Missionary Monday - Olney Week 18
Gooodmorning!
So this will be the last weekly email of the transfer, we will most likely be getting a transfer call sometime today, we shall see. The transfer will be the 6th.
Anyways, last Tuesday it snowed a bunch, that was cool. We knocked into someone from the youth Bible study but she juked us right away so that's a shame. Other than that just a lot of talking to strangers.
Wednesday was super cold. We had lunch with Hna Perez at Cafe Rio and when we showed up Elder Castillo and Elder Skouson were there 😂 Hna Perez told us some pretty funny family drama that I'd love to tell you all but it would most definitely violate data privacy laws. We watched a video the church made for missionaries this week that tells what we can and can't include in area book, facebook, emails home, etc. Basically I've said too much already 🤷🏾♂️. At night we taught an older black guy that was referred by one of our members who lives next to him. She barely speaks English and was able to share the good news with him, respect. He turned out to be super cool, he grew up in my hood Anacostia as a street fighter (I think if I don't say their name it's okay to add this kinda info?) He went into the military after his fighting days and killed a bunch of people and came home with ptsd, now all his church friends tell him he's damned. We told him the TRUTH about how Christ's Atonement works and shared some doctrine and he was super into it. We left him with a Book of Mormon and committed him to read Enos.
Thursday we found a street mini take one leave one library thing so we dedicated a Book of Mormon and put it in there, don't be surprised if there's a story about it on lds.org in a few weeks about how it changed someone's life. We had dinner with the Rivera family, and were supposed to have like 3 appointments after but they all fell through so we knocked like there was no tomorrow.
Friday we went to teach our guy from Wednesday again. He read! He told us more of his story and we explained more about remission of sins, forgiveness baptism, etc. I think he's the first person to open up this much so early on. He has a real desire to find forgiveness, it was refreshing. The reason we taught him again instead of referring him to the English Elders is because he was planning to move to North Carolina on Saturday, so we explained how the transition would work with that as well. Later we had district council, that was normal. Afterwards we may have put like 40 expired Costco cookies on Elder bassos car because he threw an egg on ours at the district activity. Later that day we found out that him and the sisters ate a bunch of them and took the rest home 😂 😂
Saturday, we helped move our guy from Wednesday and friday with all his nephews at like 7 o'clock. All of his nephews were giving me flash backs of Anacostia, it was pretty funny. So we sent him on his way and went home. I'll be crossing my fingers for him.🤞🏾 Then later, the Bible study... 😂 So we showed up a few minutes early to see if we could share something, the lady who owns the house is like "Well, I'll have to ask the preacher. Today one of the main preachers from our church is going to come and preach" We didn't think much of it figured they'd be cool with it. So the preacher walks in, everyone is giving him the "Dios le bendiga" We start out with some alabanzas and a group prayer shout, then he starts to preach. He liked to scream preach at everyone just like the guy last week, I don't get it. But anyways, his message was an hour long and 30 minutes of it was doctrine from the new testament (that was all about the apostasy btw 😂) And the other 30 minutes was him trashing all the other churches, his main targets were: The Adventists, "the ones who worship on Saturday", and guess who? The Mormons. 😂 😂 He claimed to be a former Adventist but if he went once he would know that the Adventists are the ones who worship on Saturday 🤦🏾♂️ 😂 Anyways, some of the main things he was bagging on the Mormons about were Polygamy and Joseph Smith being an adulterer, more scripture than the bible, and Joseph smith's dad being a witch. We didn't know whether to stand up and do the thing like Joseph Smith when he was in liberty jail and the guards were talking nasty things, or to just hold our peace. We ended up holding our peace because he wasn't directly attacking us and he probably would have cut us off. So he finishes yelling his sermon at everyone, they sing some more songs and then they did a group prayer on the food. After the prayer he comes over and says, "Thanks for coming tonight, hope you learned something. Now, have you guys studied your church's history?" Yes. "Like all of it, from the beginning?" Yes. Then he just went in questioning us on all of the classic anti Mormon stuff. I've learned two things about anti Mormon people/their claims. 