Aug 9, 2015

Oh Hey

Time is so weird as missionary, like its not even a thing. Do you know how much of a struggle it is to constantly never know if something happened last night or this morning,. or like yesterday or two weeks ago? Time is an invention of man and we are doing the lords work as set apart servants of him. So it's like not even a thing. 

This was a good week. We went bowling with half our zone last Monday. Guys I'm so good, I think I'm going to join a league! I scored a solid 60! #blessed. 

I had a really great new missionary training by our mission president and his assistants. I learned so much, had some good days, got super pumped about our goals and got a greenie package from my mom full of junk food. I finally got my bike back from the bike shop. (I put it into the bike shop 5 weeks ago and have been borrowing a members bike ever since. It was a piece of junk lol but it got me around.) It's beautiful. It makes me so happy, you don't even know. We ride a good 10-20 miles everyday (my legs are huge) totally worth the almost $300 worth of repairs. She's beautiful. I named her She-luh. 

We had a really cool experience on Saturday. We went over to teach this family the Book of Mormon lesson and they're awesome, but they invited over their pastor friend because they wanted him to listen to us. But anyway, from the start, this guy just starts bashing and pulling scriptures out left and right and saying what we are teaching is lies and if they follow us they're going to hell. Yeah, he said that. Elder Heiner and I were so mad. The spirit was not there, and if it's not there, we can't teach. He didn't even let us talk, he would interrupt us literally every time we would start talking. He was very contentious. At first I was super nervous because I had no idea what to say. I kept thinking, where's the promise that I shall not be confounded before men? What can I say to make him stop in his tracks?  But I realized that for me to not be confounded before him was to not talk, and honestly not to listen to him. He was straight crazy and blinded from the truth. You know someone has no idea what they're talking about when they try to argue Revelations 22:18 where it says you cant add to these words, because that was also in Deuteronomy which is the 5th book in the bible, and that means the rest of the bible is false, also Revelations was written before most of the epistles. Satan blinds people and hardens their hearts and it's so sad. The only thing I could think of doing was to remind the family about the spirit. We teach before every lesson about his role as the teacher and testifier of all truth and how we can recognize him (John 14&15:26 Gal 5:22). 

Then we got up in the middle of his sermon, apologized to the family and left. Elder Heiners eyes were red, he was so angry. We biked over to some trees and prayed, after that we decided to read some of the Book of Mormon to calm us down, and I randomly opened to Moroni 8:26-30 and it perfectly described our situation. We felt much better and very calm and decided to go back to leave the family with a prayer so they can feel the spirit. We got there and the whole family except for Jxxx (he was inside still talking) was outside ranting about this guy, so we had some good laughs but then we were able to teach a very powerful lesson. Agian, we helped them recognize how they felt when we last taught and how they felt in there. Using scriptures and testimony we helped them realize that we taught with the spirit who teaches all truth and that guy didn't. They recognized our truth. We committed them all to come to church Sunday, and all 6 of them were at church. 

TOUCHDOWN JESUS! It was awesome, definitely a miracle and a big testimony builder for both of us. We saw first hand that God places us in situations where at first we might seem lost and that it's horrible but everything we go for is for our experience and for our good (D&C 122:7) We also saw and know that if we exercise our faith, even though it might seem hard, God will deliver us and make something good out of something terrible. (1 Nephi 1:20)

It was so cool I love miracles. and being here. I also love my God and my Savior. I also love you. deuces

Elder Verdoni