Dogs and a Prayer

Dear Fawn,

They weather had been pretty tame, just regular weekly showers and whatnot... until yesterday.  At the start of priesthood this hailstorm begins and just drowns out everyone's voices.  The look on everyone's eyes was just sheer terror as a few brethren ran outside to witness the monstrous hail damage as quarter size ice balls pulverized the parking lot.  One sister ran into the building with a destroyed umbrella.

There's a member of the YSA branch who works as an insurance claim adjuster or something like that and he said "it sounds like money falling from the sky!"  Hahaha, that was funny.

But know, there wasn't actually very much, if any, damage done to vehicles so things worked out fine.

Now, I spoke too soon with that dog story last week, because certain events transpired this past Friday that just put that one to shame.

When Elder LeSueur was here he visited this part member family in the ward, but he only did so on exchange so I had never been to their home or met them before.  However, he did tell me about this killer German Shepherd with one red eye and one black eye that the family owns and they keep it chained up because it truly is a vicious dog that has respect only for the husband and it poses a danger to the wife and rest of the family.  Why you would keep such an animal around is beyond me...

Anyway, I decide to try and meet this family on Friday and they live at the top of this hill with an awful driveway so we parked at the bottom of the hill and walked to the top.  Well, we get to the top and I see about four dogs shading themselves under this tree and I stop.  I turn to my companion and tell him I don't really have a good feeling about this and that maybe we should go (because I'm a little more wary of dogs now than I have been earlier in my mission).  But one of the dogs notices us and gives a gruff alert to the other dogs and before I know it, their all on their feet with ears pointed up.  To my sheer terror, one of them is a German Freaking Shepherd and I'm not about to find out whether these dogs are friendly or not.  I turn again to my companion and say "We have to go, now!" and we just bolt down the hill.  I'm running with a stiff ankle because it's still kinda weak in super thin slip-ons and praying for my life and my comp. looks behind him and sees them about an inch away from him.  Luckily, they stop about 2/3 of the way down but that doesn't keep us from reaching the car.

We soon find the husband coming after us and we chat with him a while and the dogs are all friendly except for the killer German Shepherd which was chained up and we only encountered the nicer one.

As the spiritual thought this week, pray works.  "Even as faith without works is dead, praying without running (or vice versa) makes you dead as well."  The Lord truly takes care of us when we remember Him.

Have a great week!

Love
Elder Grabinger

P.S.  Give Matthew my congrats!  And then leave him at graduation and go get a table at Applebee's.

P.P.S.  I'm SOOOOOO SORRY about that joke if that's still a sore spot for you.  Just ignore it if so.  So sorry once again...