1. After 200 years they always come up with the same stuff, and 2. The best way to answer a question about an anti Mormon topic is to not answer it.😂 I don't think explaining that Moroni has the plates, or that God commanded polygamy, or that Joseph and his family were respectable people has ever convinced anyone otherwise in a similar setting. We've been trying different things, it was more enjoyable this time for us at least. He would ask about the plates, we would ask if he's read the Book of Mormon. (he hadn't) He would ask about blacks and the priesthood, we would ask him if he knew what the priesthood was. (He didn't) Eventually to get him off our backs we asked him "since you're so concerned about what we believe, what do we need to do to be saved, that's what matters right?" He told us baptism in the name of Christ and keeping the commandments. So we said, "Great, we've done that, by your standards, we are saved ☺ Salvation comes only through Jesus Christ" By this time everyone was watching our little throw down, eating their baleadas like pop corn. When we said that there were like 5 "Amen!" 's 😂 😂 Then he tried to show us a YouTube video of an RM who lost his testimony and "Exposed" the church but it was 30 minutes so we told him we had to go (which we did). They thanked us for coming and everything and invited us back next week haha. Elder Navarro wants to go again but if they don't let us say anything it's a no go 😂. Sorry that was super long, but you know you like it 😉
Sunday was super normal, ate with some Brazilians in the ward who speak English Portuguese and Spanish perfectly, basically like Jackson. They're pretty cool. The husband was bishop several years ago when the ward was having "better days" so we asked what things could be done to pick it back up again and they banned off about 1,000 reasons why things weren't great overall in the ward. So that was super helpful (not). Then we did a bunch of finding, surprisingly no one wanted to talk 🤔 🏈
Anyways, not sure what today holds for us, we are going where the wind blows us. Tossed to and fro by every wind of idea. I hope you all had a great week and I look forward to hearing from you!
So this will be the last weekly email of the transfer, we will most likely be getting a transfer call sometime today, we shall see. The transfer will be the 6th.
Anyways, last Tuesday it snowed a bunch, that was cool. We knocked into someone from the youth Bible study but she juked us right away so that's a shame. Other than that just a lot of talking to strangers.
Wednesday was super cold. We had lunch with Hna Perez at Cafe Rio and when we showed up Elder Castillo and Elder Skouson were there 😂 Hna Perez told us some pretty funny family drama that I'd love to tell you all but it would most definitely violate data privacy laws. We watched a video the church made for missionaries this week that tells what we can and can't include in area book, facebook, emails home, etc. Basically I've said too much already 🤷🏾♂️. At night we taught an older black guy that was referred by one of our members who lives next to him. She barely speaks English and was able to share the good news with him, respect. He turned out to be super cool, he grew up in my hood Anacostia as a street fighter (I think if I don't say their name it's okay to add this kinda info?) He went into the military after his fighting days and killed a bunch of people and came home with ptsd, now all his church friends tell him he's damned. We told him the TRUTH about how Christ's Atonement works and shared some doctrine and he was super into it. We left him with a Book of Mormon and committed him to read Enos.
Thursday we found a street mini take one leave one library thing so we dedicated a Book of Mormon and put it in there, don't be surprised if there's a story about it on lds.org in a few weeks about how it changed someone's life. We had dinner with the Rivera family, and were supposed to have like 3 appointments after but they all fell through so we knocked like there was no tomorrow.
