Smoke and Darkness

Well, Satan has been hard at work this week. We have still had many mighty miracles though. :)

We had a pretty good visual this week of how Satan fools us.

We woke up on Thursday morning and headed outside for our exercise. In the North in the valley between the mountains we saw a nice dark cloud. We thought, "Yay!!! Rain!" We had high hopes that it would make its way to Desert Hot Springs since it doesnt do that often.

We went in and went about doing our studies and began our weekly planning. When we broke for lunch we decided to go and look to see how our storm cloud was doing:

It seemed our promising storm cloud had turned a funny shade of brown.

We didnt think too much of it and went back in to finish our planning, however before too long we were off and about our day and were a little discomforted by what we saw.

Before our lesson:

after our lesson:

Yikes is right

Our poor storm cloud turned out to be a fire in the mountains.

Satan seems to work pretty similarly. He eases in, deceiving us and trying to tell us he is something that we want. He comes to us nicely:

"he [will] pacify, and lull [us] away into carnal security, that [we] will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well-- and thus the devil chateth [our] souls, and leadeth them away carefully down to hell...

"Others he flattereth away, and telleth them thee is no hell; and he saith unto them: I am no devil, for there is none-- and thus he whispereth in their ears, until he grasps them with his awful chains from whence there is no deliverance"

(2 Nephi 28: 21-22; emphasis added)

It is pretty scary the things that Satan can convince people of. That has been a struggle this week. It seems as if everyone has there issues with something. However, there is a sense of peace that has come. We know who wins these battles when people honestly seek after truth, and just as the smoke has receded, so will Satan, but he will leave behind ashes and unclean air. We get to wait, and be reminded that we cannot let our guard down. :)

All in all though, the week has gone swimmingly :) LaVerne came to church, and things have been going good there.

Brother Shaner has back slid a little, but is still right there on the map. We love him :)

Also, we have a birds nest on the head outside our house :) Meet Lucy and her new babies this week: Teancum and Mohonri-Moriancumer ( Mori for short :))

Well, I love you all! I hope that you had a wonderful week!

Sister Hope