February 20, 2017

Monday: Tuesday: Wednesday: Today I went on exchange in Athens. Man, I met a gangster with an r. Not a gangsta that cusses and through around drugs and thinks they're cool, a gangster, one who makes millions upon millions. I won't get into details, but he's now a baptized member with a past. Long story short, he was running the show in Athens and Atlanta. So much so, that the Elders I was on exchange with use his name when people threaten them and they get scared and back off. If the Kripps had the same organization of the church, he was an apostle. But now he's baptized and in the short time I was with him he really got to like me he said, so I guess I'm cool with the gangstas of Athens/Atlanta. Thursday: We had a lesson with the guy I talked about my first week here and it was awesome! He's the only one so far since I've been here that actually keeps his commitments so it sets things up for great lessons. And today we asked him about baptism and he said he would be! Friday: So as we're driving home already 30 minutes past curfew we get a call from a new investigator of ours asking us to come over real quick because his niece was going through a tough time. So we said we'd stop by and say a prayer because we were going to actually pass his house on the way. It ended up being 30 minutes. We got in and she had a recent death of a close one and needed someone to talk to because she was confused and just needed us. We started talking and the spirit was very strong, but then our investigator (who is super drunk) kept interrupting and really just saying dumb things which made it hard for the spirit to be there and for her to express her feelings. So ultimately what happened is Elder Knight taught her and got to have this awesome spiritual discussion, and I talked to our drunk investigator to keep him distracted. Kinda annoying, I could overhear parts of their conversation and hear crying and feel the spirit emanating, I just wanted to be in it so darn bad, especially because it was a long hard day and this was a little bit of spirituality I could have. But it's ok. She was able to be comforted and is going to sit in on our lesson next week with our investigator since it's on the plan of salvation. He also tried to set me up with her for marriage, and said it's ok if I kiss her, it's always awkward when that happens, especially when they're 28. We got home ridiculously late, but I think it was worth it. The fact that we were on his road that far past curfew is a miracle. We had lots of things fall through and lots of rescheduling and an appointment run way long which put us on his road when he called. Saturday: Sunday: We had an awesome lesson planned for the guy I talked about on Thursday. He let us in and sat us down with the member we brought (which isn't easy to do). He then proceeded to tell us it's not for him and that the Book of Mormon isn't inspired scripture. According to the things he was saying we're 99% sure that he got into anti (typical) and there were things we could've said to throw back at it, but he got so far from his testimony that he's shared with us so many times, that it would've done nothing. It hurt. It's already been such a rough week with having to drop so many people and that was the saltiest salt on woundiest wound. Now we're back at square one where we started a transfer ago. So I'm not gonna lie, it's hard as junk to stay enthused.  Monday: Transfers...I'm leading out the area (yikes). But guess what? He's going to ROSWELL! Whuuut? He's gonna see all my people!!! I'm jealous, yet so excited.

February 13, 2017

Being in the South, there's lots of crosses. Many people (by many I mean everyone I've met thus far) focuses on what happened on the cross. Yes that is very important and I'm not bagging on other churches, but what's more important is what happened in the garden of gethsemane. I think I've met maybe two or three people (non-members) who can tell me when the Atonement was made and when Jesus took upon him the sins, temptations, and pains of the world. All they know is that he died. There's this "Action Bible," and it's basically a 750 page long dramatic comic book of the Bible with sprinkles of false doctrine and assumptions to make it more epic. But as I was skimming through it I saw 1/6 of a page mentioning the garden, the single most important event in history, and nine full pages about his death. So the great apostasy started to show when Jesus died which is why we see all these epistles written to the Corinthians, Galatians, etc from the apostles. So I view the cross as a symbol of apostasy. In an interview, Gordon B. Hinckley had, he explained why we don't have crosses. “I responded: ‘I do not wish to give offense to any of my Christian brethren who use the cross on the steeples of their cathedrals and at the altars of their chapels, who wear it on their vestments, and imprint it on their books and other literature. But for us, the cross is the symbol of the dying Christ, while our message is a declaration of the living Christ.’ “He then asked: ‘If you do not use the cross, what is the symbol of your religion?’ “I replied that the lives of our people must become the only meaningful expression of our faith and, in fact, therefore, the symbol of our worship. … “… No sign, no work of art, no representation of form is adequate to express the glory and the wonder of the Living Christ. He told us what that symbol should be when he said, ‘If ye love me, keep my commandments.’" Monday: Tuesday: Today just messed with my brain. It was so mentally draining, I won't get into the details, but let's just say I got home and originally designed to sit in a warm bath, it only spewed cold cold water, I sat in it anyways. I will share one part that kicked off my mentally draining evening...I'm soaked because it was pouring rain, but it'd died down a little. We went to go visit the homeless guy in the forest. It was a dark forest without a star in the sky due to the thick clouds and rain that dripped through the thick discombobulating fog. As we walked through blindly avoiding puddles the only light we could receive was the occasional passing car which shot illuminating rays amongst the silhouetted trunks of the dead, towering, moss-covered trees. Hearts racing, we pressed forward with our guards spiked knowing that no matter what might happen this night, we were on the Lord's errand, and if we were to die, we'd die nobly. However this did not matter, for we knew we had the more power than anything that might happen as we marched valiantly through that ominous wood- the power of God.  It was pretty sick, I wish I could've taken a picture, it was like a scene straight out of a zombie movie right before someone dies. But he wasn't there so we left a card. Wednesday: Thursday: We tracted all day. We met a lot of cool people. We met some ministers, pastors, and reverends, but the only one to bash with us was not any of them, it was just a normal lady. That's weird because usually it's those in higher rankings of their church are the ones anxious to bash. Friday: Saturday: Sunday:

