Alrighty y'all. We got another week
of juice for everyone to delight in.
So, do you guys remember Manuel
from last week? You know the whole, no one knows the color of Jesus thing? Well,
we got a part 2 for you. So I'm a really slow typer, but my comp isn't, so I'm
just going copy and paste what he wrote to save me time. So FYI when he says
his comp he means me because his Spanish is still new so I did pretty much all
the talking.
"So I'm gonna start with an
update to last week's email of a story that happened on Sunday. So I didn't
include it in last week's email. So we were teaching a man named Manuel, and I
kinda talked about how he knows a whole lot about the Bible, but has himself a
little bit of what we call a hard heart when it comes to learning new things.
Now, last Sunday we had ourselves a very interesting encounter with Manuel. We
decided to go over and continue to teach him about the Gospel because it
appeared like he wanted to continue to hear from us, and we're here to teach.
So he believes that "the people are the church", which makes minimal
sense because Christ teaches about baptism, and without authority in a set-up
church, there is no way someone can receive baptism by the actual authority of God.
If the people were the church, there would be no organization, and that is
against the nature of God. We tried our hardest to present it to Manuel like
that, but he kinda held his beliefs to his heart, and would not let us really
do anything about that. One big question he had was "Why do you (members
of the church) practice the Sabbath day on Sunday, and not on Saturday as the
bible suggests (God rested on the 7th day)?" So we responded with how the
Church views it with, "Well, the apostles practiced the Sabbath Day on the
day that Christ was resurrected. The real reason for this is because before the
resurrection, the biggest thing Christ had done for us was create the Earth,
thus making the 7th day of rest, the day we practiced it. After he was
sacrificed and resurrected for us, that became the biggest thing He had done
for us, and it was thus changed." Now, Manuel would not take this answer
for some reason. Just wanted nothing to do with it. But we continued to try to
teach him about the restored Gospel, and all the things we are able to learn
through it in the present day. We testified of Joseph Smith to try to get
there, but Manuel wanted nothing to do with Joseph Smith. He told us, "I
have read the Bible from Genesis to Revelations, and I have never seen the name
Joseph Smith once in any of those books." So we thought that was a pretty
dumb response and my comp goes, "How many times did it say 'Jesus Christ'
in the Old Testament?" The answer is zero times. The answer is zero times
because, and we told him this, "If the Old Testament said exactly, 'The
Messiah will be called Jesus Christ', then everyone would have named their
child Jesus Christ in hopes of him being the Christ." We asked him if he
understood and he said, "well yea, that makes sense, but it still never
says Joseph Smith in the Bible." And we're like "yeah, that's our
point. If the Bible said that in the last days there would be a prophet named
Joseph Smith, everyone and their dog would name their kid Joseph Smith."
But he kept kinda mocking us in believing this, just because the bible didn't
explicitly say the name of the present day prophets. We told him that you can
find out whether a prophet is true "by their fruits" as says the
Bible. One of the fruits of the Prophet Joseph Smith is the Book of Mormon, so
if he would pray about that book, he could come to find whether Joseph Smith
was a prophet. So we go, "Look, we don't even ask you to take our word for
it. We want you to pray to God Himself to ask Him if it is true. As human
beings, we have the ability to lie, but God does not. We promise you that if
you ask Him, He will not lie to you." and he says, "well I don't
believe in that book, so why would I pray about it?" and we go, "to
find that belief." He says "no, God isn't gonna tell me that that
book is true so I'm not gonna pray about it." Now at this point, the
hardness of heart here got my comp goin' pretty good. But at the same time, he
was diplomatic about it, which I expected pretty good. He goes, "Okay,
let's suggest this then. If God Himself was here with us in this very room
right now, and looked at you and said 'The Book of Mormon is a true book.',
would you follow its precepts?" When we asked him this question, he kinda
went off on something else so my comp stopped him and said, "no, it's a
yes or no question. Yes, or no?" and he said, "No." Also, his
friend was off to the side a little bit, and Manuel kept mocking us to him
about or belief in this "Joseph Smith" to his riend which was super
annoying. So at this point, there is legitimately no way we can work with that
hardness of heart. So my comp asks, "may I share one last scripture with
you before we go?" and they say yes. So he pops out 2 Nephi 29, and starts
at verse six which says "Thou fool, that shall say: A bible, we have got a
bible and we need no more bible." Christ goes onto say something to the
effect of "What? You don't wanna hear more of My word? You don't want to
learn more of Me?" My comp read 6 entire verses of that scripture. It ends
with this simple message from God, "Wherefore, because that ye have a
bible, ye need not suppose that it contains all my words. Neither need ye
suppose that I have not caused more to be written." So we read that, left
them with a strong testimony, and left them before we got heated. I promise
y'all it wasn't heated, we were just very confused by how ridiculous that response
was. But there you go. That's our encounter with Manuel. It started with hope
for a better lesson, and ended with tellng him off pretty good."
