So this week was pretty good. We had a ton of Yellow Dots, who are people that are supposedly interested. So we spent a few days just visiting/contacting each one, trying to clean it up so we actually know who's interested. Which has been sort of brutal, because we dropped a lot of people, but also good, because we can better see who's interested. It's kind of ridiculous how many people accidentally request the missionaries to come over. Like I'm surprised whenever they're like, "yeah I did that." They're almost always confused when we come over. But I'll just talk about probably my favorite thing that's happened this week.
Anti (sorry this is long)
So, idk if I've written about him before, but there was the guy that Elder Rochelle and I met in my first transfer. He is a missionary for another church, and he just came up to us while we were studying. That was the one and only day we've every done our studies in public. We were by this coffee shop place. Anyways, that first visit, he was like "you tell me what you believe, and I'll tell you what I believe." And we had an amazing 3 hour discussion, where we just went in depth about the restoration, the plan of salvation, and the gospel of Jesus Christ. We explored scripture references for everything and went to different translations of the Bible, and it was just so hype. And then he vanished and we didn't see him for a few months. Apparently he was traveling doing missionary work, but then he came back and Elder Ball and I met with him in his home and walked mainly about the Book of Mormon. We had another amazing conversation, and I was just blown away with Elder Ball. He taught so powerfully, and I was like "dang, I wanna teach like that." It's really funny, he's meeting with us for 2 reasons: we might be right, and he might be right. We can't both be right, but we both think we're right. So he's lowkey trying to convert us, but also I think he's slowly realizing we might be the true church of Jesus Christ. He took a Book of Mormon, and said hed read it. After our lesson (with Elder Ball), he sent us a few anti-mormon videos... but it's ok because my testimony has been strengthened a bunch from it! We watched one "proving" Joseph Smith is a false prophet using the book of Abraham, one with the JST of the Bible, and one about how we have the same vocabulary, but a different dictionary. So we say things, but we don't actually mean what we say. They were pretty interesting, and I was kind of shook for a bit, but last P-day, I got to talk to my Dad, and he explained a ton about the Book of Abraham, and history around how it came to be, and I was like "ok." I was able to see where the guy (Mike Winger) had messed things up, and everything just made so much sense. There were a lot of things he said I already knew just weren't true, but some things I thought were true, and some were true. Anyways, I'll just skip to our last lesson, where we talked about the JST. This was cool and we were able to explain our beliefs about the Bible. He thinks the Bible is perfect, meaning without ANY flaws, and so we showed him a contradiction in Sauls conversion story. He was taken aback by that, and asked for time to think and look into it. We've all agreed that we should focus on more critical matters than the JST, and the Apocrypha though, so next time we are going to discuss the Nature of God (Trinity or Godhead). It was really funny because he told us he believes in the Trinity, and then proceeded to show US how in Genesis 1, the beginning of the Bible, it literally says: "And God said, Let us make man in OUR image". Verse 26. He put an emphasis on the word our, and told us how it sounds like God might be more than 1 person. And I was like "Careful there... you're starting to sound like a Mormon." We all laughed at that. But yeah he said he's going to find a video to explain the Trinity, we're going to send him something about the Godhead, and then we're going to meet on Wednesday to discuss it. And I'm so excited.
Anyways, just one takeaway from that (there are many) was if you find something that seems to contradict a belief into our church, look into it. Don't just take it at face value, figure it out. If the church is true, it can handle scrutiny, and it'll still be true. If it's really true, then if you really look into the claims, you'll come out with a stronger testimony because it's true. You just have to do some studying, thinking, and if it's true, it'll still be true. I feel like I used too many words to say that, lol. Ok bye guys! I love you all.
- Elder Wride
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