It's Your Church Lord

It was the Sabbath today and again we didn't know what to expect.  The Muslims are all celebrating Eider (rhymes with eater) and the government has declared a 4-day holiday to conclude Ramadan.  You would think that the Muslim celebrations wouldn't affect us, but they do. For the Muslims, it's comparable to Christmas.  The children get new clothes, everybody kicks back and enjoys lots of good food.  Even the Christians love Eider.

At 10 minutes past starting time for Sacrament meeting there were only a handful of people in the chapel.  The bus had already come from Irbid with only two people on it.  The other counselor in the branch presidency and his family, the Sunday school teacher, one of the Sacrament meeting speakers, the member of the district presidency and our interpreter were all missing.  Did we mention that the branch president is still in Thailand getting his arm "repaired."  He's been gone since the first of May.  I was feeling a little bit panicked but Lynn wasn't.  He walked into the room, looked out at the small group, and told them what he thought we should do--have a short Sacrament meeting, cancel Sunday School and combine everyone for Priesthood and Relief Society.  We had enough in attendance to get by.

At this low point, with Lynn sitting alone on the stand, Heavenly Father smiled down and sent us a miracle. A family of four non-members (with a friend) walked in, followed by a less-active man with his brother.  In a few minutes when we looked out at the congregation we counted 15 people.  Amazing!  We renewed our covenants by taking the Sacrament and had a spiritually uplifting time together before everyone went home.

At the end of the day, we thought about the story President Hinckley told of getting up in the morning, praying for guidance, working as hard as he could to do the Lord's work and at the end of the day kneeling down to pray and saying, "I've done all I can.  It's your church Lord.  Goodnight."  We love that.  Heavenly Father is taking care of his church, we just need to do our best and leave the rest up to him.  Everything will work out.