Day 5, Jan 30, Hot Springs Arkansas (Nat'l Park #1)

 It's lovely to stay in one place for a couple of days, and why not at Hot Springs National Park in the beautiful Gulpha Gorge Campground.  We began our Sabbath with a major tender mercy which is described below.  Found a ward to attend for a couple of hours, and I love that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is consistently taught from congregation to congregation around the world.  Our bishops, teachers, and leaders both local and general are not motivated to entertainment or employ other tactics to maintain a membership.  The church of the Lord is not beholden to modern nor convenient ideas but rather to the preaching of God's laws designed only to bless us.  Church today with the local saints was lovely and spiritually rewarding.  

We are committed to keeping the Sabbath day holy throughout these 8 months.  As such, we will not shop nor participate in commercial enterprise on Sundays.  After church, we walked along the stellar Bathhouse Row of Hot Springs where sit eight old bathhouses dating back to the 1890's.  Only two remain as functioning bathhouses, one of which we will visit tomorrow to "take the waters."  We strolled the promenade, rocked on porches to people watch, then returned to our campsite to cook dinners and study the Old Testament and plan tomorrow.  The weather is lovely, sunny, and warm.  Bambi continues to serve us well.  The bed is luscious, the shower hot and roomy, the kitchen all we need.  It's a cozy sweet place for two lover/companions to explore the US.

Good deed of the day:  We are ever watchful for opportunities, finally lighting on a couple.  A street musician of great talent had collected only small change; we decided to be generous and dropped him a $10 bill without his catching us.  I hope it makes his day.  We also watched as a very elderly lady hobbled slowly past us, obviously a local wending her way home with a small sack in her purchase.  We offered her a ride home knowing that she really shouldn't accept lifts from strangers.  She politely declined but was nonetheless appreciative of our offer saying she had less than a block to home.  

Three amazing things:  1-No matter where we find ourselves in the world, there is always a body of saints who worship as we do and who open their hearts to us.  2-Touring a bathhouse museum, we discovered that it was quite common 80 years ago to use electrico-mechanical devices on people of means to treat such ailments as jaundice, obesity, and even advanced syphilis.  Mention was made that nobody died of electrocution.  Now that is amazing.  3- We've been boondocking in 17-19 degree overnight places.  Last night Aaron was finally able to hook up to water and sewer only to discover a rather dreadful drip from Bambi.  He spent a restless night agitated and worrying over which pipe froze and broke and how to get it repaired.  Airstream dealerships are not plentiful nor convenient to our travels, and they make repair appointments weeks in advance.  It was a distressing situation we found ourselves in and only increased throughout the evening.  I wasn't happy about the idea of having to take a week or two out to repair this; we'd miss so many planned national parks and temples.  Well, this morning I felt an urge to have my daily private prayer, so I ducked into our tiny bathroom to sit on the john and utter a prayer.  I asked the Lord to guide us to where we can get the leak repaired and return to our agenda.  Immediately upon my Amen, I heard a splash, looked behind the toilet, and found a drip where a simple joint was not tight.  The water was running down to the back of the trailer and dripping out at our hookups where Aaron thought it originated.  All he needed to do was simply tighten a loose joint, and our leaking trailer was healed.  I am completely overwhelmed with how merciful the Lord consistently is to me.  He inspired me to pray so He could direct me to the solution to our worries.  Why the Lord is always so good to me, I cannot explain.  Aaron has gleefully chuckled all day.