February 6, 2017

Monique Sanders <sandersclan.01@gmail.com>

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Mass email

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Seth Sanders <seth.sanders@myldsmail.net>	Mon, Feb 6, 2017 at 11:55 AM
To: sandersclan.01@gmail.com
Ok, this is just an interesting thought, not as much spiritual, but I think about it a lot so I'm going to say it. Some people question the existence of a God because it doesn't make sense where he'd come from. Then you ask this...Where'd you come from? Where'd anything come from? There's no reason to question where he came from if you can't comprehend where even we came from.  Others say science doesn't correlate with the creation. Firstly, a day isn't a day, it's an unspecified period of time. Secondly, science contradicts itself when it comes to the creation of earth or anything. Big Bang? Come on now...Everyone knows there's more to it than an explosion from nothing. But there's something called the law of entropy. The law of entropy states that as time goes on, everything gets more unorganized. So tell me how after 5 billion years, the earth got organized along with nine other planets revolving around a sun in such a specific way that it can orbit it. That goes with every solar system. How would things go from a microorganism and organize themselves over millions of years to get to us, a highly complex and organized being. As time goes on, things should not be more organized unless there's someone controlling it. Imagine this...take a bunch of glass, screws, copper, metal and silicon and put it in a bag. Then shake the bag. I'll bet you that no matter how much you shake it, it will never ever turn into a phone. In fact, it'd just get more broken apart and get further and further from ever being a phone. Same thing applies. Just food for thought. There's a lot of other things, but that's the most evident I think. Monday:  Tuesday; Wednesday: Thursday: Friday:  Let the games begin...allergy season is starting, I was sneezing all day. Not only that, but the fun stuff is coming back. I saw the first roach of the year and a rat in our apartment today, awesome! Saturday: Ya remember I said there was a rat? We set up traps yesterday...one of them is missing. Heck no. Sunday: So super bowl Sunday and the Atlanta Falcons are playing, football here is religious. Today had to be carefully planned so we didn't tick everyone off, we got a referral from someone in the ward a few days ago who got it from one of her seminary students. It's a homeless guy named Dixon, we figured he wouldn't be watching football. After a few attempts in the past we finally found Dixon today, cool guy. He believes in a lot of the same things we do and he actually knows his bible (99% of the people here say they know the Bible, but they just know what their pastor shares). So we're pretty stoked, he even started talking about multiple heavens (I love that, people think we're crazy, but it talks about it in the Bible too). He knows there's stuff missing from the Bible and that people spread all over the world. Perfect introduction to the Book of Mormon. He started talking about stuff he wishes he knew more about that can be answered in the Book of Mormon. So it was awesome. But of course everyone comes with their challenges. There's some doctrinal things we need to discuss eventually, of course the word of wisdom (everyone here has that problem, even most of the members), and the best one, Halloween. He was really interested until he asked if we had any sort of thing involving Halloween, even if it's just kids wearing costumes of any kind getting candy. Before he was talking about how it's the devil's holiday and any religion who tolerates it invites demons in, I was hoping he wouldn't ask if we do any events. He asked. And I just said, "Yup." And he said then he can't convert. But phhh, he's gonna read the Book of Mormon and get over it, then maybe after we teach him a bit more in the dark forest he'll forget about it and remember what's important. So pictures, we've got a sports car that a member built completely out of scratch 40 years ago (before the Internet) a local billboard and the first Georgia beach I've seen

