Elder VanBuskirk: Derek: Captain's Log: Boche

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.