the response: "it looks great, but can you just move the second picture to be the last?". The baptism is at 2 PM... I am on my way to a service project of cleaning up a playground in Worcester, what else could I say but "No problem!".
Finished the service project, got home and updated the slideshow, ran off to the chapel to setup the projector etc... and all was well.
After the baptism (Saturday PM) - I am getting ready to prepare my lesson for today - We get invited by the Bishop's wife to join them for a special dinner... "Trash Can Turkey" (cooking a whole turkey in an outdoor oven made up of an upsidedown trash can covered with hot coals). How could we say no? It was a wonderful evening. Everyone enjoyed it, and, for a blessed change, my dear wife was not in charge of the cooking.
Got home and realized I was too tired to prepare the lesson... What to do? Sacrament Meeting starts at 9:00 AM and my lesson at 10:15... So I went to sleep :-)
Woke up at 4:30 AM and finished preparing the lesson.
At 8:30 I get a phone call asking if I can assist in giving a ride to church to a family without a car... by the time I got to their house and picked them up (they were not as prepared as I was led to believe), it was already 9:00.
As I was rushing to get to the chapel, fully knowing I am missing the sacrament, I noticed a homeless woman standing on the side of the road with a sign asking for money. Someone approached her, handed her some coins and gave her a hug. Then he gave her a bag of potato chips. She seemed much happier and somewhat uplifted. I felt appreciative of the man, who did not appear to be someone I would have associated with that type of kindness. I also was inspired to recognize that despite my delay in getting to the chapel on time, and the importance of partaking of the sacrament, Heavenly father knows that I have been doing my best. I relaxed and trusted Him to take care of me.
When we got to the chapel, twenty minutes late, I was surprised that the Sacrament had not started due to a baby blessing. I got to partake of the sacrament after all and I was very grateful. This was another piece of my growing testimony of how personal the relationship is between everyone of us, specifically me, and our Heavenly Father.
TOTD: He trusts you to do your best, so you can surely trust Him.
