Week # 18 Day of the Kings

As I mentioned in a previous post, gifts are exchanged in Mexico on January 6, el Día de los Reyes (Day of the Kings or Magi's ) and not on Christmas Day. Día de los Reyes marks the Bible account of wisemen from the east giving gifts (gold, frankincense and myrrh) to the Christ child some time after his birth, consistent with His many titles, of which King of Kings is one.  What to our surprise, Sister Schlachter and I received a  gift and a very kind, handwritten note from Melchor, Gaspar and Baltazar, the same three kings of old (Melchor a king of Persia, Gaspar a king of India and Baltazar a king of Arabia or perhaps Ethiopia). 

It says, "Elder and Sister Schlachter. Congratulations on your desire to come here to serve and love so many of our sisters and brothers in Mexico. We all feel the love of Jesus Christ through your service.  Like us, you continue to testify of Him because this is His work.  Enjoy your cookies, you've been good children." 

With Día de los Reyes, families and friends share a special decorated sweet bread in the shape of a circle and represents a be-jeweled king's crown, called a "rosca de reyes".  Small plastic baby Jesus figurines (muñecas) are embedded in the cake representing His being hidden from Herod and the kings not disclosing his whereabouts (the little fellow on the cake below looks a lot like the little manneken pis guy in Brussels). If your slice has one (eat carefully), you are tasked with making tamales for a follow-up party on February 2, el día de la calendaria, when the Christ child is dressed to be presented at the temple.  

There were five muñecas in the rosca de reyes. Neither Sister Schlachter nor I had one in our piece of bread so we get to simply enjoy the tamales on February 2 instead of also making them. My mom used to wrap coins in waxed paper and cook them into birthday cakes - one of the surprises was swallow by my brother Greg.  She took him to the doctor and the advice was to just wait for it to pass - a messy wait. I think that ended the practice of hiding coins in cakes. 

One of my habits is to read scriptures every day, usually in the morning. On Sunday something that stood out to me was, "For how knoweth a man the master whom he has not served, and who is a stranger unto him, and is far from the thoughts and intents of his heart. And again, doth a man take an ass which belongeth to his neighbour, and keep him? I say unto you, Nay; he will not even suffer that he shall feed among his flocks, but will drive him away and cast him out. I say unto you, that even so shall it be among you if ye know not the name by which ye are called." (Mosiah 5: 13-14)

The scripture reminded me of going with dad to fix a portion of a shared barbed wire fence that the neighbour wouldn't fix themselves. On the prairies where I grew up, when you are facing a shared fence, the half to your right is your responsibility to keep maintained. The neighbour's yearlings had rubbed a couple of poorly set fence posts down on his half of the fence and then walked over the fence to graze in dad's wheat field as there wasn't any grass left in the neighbour's pasture that bordered our field.  Like the scripture, we drove the animals out and fixed the fence to keep them out. The adage, "good fences make good neighbours" still rings true.  Ask me sometime about one of our neighbours in Gatineau Quebec and the fence between us...

In our fast and testimony meeting later that same morning a fellow bore his testimony about the answer he received to the challenge in the final chapter of The Book of Mormon, "Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read then, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things and ponder it in your hearts. And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heat, with real intent having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you by the power of the Holy Ghost." (Moroni 10:3-4)  He missed most of his seminary classes that year on the Book of Mormon and had not kept up with the reading assignments and wouldn't pass the course which would limit the number of countries that might accept him as a missionary.  Some countries require formal ecclesiastical training to qualify for a visa as a missionary. He said he read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover that summer as his seminary teacher promised him if he completed the readings, she would allow him to pass the course. And he prayed daily to know if it was true.  

He said he was expecting as miraculous an answer as Joseph Smith the prophet of the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ received. He finished reading the entire book and prayed fervently one last time.  To his disappointment, the heavens did not open. He mistakenly decided that the Book of Mormon must not be true, that it must be a fabrication and there would be no point in serving a mission. The next day was a fast and testimony meeting. His Bishop bore his testimony about how the Holy Ghost testifies of truth, something along the lines of we receive His promptings when necessary to keep us on the right course to become like the Saviour Jesus Christ. The Bishop then shared an analogy. If you were told to go from where you were standing to the door that you could see at the other end of the room - you wouldn't need any further instruction would you. This fellow said that when he heard the Bishop's testimony he understood that from a very young age he had known the Book of Mormon was true and that he had been guided by the Holy Ghost his entire life - he already knew enough about the master he served and didn't need a miraculous vision to confirm what he already knew.

I have learned so much from the Book of Mormon over last 36 years. Even, if you are not prone to be a person of faith, its teaching, precepts and principles are life changing.