I would just like to say I testify to
the words of my comp. But seriously, it was insane. I really don't like going
of on people like that, as I said in my last email. I tried t keep it civil but
due to the hardness of their hearts I had to be direct about it. The meaning
for the term “hard of heart” is that the as we teach some one the Holy Ghost
will literary go up to the heart of a person and be ready to testify the
truthfulness of our words. And that's amazing, but God allows our agency, the
Spirit will only enter our hearts once we let it. These guys had very hardened
hearts to not be willing to change their mind if God himself said it was true.
Obviously this is a very extreme example, but we must constantly be willing to
be open to the guidance of the spirit even if it's something that we initially
didn't want to do. I and my comp can both testify that as I read those
scriptures in the Book of Mormon I felt a strong power in my voice and that my
comp and I both felt the Spirit testify to our hearts that our words and that
this book was true, and I could never deny that. I really hope that they may be
able to humble themselves enough to get on their knees and just ask God if The
Book of Mormon is true. Because I know that if they did that that they would
know with the same surety that I know that this book truly is Another Testament
of Jesus Christ. I hope they do this because lately I feel like I am condemning
more people then I am saving.
So that's how our week started but
it did get progressivly better as it went. For example Tuesday was fantastic
solely for the fact that we got running water back in the house after 3 whole
weeks straight of bucket showers. Also while we were waiting for our ward
mission leader to come our meeting we talked with these girls who were
reference from the other missionaries in our building. They have already been
to church a bunch of times and are legit interested. Anyway it was funny
because as we were talking to them one of their brothers walked up to me and
said, "Hello. I'm Oscar and I am ten years old. When can you baptize
me?" I was like, "Wow, Wow!! Hold your horses bud. I barley know
you." No, I told them that if we can come by and teach them a bit and the
go to church we can baptize them in no time at all. And he told me he wanted me
to baptize him that Saturday, but we just ended up having a lesson with the 4
of them in total. It went well until the end when we told them that because of
where they lived they had to go to church at 8 instead of 10. They didn't like
that one bit. But after some convincing they finally said that they would come
with us at 8. So, that next morning as church started we noticed that they
weren't there. But, as we were leaving the church at ten we saw them entering
the church. I think at first they hoped that we didn't see them, but as we were
walking near we saw the face of panic and pure embarrassed. (Let's just say
that it was very similar to all the looks that our investigators gave us every
time we caught them drinking alcohol this week.) So that was kinda funny, but I
feel like they will get baptized very soon.
Also this week we passed by and
taught 2 converts who are friends Jose-Antonio and Jeran. They also had a
friend with them named Josdaniel. He was super cool and super interested. We
taught him about the plan of salvation and left the pamphlet of lesson one with
him. When we came back he told us he read everything and really liked it, and
plus the lesson went well as well. So we left him a baptism date for the end of
this month so lets see what happens.
Other things that happened: We
contacted a Dutch guy who is a music teacher and a composer. He knows like 5
languages and being Dutch and he got a pretty good kick out of my name.
Maria-Lisa, an investigator that we had with a baptismal date planned for next
week was told that she can't change work schedule so she can go to church,
which means we have to postpone her baptism until further notice. Also that
orange car that I said I saw a lot of, well let's just say I saw 47 of that
same car today.
Thanks everyone. See ya
later.
Splits with elder Palmer last week
Dominicans spelling things wrong
I’m on Mom. And
by the way, I love looking at art.
Thanks mom, and can you send me a pic
of the pinball machine please.
That’s super dope! Thanks mom. Gotta go. Love
you.
