In other news Elder Cook and Elder Stevens (of the presiding bishopric) will be coming for a mission conference this week and we are really excited.
An ironic thing happened to me this week. We were able to download conference already and listen to it in our car. One day we were listening to Elder Hollands talk- "The Cost and blessing of Discipleship." This talk is about how sometimes we will have to stand alone as disciples and sometimes we might face a lot of cruel adversity. In my mind I thought I am lucky I haven't experienced anything to awful on my mission yet. Just a few people telling us about all the wives the men had. Well then this happened.......
Some back story: As always all good things come with some opposition. This has been true for the temple open house. There is a family that stands outside of the temple all day everyday and hands out newspapers with anti mormon articles. The paper is very deceiving. The first page says 'Mormon Temple Open In Davie.' So everyone thinks that its the church putting it out and its full of factual information. Many people have been deceived by this. I hadn't really experienced the effects of these antis until this week.
And of course this was all in spanish.....
We were out harvesting and we knocked on Teresa's door. She answered and we gave her the normal intro, asking her name and telling her that we were representatives of Jesus Christ and that we were sent to her to say a special prayer with her. She proceeded to ask what church we were from, so we told her 'The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints'
She asked what denomination we were and so we told her christian. She said "well but which kind because I am baptist"... and we said well we are actually from Christ church. She said "well who is your leader". And we knew exactly which answer she was looking for either Mormon or Joseph Smith. And Sister Chiou said 'Thomas S. Monson' but by her face we could tell that wasn't an acceptable answer for her. So I said 'Jesus Christ,' she didn't like that answer. She then said 'Ill be right back.'
She went in her kitchen and opened a drawer and started looking at a newspaper. In my mind I thought she was looking at just a normal newspaper that did a story about the temple. Nope. She came back and said 'Oh you are mormon' and we said 'yes, well that's the nickname of our church' and she said that they had been talking about the temple at her church. Then she said 'well I know that you think God sent you here so you could say a prayer for me but actually He sent you here so I could say a prayer for you.' We said okay then she asked me how old I was, I told her 21. And she essentially said 'you are too young to know anything about God. How long have you been in the church?' I didn't answer. Then she said 'well I have been a member of my church for 18 years.' Yeah i laughed a little. and she said 'you are being fooled. and you are too young to know'.
Then she invited us in to say a prayer with her...so we said okay you can pray for us but we will pray for you after. She prayed for us and then we kinda forced the prayer on her. After, she handed us an anti newspaper (a different one from the temple) and told us we should read it. I then looked her in the eye and said:
"Thank you for bearing your testimony, because hearing it has made my testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints so much stronger. This is the only true church on the Earth. The spirit has told me so. I know that Jesus Christ lives, and is my Redeemer, and I know The Book of Mormon is true."
She then said 'well take the newspaper and read it' I gave it back, and at this point I was getting kind of heated. Sister Chiou gave her a temple open house invite and asked her to come and see what it was all really about. She wouldn't take it so I said 'here lets trade' I gave her the invitation and reached around her to grab the newspaper but also all of the extras she had. (okay in hindsight I shouldn't have done that). I started walking out and she grabbed my arm pretty hard, whipped me around and said 'only one.'
After all this happened I was pretty frustrated and I just felt weird and I couldn't shake it. So I received a blessing from one of the Elders that night. Usually its the words that bring comfort to me, but this time I wasn't even sure what he said because The Lord was speaking so strong to my heart, giving me so much comfort, and with His atonement healing my anger.
It was a beautiful message to me, and it gave me a great understanding for the love He has for us.
Please enjoy this link to an Easter message
LOVE YOU XOXO
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