What? Krispy Kreme!

YES!!!  Krispy Kreme!!

     Hello!  This past week was awesome. Started off with a huge game of Capture the Flag in Yoyogi Park. Which was followed by, on the next day, numerous mosquito bites on my right leg that got so swollen because they were so close together and huge that they turned black and it was a great time for everyone. Never had mosquito bites hurt like that. 

     Sadly, one of the elders in our apartment this week had to go home early because of health reasons and he was struggling. We became a trio this last week because there are not enough missionaries in the area as of now to send us another missionary, but hopefully we'll get one. We are down to about 150+ missionaries right now. Our mission is so small... It was at 220 when I got to the mission. It is decreasing every day. But we, the three Amigos of Adachi are killing it right now. It is just straight fire up in this place. There are some amazing miracles being seen!  We had zone meeting this week and I got called the night before and was asked to sing I Know That My Redeemer Lives. I had no practice but I got to sing and I loved it. I just love singing so much. I definitely want to try to sing when I get home. But it was great week altogether. It went so fast. I cannot believe how fast it has gone. I am treasuring every second and I have never been happier! But anyway... on to the good stuff. 

     This last week, I was thinking about desires and how strong my desire is to follow my Savior Jesus Christ and turn away from the things of the world and the temptations of the adversary. The thought really hit me that Jesus Christ and Satan are very different people with very different purposes in the grand scheme of things, but in reality they have many things in common. One of the most notable being.. they will never make you follow them. It is always our choice.  The Savior did not make the water solid for Peter to walk on, and he will not do so now for us. He gives us the choice to choose faith and to choose Him. We stand in a world where we have to choose between two forces and the choice is ours. 

     In the pre-existence as everyone was making their decision to follow the Savior or the adversary, they stood in a valley with a fence, the line that drew the decision they would make. One by one everyone chose their side and faded off into the distance as they picked a side of the fence and walked with the Savior or the adversary away in their directions. Yet, this one man could not decide. He could not choose the way to take. He liked things from both. So he had the ever so brilliant idea come to his mind that he would sit on the fence. He would straddle one leg on each side and he would have the best of both worlds. He sat there alone thinking he had won; had made the perfect decision. As he sat there Satan returned to the fence to find the man and asked him what he was doing. He told him, "I am sitting on the fence," he said so ever confidently. Satan replied simply, "Don't you know? I own the fence." 

     The choice will ever be ours to choose the path we take and whom to follow. We chose it once and made the right choice, but we make it again every single day. To follow the Savior or to follow Satan. But everyday we wait and sit idly by in the middle ground we only serve him, the one who would bring us down to misery and woe. The one who wants us to fail and be miserable. We cannot serve God and mammon. Christ will never make us follow him, and even though we often think otherwise, Satan cannot either. He cannot make us fall into temptation and turn from our Master, Lord, and King. Choose the Savior. Choose Him. Each and every day choose Him! The most important control is self control. It is never too late to choose Him. Because he is always choosing you. He always will. He loves you. He lives!  

     Have the greatest week ever everyone!

\

Love,

Elder Trevor Aiken