March 27, 2017

If there's one thing I've come to find true on my mission it is that the apostasy is real. If there's anything I've come to dislike on my mission it would be the apostasy. It makes us look ridiculous and is the cause for many people becoming atheist as there are so many contradictions leading to confusion and flat out ridiculousness. For example, there's a "telepastor" that I heard of around here just the other day that is going around on TV (Heleman 13:26-28) doing all these things and everyone likes him because he's doing all these "miracles" and there's no commitment involved. He said for every dollar donated to him, he will save a soul. He's at 70,000 saved souls and the goal is 5 million. This is wrong on so many levels. But no one questions it (again, Heleman 13:26-28). When people look at us and ridicule us because we're weird and peculiar (Deuteronomy 14:2) it's just because everyone else has gone so far off the beaten path in the course of 2000 years that the original things are no longer generally accepted. So when the apostles were killed the authority to act in Christ's name and receive revelation for the whole church was gone. Well if any of you have played a game of telephone, you know that by the time the message gets back around it is not the same at attached, even though the intentions were good. Now multiply that times 2000 years. If you haven't played it, then it's like a steering wheel. Imagine you're in a car and suddenly the steering wheel disappears. Well as time goes on and the world (road) around you changes and swerves, you will find yourself very far off the road. So without that authority, apostasy is inevitable. I won't get into the details of the actual documented history of apostasy because it can come off as me trying to disprove and disown other churches. But, if you want to know a brief overview then I will attach a file. 

However, this is why the authority and prophets are so vital to Christ's church. Amos 3:7 says that "surely the Lord God will do nothing save it be through his servants the prophets," and if he's the same yesterday today and forever, then it would make sense that prophets should still be around.

Monday:

Guys...I had fried ice cream today. A member made it for us western folk. It was amongst the most delicious things I've ever had in the span of my entire life. My tastbuds shouted a triumphant cry of satisfaction and the purest, most exquisite joy filled their bossoms as they came to the knowledge that their work here was finished, from thenceforth they needed no more to taste as they have tasted the untastable. That's the best I can do to put it into words. I also cut my own hair today for the first time! It looks awesome!! Hopefully the back does too, elder summers said it did so I'll take it. 

Tuesday:

HOLY SMOKES!! This evening we had a couple storms blow through that were gnarly and lemme tell you about it. Regardless of the storms, we went out tracting, there was lightning all around but it was tiny and stayed in the clouds and we didn't want to be piles and stay inside twiddling our thumbs. We were about to leave for home and as we getting in the car we heard cop sirens and honestly thought it was for us because a lady was watching us, we were thinking she might call the cops, she seemed like one of those people. Then we saw two cops running across the street with urgency. We were like what the crap. Then two cops cars came rushing in and we were like "yup they're coming for us," they rushed into the parking lot (and we are the only ones there) and the way they pulled in made it seem like we're blocking off the exits and pulled up on either side. We waved, they waved, but then they turned around and left. Weird, there was obvious panamonia nearby though. Right after they pulled out I look up and tell elder summers to get back out to see. I don't know if it was funnel cloud or not, but it was an irregular looking cloud moving really fast and hanging really low from green clouds with a slight twist. It was close too, I'd say within a mile. I saw a bright green flash under the rapidly descending cloud. 30 seconds later the power went out. Immediately following that the wind picked up significantly blowing towards the possible funnel, there were trash cans and branches flying everywhere! The lightning got stronger and very frequent. I was stoked of of my mind!!! Then I realized oh crap, we're in an open parking lot at 9:00 pm with no one around except cops flipping out about something (ps we're across the street from government housing aka the projects aka ghetto) and there's what seems to be a tornado coming down less than a mile away. I was enjoying myself, but Elder summers starts getting nervous and says we need to leave now. I tried explaining to him that if this is a tornado, the worst thing to do would be drive and how lots of people die like that. But he's a bit of a hard head and I have to be with him, I figured if we died I can say I told you so and have bragging rights for eternity, so it was worth it. Our dumb tiwi that tracks us kept yelling at us for going over the speed limit trying to you know, avoid a tornado... But man, that was the craziest and sickest 2 minutes of my life. Cops running around, cops racing to us, explosions, tornadoes, it was like a movie! We got home and watched it be crazy and die down to a bag of popcorn. Man, that lightning is bright as day and has more bass than an EDM dubstep concert. Someone in the ward over died. A tree fell through their house. I guess some other died too. Sad.

Wednesday:

Like I said, this week we're doing pretty much just tracting. Today for some reason everyone was either kinda rude or really rude to us with the exception of two people one of which said he wasn't interested and the other was making dinner and wasn't interested in us coming back. So that was our day. Even most people in cars driving by were kinda rude. Even an active member that we walked by and asked if they needed help got a little sassy with us. Oh well, refiners fire... here's something cool though, as we were doing our thing I said, "Man, the Lord is testing our faith for something, I've never met so many rude people in a row, hopefully we get a referral out of this, and not a bible one (that's when someone clicks on an ad saying 'free bible' and they put their name and address and it says 'missionaries will be at your door to deliver your Bible,' so they don't work out well usually)." We got done tracting and were at a member's for dinner to conclude the night, while we were there we got a bible/book of Mormon referral! And get this, he lives exactly where our plans are for tomorrow, so it works perfectly.

Thursday:

I found my first four leaf clover! And the referral guy I talked about yesterday, he's not interested...Oh well. So much for the luck of a four leaf clover.

Friday:

Saturday

Sunday:

Dang, we were stoked for today because we had six investigators from four separate households committed to coming to church. Guess how many came? Zero. But the sad thing is, it's not unusual. Two of those investigators we had on date for baptism and were going to see tonight, one of which cancelled last second and the other didn't show up, so that wasn't thrilling.