August 7, 2017
A Nice Story
First off I want to tell you about an investigator named Gertrude. She was a referral that wanted to know about the truth of rumors that she heard about the church such as being an occult group, etc. She is studying the Book of Mormon and even came to church once. But after that she was told by her church’s pastor to never to visit another church again. (Boo!) So now she’s working on her testimony and continuing her Book of Mormon reading.
Then we had that conversation every missionary loves to have:
“So Sister Gertrude, how do you feel about the Book of Mormon?”
“You know, when I really think about it, I can start to feel that it’s the truth.”
“So how does that feel?”
“I dunno it’s hard to explain, but it’s a good feeling. And it feels like it’s true”
“Yeah I feel it too, even right now. Sister Gertrude, that’s The Holy Ghost telling you it is true.”
Bam! And just like that through her own experience, she is beginning to recognize pure truth when it’s revealed to her. This isn’t imagined, this is the work of God.
But what’s even better is a couple days later when we went to follow-up with her. We found that Gertrude wasn’t around, but her sister, Akos, was! Akos attends the Church of Christ with the rest of Sister Gertude’s family, but Sister Gertrude attends a different Protestant church.
So anyway, I asked Sister Akos about the origins of her church after some small talk because Sister Akos really didn’t want to talk about religion at first, but with asking her questions about her faith, she opened up. She said that the wonderful part about the Church of Christ is that they don’t have a founder, but the church has just been there forever.
Wait…
I replied that if you google search Church of Christ it will say that it was established in 1830 on April 6th, by a man named Joseph Smith who later received a revelation to change the name of the church to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. At least that’s one of the sources of one of the churches established named the Church of Christ. She asked me, “Do you do this; do you practice this way? How do you pay tithes?” And her questions about other doctrine principles was similar. She was very intrigued as I opened the scriptures in both the Book of Mormon and the Bible to show her scriptures to go along with everything that I was saying. She asked plenty of questions and she loved the stories about Joseph Smith, the first vision, the restoration of the Priesthood, and the Book of Mormon, all the way to his martyrdom. Though she still isn’t super interested in investigating the church, she said that she learned something from Joseph Smith’s example and now she won’t be as judgmental anymore. The interesting part is I never once mentioned anything about being judgmental. I guess that’s just how the Spirit works sometimes, and now she has changed her way of thinking for the better.
That’s a good story and I’m just extremely grateful that The Lord was able to do these miraculous things for these people as I teach what I know to be true.
This & That
Time is Going By Quickly: This is Week 6 of this transfer, so that means next week will be week one of my second to last transfer! :O
Letters: I’m glad to hear that you got my letter. I’m glad that Abbie received her letter as well.
Service when I am home: Oh! I wrote down a list of ways that I can serve when I get home and I want to type out Grandpa’s interview that Mom did a few years ago. You said it would be a Labor of Love, and now I want to do it as soon as I get home.
Also, I thought of a project for us to do. To buy a broken down car at an auction and fix it up so I can drive it. Just a thought, I want to hear yours. 🙂
Wishing you all the best,
Elder Gilbert
Just Gilbert 