Hello family and friends!
This week was alright. There was still a lot of tracting with very little success. However, we did find one new investigator! His name is David. He actually let us in and asked for a lesson right off the bat.
We had a really good lesson about the Restoration and he seemed really interested, even a little enthused. We have a return appointment in two weeks. We also did a lot of service. We had our weekly service project for a couple hours helping Jose, a less active working with the Spanish Elders and our senior couple, getting the giant weeds out of his yard. The next day we had a service project cancel so we spent a half hour stacking wood for our landlord.
I heard the sad news that Boyd K. Packer of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles died a few days ago. That made me really sad. He is a great man. But I am happy for him. He was so aged and tired. He is in a better place now, and he deserves his rest. Him and Elder Perry. With them gone though, there are two vacancies in the Quorum of the Twelve. I am curious to see who President Monson will call to fill those vacancies.
Our mission boundaries are officially changed. The Provo mission took Delta, Nephi, and the Price Zone.
On Independence Day we did over 5 hours of service. He helped set up chairs in the park in Cedar City, and then after the parade was over we helped run booths at the park, basically little games for the kids. Elder Spencer and I started out helping with the darts game (yeah, give a kids sharp object and tell them to throw it, sounds like a great idea) with Elder Bennett and Elder Howard, but then Elder Spencer and Elder Bennett were recruited to help with the fish pond so we had a mini "exchange" and Elder Howard and I ran the darts game. That was scary! I was the one who was collecting the darts after each kid was done, and putting up more balloons as they got popped. The
only problem is some of the kids didn't feel like waiting for me to get out of the way before they were about to toss their darts. I almost got stabbed a couple times. That was scary! But nobody got hurt. So that's good!
After service, this preacher guy came up to us and started talking to us. He was talking with us for a while and it was a good conversation, and then Elder Bennett and Elder Spencer went to do something else. The guy was mostly asking just asking us questions so Elder Howard and I tried our best to answer them. He usually wouldn't let us actually answer his questions though. So it started to get kind of annoying. But it was still an alright conversation. Then he just started outright bible-bashing. That's when we knew to abort the conversation and let this preacher be. We respect other people's beliefs, and we are not supposed to argue. If they won't respect our beliefs, then we leave them alone. It was almost entertaining though because he really wasn't making a good argument. He seemed kind of like a flustered Kirby vacuum salesman. He was arguing semantics half of the time, and when he was actually trying to argue doctrine, he kept contradicting himself. It seemed like his biggest problem with the LDS church was our belief about the Plan of Salvation. Apparently, God's Plan of Happiness and what not didn't sit right with him. He was preaching fire and brimstone all the way (I almost started to wonder if he was excited for it). I was just thinking to myself "wow, you must be fun to have at funerals". Anyway, after he started bashing, we tried to get out as soon as possible (we are called to teach, not to argue), and after a few minutes we found an excuse to stop talking to him and we got out of there.
Elder Spencer accidentally left his iPad on a member's truck, so we spent an hour or so with the Canyonview Elders trying to track down the member so we could get the iPad back. We found it just fine, we just had a bit of an adventure going all over Cedar City to find the right house.
Not much else happened on Independence Day. I will say though, I am super grateful for this nation we have, and the liberty we enjoy. Though I don't agree with everything the government does, at heart, the USA is still the greatest nation in the world. God raised up this nation for a great purpose. We really are blessed to be part of it.
That's all for this newsletter. Have a great week!
-Elder Oswald
No comments:
Post a Comment