I got DUMPED at the laundramat!!
Meg, how was your birthday?!?! I want to hear about it. I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU ARE 18! Stop freaking me out.
It was so bizarre. I have never been dumped in a laundromat before :)
Ken is one of my FAVORITE investigators right now. He is an older man in his 70s, and he has the best sense of humor! He has been anti-ed REALLY badly, and all of his neighbors have been ganging up on him since he has been meeting with sister missionaries (and they are all different religions!). The poor guy has been completely beat upon, and I am not going to exclude us missionaries from the beating :) He just needs to read the Book of Mormon and pray to know if it is true, and he won't do it! Instead, he talks to others who tell him all about us, and he goes on these websites that disprove the Book of Mormon by historical fact. He is so smart- he knows Korean and German, has traveled the world and has done everything you could think of- and so his intellectual side is having a difficult time with this mountain of 'facts' disproving the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He is so funny though- he knows more about us and the missionary's lives than any other investigator. He uses all the Mormon lingo- he even calls himself an investigator- and in his spare time he reads the White Missionary Handbook, Preach My Gospel, and True to the Faith. He even asks us to take certain questions he has to our district meeting so we can return and report on his concerns and roleplay for him! Haha, the guy knows way too much about everything! He is so good natured and fun to be around. It is really sad, because we have been having really powerful spiritual lessons, where his concerns seem to be relieved and he resolves to just read the Book of Mormon, but then when we leave he says these ideas come to his mind that these things can't be true, and his neighbors aren't helping the matter (they come and purposely interrupt our lessons when they see our car outside). This experience has really made me realize the need for personal revelation. There is no way that we can take people's words for gospel truth. In the end, the only way for us to truly know something is for us to take action, study it out and pray. It is strange how calm I feel about dropping him. If this were at the beginning of my mission, I would have freaked out, because I know how close he is to finding the truth (he knows it already, he just won't admit it to himself). But I have come to see the power in letting people find this out for themselves. I know that is the only way that he will find what he is looking for, and at this point we have taught him all that we can and brought the spirit as much as we could into his home. At some point, there has to be agency so they can learn and choose for themselves. It has been a hard, but neat lesson to learn. I hope he can see/feel the difference in these next few weeks.
This area has been incredible- it is exploding with new investigators, and I have been loving it! Normally finding is my favorite thing, but Sister Tok is pretty good at it, and it is amazing how much you can learn to enjoy something when you think of the 'why' behind what you are doing. Finding people to share the truth and eternal salvation with seems like a pretty good motivator :)
I LOVE missionary work, I LOVE this area, and I DO NOT love bed bugs. Some people are getting them in the mission. Sick. Nasty. Disgusting. We better not get them.
LOVE YOU ALL!
Sister Kimber Mahrt
No comments:
Post a Comment