Spiritual Crocodiles‏-Beira, Mozambique

On Monday this week we were invited to a youth fireside/FHE for the Inhamizua Branch. The branch president is a 21 year old missionary, Elder Jacob Lake from Burley, Idaho. The theme was centered on the video Spiritual Crocodiles by President Boyd K. Packer.  Due to technical difficulties and several power outages, we were not able to show the video on the back wall of a member's home.......

First attempt to set up the projector.

 

  

 Elder Thurston and Mom

 

 

     The family well

 

 

   Elder Toyn and Elder Lake working on the screen

 

 

   Elder Lake teaching the 35 youth!!

   

There were 35 + people in this room for about 2 hours. We were sweating for most of the time.

In the April 1976 General Conference, President Boyd K. Packer said:

"Those ahead of you in life have probed about the water holes a bit and raise a voice of warning about crocodiles. Not just the big, gray lizards that can bite you to pieces, but spiritual crocodiles, infinitely more dangerous, and more deceptive and less visible, even, than those well-camouflaged reptiles of Africa.

These spiritual crocodiles can kill or mutilate your souls. They can destroy your peace of mind and the peace of mind of those who love you. Those are the ones to be warned against, and there is hardly a watering place in all of mortality now that is not infested with them.

On another trip to Africa I discussed this experience with a game ranger in another park. He assured me that you can indeed hide a crocodile in an elephant track—one big enough to bite a man in two.

He then showed me a place where a tragedy had occurred. A young man from England was working in the hotel for the season. In spite of constant and repeated warnings, he went through the compound fence to check something across a shallow splash of water that didn’t cover his tennis shoes.

“He wasn’t two steps in,” the ranger said, “before a crocodile had him, and we could do nothing to save him.”

It seems almost to be against our natures, particularly when we are young, to accept much guidance from others. But, young people, there are times when, regardless of how much we think we know or how much we think we want to do something, that our very existence depends on paying attention to the guides.

Now, it is a gruesome thing to think about that young man who was eaten by the crocodile. But that is not, by any means, the worst thing that could happen. There are moral and spiritual things far worse even than the thought of being chewed to pieces by a monstrous lizard.

Fortunately there are guides enough in life to prevent these things from happening if we are willing to take counsel now and again.

Some of us are appointed now, as you will be soon, to be guides and rangers. Now we don’t use those titles very much. We go under the titles of parents—father and mother—bishop, leader, adviser. Our assignment is to see that you get through mortality without being injured by these spiritual crocodiles.

All of the training and activity in the Church has as its central purpose a desire to see you, our young people, free and independent and secure, both spiritually and temporally.

If you will listen to the counsel of your parents and your teachers and your leaders when you are young, you can learn how to follow the best guide of all—the whisperings of the Holy Spirit. That is individual revelation. There is a process through which we can be alerted to spiritual dangers. Just as surely as that guide warned me, you can receive signals alerting you to the spiritual crocodiles that lurk ahead.

If we can train you to listen to these spiritual communications, you will be protected from these crocodiles of life. You can learn what it feels like to be guided from on high. This inspiration can come to you now, in all of your activities, in school, and dating—not just in your Church assignments.

Learn how to pray and how to receive answers to your prayers. When you pray over some things, you must patiently wait a long, long time before you will receive an answer. Some prayers, for your own safety, must be answered immediately, and some promptings will even come when you haven’t prayed at all.

Once you really determine to follow that guide, your testimony will grow and you will find provisions set out along the way in unexpected places, as evidence that someone knew that you would be traveling that way."  (Boyd K. Packer, Spiritual Crocodiles, April 1976)

 Here is a photo of us with two other senior couples. On the left is Sister Ann and Elder Daryl Hobson, Elder Larry and Sister Sandi Dille and Us:)

 I Love You!