Drunk Man Comes to Sunday School

March 24, 2014

I thought I would share with you an exceptionally random day in Gospel principles. I am not sure how ya’lls gospel principle class was yesterday but ours was indescribable with that said I am going to try to describe what happened; bear with me. It starts off with the other Sisters teaching the lesson about the Gifts of the Spirit, great topic right? They were teaching one golden investigator with his 5 year old son (not sure why he wasn’t in primary, today was a really bad day to bring your kid to gospel principles). Everything is going great till we hear a knock on the door like 20 minutes into the lesson and in walks toothless Jesus in his red jumper and sun glasses. The look on the other Hermana’s faces was pure shock as he is an investigator of theirs, well more of like someone they talk to as they are waiting for the bus. We were like “Who is this?” because he sat down and then would get up and kept trying to kiss the teacher  then we properly informed him he can’t kiss the teacher we got him to sit down. They then try to proceed with the lesson. Every time they mentioned “Jesus”, Jesus would stand up and proceed-yelling my  name is Jesus while he was showing his carnet or ID to everyone it was kind of an distraction. He kept making random comments half in Spanish and half in English but we couldn’t understand any of it because of his lack of teeth. Can it get anymore awkward?  … another knock… yes it can. Coti calls 2 of us out Hermana Huber and Hermana Portillo and the rest of us are like where the heck are they going? We then tried to save the class. Meanwhile Hermana Huber went with Hermana Portillo to the gate that surrounds the church, yes the churches have large pointy sharp metal gates surrounded  down here in south America.  Coti pointed and said there is a man mumbling out there and left. They were like ok… and went to go talk to him third hour so they were all waiting outside as we bring out this drunk guy who literally is about to fall over. Everyone’s looking at us pretty weird by now but I’m just like we got to get him out of the church. We get him to the door and our branch president stops us and then takes him out the front gate having to step over another drunk guy who passed out on the church lawn/driveway. Yes I am not so sure what was with all the drunk people today but it was quite an experience.  It was sad but funny all at the same time.  All I can say is drinking is so bad please don’t do it because it really ruins lives.  It’s not cool.

. Point of view of Hermana Huber; “oh dang it I know that man”. And Hermana Portillo asked who is i?   Well a little background information -  like 2 ½ months ago Hermana Huber and I were waiting for the bus  - cause they take 20 minutes to show up. And there is this incredibly wasted man in the middle of the street shouting at the cars. I had never seen someone that drunk.  We were worried that he was going to get hit by a car and die. So as we could not leave him there in the middle of the road to die.  We were like, “ Hello - come here” trying to get him out of the road. It was a challenging task but we got him to sit down at the bus stop. It turned out his house was about 10 feet away so we took him in to his mom. It’s so sad because he is like a 45 year old man and still lives with his 80 mother.  She started to cry when we brought him in because he is always drunk. It was a sobering experience.  Ya while we were there we shared a thought with him and his mom and invited them to church and told them where the church was. We left, and time passed and we forgot about the drunk man until yesterday.   So back to point of view of Hermana Huber; so we are standing on one side of the gate and him on the other and he is  slurring the question “How do I get in?  Naïve Hermana Portillo says,  “It’s right here come on in.” Hermana Huber said,  “He is so drunk he can’t talk and can barely walk I don’t think bringing him to church right now will help him.” They  brought him in anyways after avoided the kisses he was trying to give them…uncomfortable… meanwhile Hermana Cabezas & I were in the class with Jesus and Pedro (peter) = oh the irony of this whole thing. The door opened and I see the other Hermanas and  this incredible wasted man walk in,  I’m like I’ve seen that nose before (because he got in some crazy drunk fights and his nose literally is like an “S”) and then I remembered who he was. I was like what?!! How the heck did he remember ago to come to church today when the one time we visited him, more like we saved his life, bcuz he was drunk was 2 months ago. I’m thinking why did the other Sisters bring him into the church?  We have children in this class!  Well the damage was done and now we had this drunk guy in the class.  It was going well till the drunk guy wanted to comment;  he wouldn’t stop talking and we couldn’t understand him between his drunk slur and hiccups.  This made Jesus angry and he started fighting with the drunk man. We had to separate them and finally we got some order in the class.  We are all trying not to burst out laughing because the whole thing was so ridiculous.  Well we ended up going over like 3 minutes and of course the room we were using is also the room for the Priesthood brethren for the 3

But ya on a more positive note we an open house in our branch Sunday and so many people came. We gave the tours and we were running around like crazy teaching and got so many references. The branch really came together and it was a success. The bummer thing is all the people who came don’t live in our sector but the elders got some sweet references and it was a neat experience giving tours about the gospel over and over because we could really feel the spirit testifying to us of the truth of the gospel. It was a powerful

experience.

This week was also went to Zone conference  - best ever. One of the things we learned from President was about making your scriptures you own. With your markings, your own testimony, revelations you have received, or words from the modern day prophets. He talked about how from 10 years from now we will not be carrying our mission study journal but we will still have our scriptures. He talked about how he has done this in his life and how they have helped him and others. We all are now striving to make our scriptures ours and to use the conference talks and study them by the scriptures in each talk and writing the words of the prophets next to the scriptures they expounded on. President talked about the importance to slow down while reading our scriptures and really pondering and studying verse by verse.

Together, we studied the parable of the Good Samaritan found in Luke 10. We likened this parable to the Plan of Salvation. In verse 30 the symbols we found are Jerusalem represents the premortal life, and Jericho represents the world in which we live. A man went down or left the premortal life, the man can represent Adam or ourselves,  the robbers represent Satan. When the man fell to the robbers represents the fall of Adam or our own sin.  The man being half dead represents how we can be dead spiritually but not yet physically. The next verse a certain priest represents the Law of Moses, he didn’t help the wounded man because he couldn’t save him, he didn’t have the power to do it and in the next verse, the Levite couldn’t either. In verse 33, a Samaritan represents Jesus Christ; He journeys on the SAME PATH and has compassion on each of us! I know that Christ has gone through what we are going through now. He has gone on the same path as us and knows how to help us! In verse 34 the oil and wine signify the Atonement of our Lord, his own beast is the life of Christ, and the Inn can be a number of things like the Church or the temple, the office of a bishop of mission president  - anywhere we go so our Savior Jesus Christ can take care of us. In verse 35 the two pence symbolizes that we do not have the pay the whole price. In this verse we see that the Samaritan trusted the host to take care of this fallen man. As missionary I need to take care of the people the God puts in my path. Most of them have fallen and he trusts us to take care of them. I know that Christ will return!     

Hermana Jennings