"And whoso recieveth me there I will be also, for I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up."
-Docterine and Covenants 84:88
That scripture was of special significance on my mission. When I think back to my mission, there is no reason I shouldn't have been more scared. Although there were so many nice people, bad things could have happened. And sometimes there were things that DID scare us. But we were always watched over and protected. I especially have bad memories of dogs.
They are everywhere, and most of them wouldn't bother us. But some of them seemed almost evil. Seriously. As missionaries on bikes, we learned a lot of ways to get dogs away from us. I remember my heart beating so fast after dogs would start chasing us trying to bite at our legs. We would slam on our brakes really fast and that would usually scare them off, or sometimes we would even have to kick at them. And who knows what kind of diseases those dogs carried... some of them were awful sick... and I didn't have the heart to take pictures of those dogs.
11-14-2002
(Summary from my journal)
I hadn't been in Thailand for more than two weeks, and Sister Knapp and I were walking trying to find people to talk to. We started noticing that this medium sized black dog was following us. And not just following us but growling and barking as if he were after us. It was really really scary. It seemed so evil to me- like, it could have had red eyes or something. It didn't, but it just seemed like one of those really scary dogs you would see in a horror film. All of our normal tactics like throwing a rock, moving really fast or pretending we were about to hit it weren't working. IT wasn't bothering anyone else- it was after US. We finally stopped and decided to say a prayer. We both kept our eyes open and kept an eye on the dog which I would say was about 15 feet away from us. As we said the prayer, something happened. The dog started walking away. It would turn around a little and bark, but it was walking away. Relieved, we started walking again. As soon as we started walking again, it turned around yet again headed toward us. So we both started praying in our hearts. Again, the dog turned around. Hearts beating fast, we continued to pray until the dog was completely out of sight and we never saw it again.
As if that weren't enough, we had yet another encounter with mean dogs that day. Sister Knapp sure was brave! We were once again walking when we saw about 10 dogs together... 5 of them, HUGE dogs, came out of their cages and started barking at us. Can you believe it? They could have killed us! I was so scared... but I remember Sister Knapp saying to the dogs "Go home" and I'm not sure if she said it in English or Thai because I didn't specify in my journal, but as soon as she said that the dogs went back.
Thinking back, I am so grateful for the danger we were able to avoid. I know without a doubt that God was watching over us and protecting us.
