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| At Zone Conference Front row: Hermanas Lucero, Rodriguez, McAfee, Ramirez, Sanchez and Carvajal Back row: Elders Celestino, Anderson, me and Beltré |
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| We went to get pizza to celebrate Hermana Sanchez's last week in the mission. |
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| That is a 30 inch pizza and a member kindly paid for it all! #tendermercies #missionaryblessings |
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| My growing watch collection |
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| Elder Walker's homemade jambalaya |
John 3:6 "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit."
So we are over half way through the transfer now....freak. I'm already getting a little nervous for the next round of transfers because I REALLY want to stay for one more. I'm loving the area and being with Elder Walker and getting to serve the missionaries in the Las Vegas Zone...but every time I start getting too comfortable the Lord has a tendency to change something in my life. God's funny that way.
I've been truly trying to live with the mindset that Elder Holland talks about in his "For Times of Trouble" DVD. He says, "God is always going to give us what we want, or something better." I love that! He is perfect and has an eternal perspective. As our father He naturally wants only the best for us. So with everything that we have in life, we are going to always get what will be the best for us in the grand scheme of things even if in the moment it is not exactly what we were praying and asking for. Got to keep that mind set always!
So you might be wondering about the title to this week's email. Ya know, as I prepared for my mission I had envisioned that just about every day I would have people pulling out their Bible and trying to fight with me and tell me that it is impossible that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is everything that it claims to be. As I've been out here though, I've been shocked that it really hasn't been that common. Nevertheless I have studied up to be able to respond to people's questions and I feel pretty knowledgable with my Bible now haha but this last week Bible Bashers were out more than ever!
We had lots of people wanting to have a scripture war and see who could pull out more Bible verses to defend their side. We always try to avoid those situations because it is impossible to have a spiritually enlightening conversation with a person with whom you are arguing. So we usually will make our point and leave or just let people say what they want to say.
However, we were visiting a less active member in our ward who we have been helping to come back to activity and he is genuinely the nicest man ever. As we were visiting him, though, his brother-in-law came over, and then he started getting on us and really drilling our member friend and just not being very pleasant. He said it is blasphemous that we claim to have another book that is just as important as the Bible, etc. He said he has read the Bible twice all the way through and has never read anything about the Book of Mormon or Joseph Smith in there.
We had already been there a little bit by the time he got there, so I didn't want to get wrapped in another lengthy discussion so I simply told the man, "Sir, we are going to come over next week and we will show you just where in the Bible it talks about the Book of Mormon. (Ezekiel 37: Stick of Judah, Stick of Joseph, among others). So we have that lesson this next week.
That lesson got me really fired up because I could see how bad our member friend felt. He felt embarrassed by his brother-in-law and bad that he didn't know the doctrine to be able to defend himself. That got me mad so when we got home I studied all night and all the next morning all of the biblical references that support our church. I took notes and drew diagrams and everything. (I've got a whole book of material I've come up with to show y'all when I get home if you want.) And especially I studied a talk by Tad R. Callister entitled, "What is the blueprint of Christ's Church?" in which he shows us perfectly, using the Bible, how ours is the only church that teaches all the same doctrine, has all the same ordinances, has the same structure, and yields the same fruits as Christ's original church as described in the New Testament. I highly recommend it. It will destroy any doubt you have that the Mormon church isn't the same church Christ established.
But this was the interesting thing. I went so hard studying up this stuff, and then the next day we had a lesson win a guy who was very well versed in his Bible. And he just kept talking and taking and was going off about all this stuff. So, I literally asked for his own copy of the Bible and using it I showed him several references to apostles and prophets and the importance of having them on the earth and how God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and so therefore He would have apostles and prophets on the earth today. Then I asked him if he knew who those men were today? He said, "No", and we talked about President Monson (our prophet) and the Quorum of the 12 Apostles and all that. Then...he just sat there for a sec. He literally admitted that we were probably right and that it was insane how we used his own Bible to prove it. But, he said that it really didn't mean much to him because he was still very set in his ways and that we needed to not focus so much on little details like that and teach more about faith and repentance and that stuff.
We left his house, and I learned a very valuable lesson. Yes, I technically "won" that Bible bash with that man...But...nothing had changed. The Spirit wasn't there because of the contention and so his heart wasn't touched and he wasn't changed at all from what we shared.
I guess it just goes to show, that the Spirit really is the most important thing in conversion. We can sit here and Bible bash all day, but unless someone has a broken heart and a contrite spirit and is truly searching for the truth, and we as missionaries teach with Christlike love and power and authority, people are going to stay exactly as they are. It was a good lesson to learn this week.
It was a good week! We are working harder than I ever have on my mission and teaching lots of people and helping all our missionaries. We hope to finally see some baptisms come out of all this work we are putting in, but that will come in the Lord's time. I truly know I'm working as hard as I can, so the baptisms and things like that are all just up to when the Lord wants them to happen. God is good!
Love y'all!
-Elder Alley
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