27 June 2016

Good morning everyone!! whoa, crazy, i just realized that if it's still morning here, "technically" it could be afternoon in Texas... CRAY!!! anywes, this week has had some interesting experiences! the most interesting one having to do a born again christian (i'm tellin ya, i've had more interesting conversations with those people than anyone else haha). But i will say though before i start that there really isn't very much at all the report on this week. like we had 2 lessons and that was it.. somehow we were still decently busy with a couple moves but that was it on the teach side of things :/ SO, one of our 2 teaching appointments was with the Baca family!! they're a super cool family who just needs to have a testimony and get going back to church (as do they all). it was a good lesson and we shared the restoration with them! I feel like it was like a review for all of them because i asked if they really remembered who Joseph Smith was and they were all like uummmmmm no.. haha! but it was a good lesson and we invited them to all start reading the Book of Mormon each day and they accepted. We're gonna follow up this week and then we have another lesson with them on Friday. We're probably gonna keep going through the missionary lessons and hope that works :) Well, the rest of the week was pretty lame. our other lesson was really just a message with a less-active member who still has a testimony but works on Sundays a lot so he hasn't been for a while. HOWEVER, he was at church on Sunday!!!!! He's actually technically our ward mission leader but hasn't gone for like 2 or 3 months or something like that.. that's cray!! he was totally active when i was here a year ago.. haha! but he was there Sunday which is awesome :) then our interesting conversation with the born again lady!! so just how we came into contact with her, she apparently called the mission office asking for help moving a couch out of her apartment. well we get there and turns out she needs help Moving all her stuff out!! (she as moving outside Calgary) so we're like ummm we can stay and help with the rest, we don't really have anything else going on that we need to get to.. so we stayed and had some other missionaries come and help out. After we finished though she started asking us some questions aimed at just taking down the church a bit because of lack of physical evidence.. then we got onto a HUGE discussion on the character (i guess you could call it) of God and the godhead. we tried to share several scriptures with her proving that that God and Jesus Christ are 2 separate beings (some of which include the intercessory prayer, Acts 7 where Steven sees God the Father and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and a couple others) and even after reading them and pointing out how they are seen together as 2 separate beings, and she's just like "well i have to go back to the Greek version of the bible to see exactly what it says." and then the last question was if we had seen any people be healed with our priesthood we have. i told her i hadn't but i had heard some people my parents knew (Daniel's Scoliosis) and the other elders shared a couple stories, then she went on to tell us how she has personally healed people herself and prayed over them and felt their bones reforming, sockets reforming, etc. and she doesn't know why she would join a church where miracles like that "don't happen." But the thing is, they're doing those things with a power that isn't of God and according to the stories, faith isn't even a requirement to do the miracles it seems.. so i don't believe at all that they have an authority given from God...... anyways, enough crazy talk!! that was a weird experience, and she said a lot of flippin insane things that make me more aware of how much craziness there is in the world. But not in the church!! we have the REAL authority, and we wield it worthily, and that's something i'll never doubt :) anywes, i love the freak out of you guys and love the freak out of this gospel. the church is true yall!! have a great week :) Love, Elder Levi Windham