Hi everybody! It's been another good week!
Last
Wednesday was mission conference. All hundred and something
missionaries in the St. George Mission were there. I got to see my MTC
district again, so that was really cool! We received our iPad training,
but we don't get the iPads until a week or so. There were two general
authorities, both Seventies, Elder Gregory Schwitzer, and another one
whose name I can't remember. Elder Schwitzer actually spoke at the MTC
while I was there, and I actually got to meet him and shake his hand on
Wednesday. He taught a cool way to look at our progression in keeping
the commandments. It is as follows:
What - What is this commandment telling me to do?
Why - (common among teenagers) Why should I obey this commandment?
Want - I want to obey the commandments and please God.
Within - The commandments have been internalized and are essentially within the person.
He also shared Elder Bednar's lesson on agency, which will take too long to explain here, so maybe another time.
My
investigators are doing really well! Jason has gained a testimony that
President Monson is a prophet, Monica is coming to church, Isabel has a
baptismal date set for later this month, Esmarelda is keeping the Word
of Wisdom and doing everything else she's supposed to...it is really
awesome! A lot of them have weird situations though preventing them from
being baptized right now. One is a foster kid who need's the mom's
permission to baptized, but that situation is pretty messed up, one is a
former FLDS and so has a long interview process ahead, including an
interview with the mission president and a general authority, usually
one of the Seventy. Another investigator is currently living with her
super anti-Mormon parents, so we can't even meet at their house, but
she wants to be baptized, another wants to be baptized but is afraid of
water (yeah, that happened)... there's a lot of weird situations, but I
guess with so many golden investigators, something had to be a
challenge! :) It's going really well though, despite the weird
situations of some of them.
On Saturday, for
the first time in my mission, I had to drop an investigator. Long story
short, he was an atheist but had agreed to meet with us. We taught a
lesson about why we believe what we believe, and that went okay, but our
second lesson bombed. All he wanted to do was argue over obscure events
in the Bible and "why we would believe in a God that does [insert
stupid complaint here]. One can't come to know God if all he does is
criticize Him over things he doesn't understand and often isn't even the
work of God so much the work of men. Can you imagine if we tried to
talk to each other like that. When you want to get to know someone, you
don't start by criticizing them and giving reasons why it wouldn't make
sense to meet them at all, unless of course you don't actually want to
get to know them. Basically what it boiled down to was that this
investigator doesn't WANT to believe, and all his arguing was just a
feeble attempt at finding a way to disprove God, or at least justify not
believing or wanting to believe in Him. We answered all his questions,
and we shared our testimonies, and I actually felt the Spirit present
despite this guy's antics, but we was not willing to listen. So we won't
be going back there any time soon. It makes me sad. But I guess we
can't win them all.
I got my first church
speaking assignment! I spoke yesterday on the joy of saving souls. It
was basically about missionary work and temple work and the joy it
brings in this life and the next. It was really good! The cool thing is
that I didn't really know what to speak on when I got the assignment
(the topic I was assigned was 'joy") and as I was praying about how to
prepare it, I instantly knew what I should talk about, and it was
awesome!
Well that's all for today. It's been a
really good week. I'm so happy to be a missionary for the Lord! I miss
you guys. I hope you all have a great week!
-Elder Oswald
No comments:
Post a Comment