January 30, 2017

This week we door contacted someone. This guy wasn't Christian because the Bible has some contradictions and so many churches have branched off from it teaching different things (we actually meet quite a few people who are atheist because of this). There's also many rewritings of the Bible that contradict one another and it's been translated so many times and changes each time. So that's why he and quite a few others revert to atheism. See now I hate when this happens because it fits so perfectly with our message of the restoration, the need for a prophet, and how the Book of Mormon clarifies those confusions, however, by the time these people are at that point they don't care what we have to say. Even though our message fits perfectly with what they've seen, anyone who's gotten to that point (from what I've seen so far) is so closed minded to Christianity that it just doesn't register. Anyways, this particular individual told us what that we're just another break off. No surprise, like I said, when we share the restoration with these people it doesn't register. He said that because we're "a relatively new church, [we] just copied the basic foundation and added our own twists. Ok, we get that kind of stuff a lot, but this is why I'm saying it... Afterwards I went on a little rant with Elder Knight like I do sometimes for my own gratification in knowing that I'm right. I'll share a piece of it. Here's the thing, we are definitely not a new church and we're definitely not a branch off. Frankly, I don't even like calling us a church, I like to think of us as an organization in which the original priesthood keys and ordinances that Christ had and established are held and a place wherein we can all meet to strengthen one another, learn, and renew our covenants. But this organization (church) has been here since the beginning of time. This is the analogy I said while ranting about it pertaining to how we aren't new, but restored. It's like Twinkies. Twinkies have always been around, and then one day after the employees rebelled, the "Twinkie Boss" shut it down and took Twinkies off the face of the earth. After Twinkies were taken away other knock offs started popping up, the biggest one being "cloud cakes." That's was the "great and abominable church." But you see, it didn't have the original ingredients as a Twinkie and neither did any other knock off, so it wasn't the same. But then Twinkies came back, we've been blessed to have the original Twinkie restored.  Does this mean Twinkies were invented in 2013? No! Does it mean the church of Jesus Christ was made in 1830? No! It was restored in 1830, but it's always been around. This church has always been here since the beginning of time. The priesthood and ordinances of salvation have been around forever, it just was taken off the earth when God's people (Twinkie employees) started rebelling, but when the time was right was restored. That's just something that needs to be cleared. Monday: Tuesday: Wednesday: Today was the worldwide missionary broadcast, haha, cooorny! It was like one of those cheesy 80s seminary video intros. But here's what I got mostly out of it. 30 minutes less of lunch, two more hours of p day, and planning will take place in the morning instead of night now, thank heavens! We have lots more freedom to move around our schedule. I already knew what the changes were anyways, I asked a couple inspired questions here and there and acted like I knew more than I did so people inside would tell me Thursday: Friday: We had a zone meeting with over half the mission today. Another rule just popped up, we can't do "beat to teach." That means if someone is playing basketball or someone is doing flips we can't go over and do it with them in an agreement to teach them. I was also asked to share my experience with the fire incident a few weeks ago and what I learned. It was pretty funny. Not to be cocky, but it sounded like a comedian show in there, forreal. One of the missionaries just had an appendix explode a week ago, I hurt him apparently, he can't laugh. Even the mission President and his wife were dying, I thought that was good because now I'm more likely to be an assistant (just kidding, don't aspire). I even related to a spiritual aspect, and I totally winged it the whole thing! Afterwards the housing coordinator got back up and explained our call. She said when I was explaining the situation I said, "...and it started a small kitchen fire." She said "how small is small?" I said "like the oven, the back wall, a little bit of the roof and a few cabinets" and she said "then what's a big one???" I said "Umm...the whole kitchen?" She thought it was pretty funny. There's been a trend her whole time serving of missionaries' apartments having damage that wasn't reported, I broke the trend, I was the first to call admitting I did some damage. So that was nice to know that I broke the chain in that way. Then again, I'm the first to do that. But anyways, now I'm being uncomfortably prideful talking about how awesome I am, but I just wanted y'all to know how awesome I am. Saturday: Today was just weird. Sunday: Well it was one of "those days." We biked and biked and biked against wind and in the cold. There wasn't much that came out of it either and people were mean today which made it hard. My legs are throbbing. To describe today, there was a 1% chance of precipitation and we won. It rained. But oh well, we all have "those days."