Friday we went to teach our guy from Wednesday again. He read! He told us more of his story and we explained more about remission of sins, forgiveness baptism, etc. I think he's the first person to open up this much so early on. He has a real desire to find forgiveness, it was refreshing. The reason we taught him again instead of referring him to the English Elders is because he was planning to move to North Carolina on Saturday, so we explained how the transition would work with that as well. Later we had district council, that was normal. Afterwards we may have put like 40 expired Costco cookies on Elder bassos car because he threw an egg on ours at the district activity. Later that day we found out that him and the sisters ate a bunch of them and took the rest home 😂 😂
Saturday, we helped move our guy from Wednesday and friday with all his nephews at like 7 o'clock. All of his nephews were giving me flash backs of Anacostia, it was pretty funny. So we sent him on his way and went home. I'll be crossing my fingers for him.🤞🏾 Then later, the Bible study... 😂 So we showed up a few minutes early to see if we could share something, the lady who owns the house is like "Well, I'll have to ask the preacher. Today one of the main preachers from our church is going to come and preach" We didn't think much of it figured they'd be cool with it. So the preacher walks in, everyone is giving him the "Dios le bendiga" We start out with some alabanzas and a group prayer shout, then he starts to preach. He liked to scream preach at everyone just like the guy last week, I don't get it. But anyways, his message was an hour long and 30 minutes of it was doctrine from the new testament (that was all about the apostasy btw 😂) And the other 30 minutes was him trashing all the other churches, his main targets were: The Adventists, "the ones who worship on Saturday", and guess who? The Mormons. 😂 😂 He claimed to be a former Adventist but if he went once he would know that the Adventists are the ones who worship on Saturday 🤦🏾♂️ 😂 Anyways, some of the main things he was bagging on the Mormons about were Polygamy and Joseph Smith being an adulterer, more scripture than the bible, and Joseph smith's dad being a witch. We didn't know whether to stand up and do the thing like Joseph Smith when he was in liberty jail and the guards were talking nasty things, or to just hold our peace. We ended up holding our peace because he wasn't directly attacking us and he probably would have cut us off. So he finishes yelling his sermon at everyone, they sing some more songs and then they did a group prayer on the food. After the prayer he comes over and says, "Thanks for coming tonight, hope you learned something. Now, have you guys studied your church's history?" Yes. "Like all of it, from the beginning?" Yes. Then he just went in questioning us on all of the classic anti Mormon stuff. I've learned two things about anti Mormon people/their claims. 1. After 200 years they always come up with the same stuff, and 2. The best way to answer a question about an anti Mormon topic is to not answer it.😂 I don't think explaining that Moroni has the plates, or that God commanded polygamy, or that Joseph and his family were respectable people has ever convinced anyone otherwise in a similar setting. We've been trying different things, it was more enjoyable this time for us at least. He would ask about the plates, we would ask if he's read the Book of Mormon. (he hadn't) He would ask about blacks and the priesthood, we would ask him if he knew what the priesthood was. (He didn't) Eventually to get him off our backs we asked him "since you're so concerned about what we believe, what do we need to do to be saved, that's what matters right?" He told us baptism in the name of Christ and keeping the commandments. So we said, "Great, we've done that, by your standards, we are saved ☺ Salvation comes only through Jesus Christ" By this time everyone was watching our little throw down, eating their baleadas like pop corn. When we said that there were like 5 "Amen!" 's 😂 😂 Then he tried to show us a YouTube video of an RM who lost his testimony and "Exposed" the church but it was 30 minutes so we told him we had to go (which we did). They thanked us for coming and everything and invited us back next week haha. Elder Navarro wants to go again but if they don't let us say anything it's a no go 😂. Sorry that was super long, but you know you like it 😉
Sunday was super normal, ate with some Brazilians in the ward who speak English Portuguese and Spanish perfectly, basically like Jackson. They're pretty cool. The husband was bishop several years ago when the ward was having "better days" so we asked what things could be done to pick it back up again and they banned off about 1,000 reasons why things weren't great overall in the ward. So that was super helpful (not). Then we did a bunch of finding, surprisingly no one wanted to talk 🤔 🏈
Anyways, not sure what today holds for us, we are going where the wind blows us. Tossed to and fro by every wind of idea. I hope you all had a great week and I look forward to hearing from you!
Elder Beck
Pictures: Moving our guy
Our books
Crapé río
