"God is in This Storm" (Joseph Smith)

February 06, 2023

"God is in This Storm" (Joseph Smith) - February 6, 2023

Spiritual Thought

One night as the Camp of Israel made its trek across Missouri the early saints received a warning that a group of armed men were waiting to ambush them during the night. Unable to retreat or deviate course the band of faithful men cautiously pressed forward planning to make camp for the night in a place of relative security and keep watches until dawn. However, just after pitching tents and beginning to settle in on a river bank a torrential downpour began. The storm was so massive it forced the beleaguered group to take shelter in a nearby church of another denomination. It also obscured one's vision to the point making a surprise attack on the saints would have been foolish. After hurriedly closing tent doors and stowing belongings the prophet Joseph Smith burst into the church with the other men and, with water running down him like a river, excitedly declared "Boys…God is in this storm!" The hostile mob had been thwarted and the Camp of Israel could continue with the commandment they had been given.

For those men huddled in a small church on the Missouri prairie the answer to their prayers cane in a way they had not anticipated or even would have chosen. The storm was the answer. The miracle which delivered them from harm. On nearly all other occasions it would have been seen as a curse or trial placed before them, and in many ways it still was. Over the next few days they were required to continue marching in damp clothes and wet shoes, two things which can quickly become more than mere annoyances during extended walking. But this night, however, their prayers were not filled with pleas to stop the rain and send the storm away. Rather, they poured out their hearts in thanks to God for delivering them from danger and sparing their lives. In a sense the Savior had delivered them in the same way he delivered the Israelites of old, enveloping a group of brutish Missouri mobsters in a veritable ocean just as the Egyptians had been swallowed by the Red Sea. Those faithful men realized that "God [was] in [that] storm" and thanked him for his deliverance.

If our Heavenly Father used a storm to deliver his saints from trial then, why would he not continue to do so now? I wonder if you and I think about that during our own trials and times of difficulty, our storms. Do we join with the Camp of Israel in thanking our Father in Heaven for delivering us from the greater struggle or do we ignorantly plead for it to be removed while unaware that doing so would unleash a bloodthirsty mob upon us? When the storms begin in our lives my hope is that we will have the spiritual eyes to see God, our Heavenly Father and His Son, as being in those tempests. To do so is never easy and requires childlike humility and submission to divine will but it will also bring the blessing and aid of heaven as we weather the storm and become better for it.

I testify of the Savior who has power to not only calm the storms but to bring them upon us when he sees fit to do so. He is in all storms. Sometimes he will stand on the bow of the boat and command those storms to be still. Sometimes he will stand next us and command us to be still and know that He is God, even as the storm continues to rage around us. And sometimes in response to our prayer will be an unexpected, unasked for storm which keeps us secure and encircled in his arms while danger lurks just at the edge of the swell. My invitation is for each of us to more fully appreciate the many ways in which our Savior can and will deliver us. God was in that storm, he is in your storms and, in time, he will permanently calm all storms and bring a tranquility to the waters of our lives which can be received at no other hand.

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Weekly Update

Hello everyone,

We'll start with the weather since I'm just generally a boring person. Last week I mentioned the cyclone was churning out in the ocean. Well it ended up dying out there but almost immediately another cyclone started and is following essentially the same path the first one did. This one is also supposed to miss us but could come closer than the last one. Stay tuned. One way or the other we've started getting rain again and will definitely get a lot more this month. February is the height of the rainy season and cyclone season so it could be exciting!

In non-weather related news, we had six baptisms on Saturday. I think possibly even more than with past baptisms I felt such a connection to every person and had been forced to rely on the Lord's plan. I could tell you stories about how every one of those six people overcame nearly insurmountable challenges in order to be baptized. At one point or another I thought everyone of them was a lost cause and we should move on to someone else. This is the Lord's work though and he had a plan bigger than me.

At the baptism one of the members pulled me aside and said she wanted to say thank you to me on behalf of all the other American missionaries for making the sacrifice to serve in Madagascar. She said she understood how far away we are from home and how different her home is from my home. Then she became emotional and said it makes her think of the Savior giving up his home in order to save all of us when she thinks of the American missionaries that taught and baptized her family. I'm grateful she followed the prompting of the Holy Ghost and told me that. It was very good to hear. Serving in Madagascar, especially serving without a single American in sight, is more than a little overwhelming at times. It was good to be reminded that eventually the people will appreciate those sacrifices, even if they express that appreciation to another American missionary serving here in ten years and not to me.

I need financial advice from all of you in America. I hear eggs are quite a bit more expensive than they used to be. I can buy eggs for about ten cents each. Should I be buying massive numbers of eggs to then ship to America? I could sell them to mother's of five in dark parking garages as we hide behind their suburbans and cover our voices with the sound of the "Frozen" soundtrack on an eternal loop. Or I could turn grade schoolers into egg mules as I slip a couple into their backpack during recess. Maybe I could disguise them for my biggest users by sneaking them into boxes of platinum blonde L'Oréal hair dye and hiding them on Costco shelves all the way up the yolk belt (Provo to Logan). The possibilities are endless. I haven't even mentioned posing as the refrigerator repairman so I can sneak a dozen into the Maytags of the elite housewives across our land. Or, hiding in the shrubbery and clucking to signal any passing bodybuilders that a natural protein fix is only a couple coops away. It's not quite the upstanding or safe work I was looking for but anything to turn a profit these days, am I right? Let me know your thoughts and I'll drop some eggstasy into an open light pole near you.

I hope you all have a great week!

Elder Payne

P.S. I'm just playing, we all love you Utah moms!

There was a tiny gecko in our apartment one morning. I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure this is a fully grown adult, not a baby.

Rice paddies.

We saw an owl that let us get very close to it. I don’t have any pictures on the phone so instead I'm sending a picture if the rock it was sitting on. I know, it's weird but I need to document that we saw an owl in these emails somehow.

On top of the mountain we climbed for p-day.

A less than great picture of a lizard we saw.

Chameleon.

I was sitting outside a classroom in the church while some of the our investigators had their baptismal interviews when I noticed this picture was crooked. My OCD kicked in and I spent most of the interview making sure it was straight. I'm not sure if you can tell but it looks much better now.

With a family in our area. No, Malagasy photographers don't see the need to have my entire head in the frame.

I'm getting good enough at the language that I can understand what people are whispering about me when I go by and respond with something witty that catches them completely off guard. I did that with this group of college kids and they thought it was hilarious so they asked to take a picture with me.