Alright, due to my lack of e-mail on moday, I'm sure rumours are abounding. So in case you were wondering, I have not been shot, stabbed, or deported. My kidneys are still in place, and the people here are not rioting. Haha, I was at a missionary leadership conference from monday to wednesday 7:00 am to 5:00 pm roughly. So my P-day got switched to thursday. Which is kind of awesome because then I get a P-day in 4 days! Man transfers are in like 2 weeks holy smokes!
So our p-days here have been kind of stinky, because we don't have a lot of miles in the car left for the month, so we haven't been able to do a lot of crazy stuff. Today though, we are doing something called capaeirua (or something like that) it's Half Dance, Half Martial Art, and 100% Brazilian. AKA Brazilian Dance Fighting! Some member owns a studio, so ya, it's going to be sweet.
One thing I will say to make people jealous, Is that I eat Cookie Crisp for breakfast every morning. Ha! Try and find that in Canada!
This week I got my first 2 ties that I didn't come out with. A recent convert gave me one, and I went and bought another at Burlington Coat Factory. It's a sweet tie. So sweet that some protestant guy complimented me on it when we tracted into him. He didn't get baptized though.
I met a guy this week that is a Green Beret, Special Forces. He's done it all: Dropped down from a helicopter like in the movies, done tons of parachute jumps, and numerous tours of duty in places he can't talk about. That's the interesting thing about Colorado Springs: At first, I was all like "No WAY!" when people mentioned they had recently returned from afghanistan/iraq, but now it's just like "oh cool". Pretty much everyone here is in the military and hates Obama, which is quite funny sometimes.
I'm getting used to all the excuses that people say to us when we tract into them. The most common one is, "i'm too busy" Well one lady gave that one to us, and my companion noticed she was playing a flash online pool game on addictinggames.com. She had just started. One thing about pool is you can take a break in between turns. I just laughed.
We have been working with a Mother her son that have close ties with a member family. The boy has been going to church for many years and wants to be baptized, but the mother wanted to be there to hear the lessons and make sure her son knew what he was getting in to. Little did she know that (in the words of Admiral Ackbar) "It's a Trap!" She and her son are now getting baptized on the 17th of October. We converted her as well. The amazing thing was, even though the lessons are very irrevrent because of the children, the spirit was so strong when we taught lesson 3, that she couldn't have said no, even if she wanted to! I told you, it was a trap. A very spiritual Trap.
And now to the less spiritual part of the letter, the bash. I could go into a play-by-play, but I won't. Suffice it to say, that we street contacted (ITL-Invite To Learn) a younger looking man, and said "Hey, we see that you are on your way, can we leave you with a pass along card?". We started talking about the church, and turns out he's doing a bible study at another church. We went through Exaltation, Additional Scripture to the bible, Authority, but mostly exaltation. I'm glad for his sake he didn't bring up "saved by grace". Basically, the gist of it was that we talked about how we knew the book of mormon was true, and he told us that our witness came from satan. Apparently Satan can manipulate the fruits of the spirit as mentioned in Galatians, and God will then JOIN IN! God will then make our deception more real, because he loves us so much. He will actively lead us into temptation. We just shook our heads. The bash lasted 2 hours. 2 hours of the Lords time completely wasted. So that's why it was my first and last bash, because I realized how useless they are.
Actually, like the other churches are a lot like CNN: They manipulate the source material, and take everything out of context. Here is an example of what it would be like if I did it with the Book of Mormon, check out 1 Nephi 11, Look at verse 10, and skip down to verse 15, ignoring all the other verses in between. ya, it's funny, but it's also a very real thing that all the other churches around here do.
Another funny thing that happened this week, was some other elders in the district broke into our apartment, and stole my Star Wars tie. Now, at first I was angry, but on church on sunday, the choir got up and I noticed that one of the members of the choir was wearing my tie. I was made very happy. In a way, it's like baptisms for the dead: I can't perform the ordinance, so someone else does it for me. The tie is going to be given to a different member each week, so I will always get to see it worn!
And finally, back to spiritual stuff. We are teaching a refugee family from Liberia (civil war). They have been baptized and are recent converts. The mom speaks very little english, and the father speaks none. In fact, he speaks a tribal dialect from Liberia, that is actually an unwritten language. So there is no way he can read anything. So our lessons are always fairly inventive, always requiring objects. Right now, we are trying to explain the melchizedek priesthood while his wife translates, so he can go to the temple. Now, they are so poor, that they went without their phone last month so their son could buy shoes, but they are literally the happiest people I have ever met on the face of the earth. But unfortunately, every time we go over there, the mother makes some kind of food for us, and we usually go right after dinner. If you know anything about me, once I've eaten, I'm full, and if I eat anything else, I will vomit. So we go over there after dinner one night, and she made a cornbread cake/bread thing for us. How am I supposed to turn it down? It was a gift! It was probably the most difficult thing I've done on my mission, trying to choke it down without throwing up, trying to keep a straight face, and not offend them. The fun times you look forward too on a mission. Lowest card is one thing. I've eaten straight cottage cheese with nothing on it and barely blinked. (I hate cottage cheese with a fiery passion). But when I have to eat more when I'm full, look out. But this family is such a wonderful family that I can't turn it down. But you know what? The spirit doesn't recognize language barriers. Our lessons there are very spiritual affairs. So you can take that to the bank.
Elder Kilgore says Hi. he's looking over my shoulder, and wants to go shopping. So i'd better end this quickly. Courtney, if you want a missionary to write to, Elder Kilgore is your man. He looks like a cross between Ryan Seacrest and the Old Spice guy, with a little bit of Orlando Bloom mixed in, sprinkled with Zach Efron. Also, it would make mom and dad really annoyed if you were writing a guy that's going to be an RM in about 5 months. Haha. So send some pictures please! Actually though, I would appreciate some pictures.
Elder Gibb.
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