Week 18

Hey everyone

This week has been very much like the last couple weeks. We have been pretty busy this week with teaching lessons and a lot of studying the Book of Mormon and the Bible. 

It's been hard to keep motivated but I learned in track that when you are in a rough patch that those are the times that it's most important to continue to work hard. Especially when we don't want to work hard, otherwise we are letting the competition continue to get better and stronger and get ahead of us. That's  kinda where my thoughts have been this week. 

Our "competition" or the "Other team" could be all of the things that stop us from coming closer to God. Something that I learned from Pole Vault is that the other team is constantly working, they are constantly getting better so we have to also be constantly working and constantly getting better too. The best thing for the "other team" would be for us to only work hard when it's easy to do so. When the sun is out , the weather is warm, and we have a tail wind at our backs pushing us along the runway. 

If we only remember our Heavenly Father when we attend church, when we have the time and when it's convenient, then we won't be prepared come meet day when it's cold and wet, when there is a headwind blowing in our faces making us feel like we can't do it. 

If we are constantly working through the days when our legs hurt, when we feel like we don't have the courage to take off the ground then we will be prepared for the hard days when they come. 

However, the biggest difference between pole vault and maintaining a relationship with our Heavenly father is that his son Jesus Christ knows exactly what it's like to feel like we are feeling when we feel like we want to give up, when we feel like we aren't enough, when we feel like no one could possibly know what we are going through. He felt all of our pain, all of our anguish, all of our shortcomings. 

When listening to a sermon given about Christ this week the question was asked "How many drops of blood did Christ drop for me individually? " What we call the atonement, when Jesus Christ felt all of the pain and sorrow of every person individually, is the thing that allows him to know exactly how to help us on those days when we just wanna "skip practice" when everything seems to be going wrong. 

He will help us through anything we are going through and He will give us strength to put on our shoes, pick up our pole and get on the runway to face anything that is being thrown at us. 

I hope that I can be better at facing my challenges this week by continuing to come closer to God and I hope that I continue to help other do the same. 

Please water my plan mom 

Elder Ethan Amata 

1)This week wasn't super eventful so I only have this picture of the pretzels I made from scratch lol