Missionary Monday - 3rd Week in Marshall

Marshall is hot! Not the temperature, that is still beautiful, but the missionary work! No one is very close to baptism, but we have made like twice the progress this week that we had the last two. I don't mean to boast of myself, so I'll just say that having more control of things doesn't suck.

Last Monday we went to the Branch President's house for dinner. They have eight kids as well, but SEVEN of them are girls. Made me count my blessings. This Branch is super active. They go visit less actives all the time and have like a million activities. 

I don't really share too much about our investigators because so far no one really ends up working out. Even though the way we found them might be a miracle and the first few lessons are awesome, they've all gone to crap, Don't try to convince me to tell you about them either. I can't get my hopes up for anything and I don't need you guys getting any hopes up and then asking me what happened when I stop talking about them. I will tell you about interesting stories and investigators that have a happy ending. I'll give you an example of what I am talking about. My first week here we met this lady who was awesome and talked with us for like an hour the first time we met and was super interested. We taught her the Restoration and she was stoked for the Plan of Salvation. We stopped by another time and she didn't have much time, but she was having a lot of health challenges and so I gave her a blessing and she was like, "oh man, I don't know if you guys felt that, but that was strong." And we were like yes, we know, the church is true. She is super excited to come to church, says she just needs to ask her husband. We stop by on Saturday and its only her husband home. We say, hey did Jen tell you about us? and he says (my words) yeah the only problem with you guys is your extra scripture Revelation clearly says blah blah and we say yeah it says that in Deuteronomy 4:2 as well. He says yeah its talking about the bible. God made it that way. Its all we need. Well, the Bible never says it is all we need so you are making a claim for the bible it does not claim for itself. Long story short, he is super hard hearted and we don't know if we'll ever see Jen again. And Crap like that happens all the time.

Yesterday we met a guy named David though. He was pretty cool. He is a pastor so that's always a good time. He actually has the most gospel and Bible knowledge of any Non Mormon I've ever met. He is working on his own translation of the New Testament from Greek. If you ever see the "R.E.A.L. Word Translation" it will be from him. We talked a lot about the Trinity. He gave the best case for it I've heard yet, but that still included Christ being forsaken on the cross to be God being so powerful that he can kill himself. He said our belief of the Godhead just comes from not being able to understand the Trinity. YOU CAN'T UNDERSTAND SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T EXIST! He was super reasonable though so I decided to bring up exaltation and how if you truly believe that we are children of God and children grow up to be like their parents, that we have the potential to become like God. It really bugs me that people use that as anti. Its in the Bible and everything. Anyways, he actually believes that too and said that we (Mormons) just say what every one else is too scared to and then he proceeded to look up Scriptures I already knew to show that we really do have the potential to become like God. He said he has done a ton of research and basically said he is too chicken to accept latter day prophets and an open canon. He said its dangerous. This is my analogy, but just like having a king can be dangerous.

It was a good week. I'm trying to burn a bunch of Mormon Messages and Bible Videos to DVD so this letter has been a little rushed. Have a good week.

Elder Beck