Glamour |
One of our poor investigators named Ruth is trying to convert us to.. the Bible maybe..?..Her Bible study group...? Apparently us meeting her is a sign that we need to join her personal theory religion. She described us as feeling the trunk of an elephant and saying "Oh, yes I know who God is, this is God." But really there is a whole elephant that we are missing out on. She is so genuinely concerned for us, it's cute. For some reason she talked to us about how when Christ came, the New Testament added to the Old and didn't replace it, it was just another testament, but the Jews couldn't accept that. We sat in bewilderment as she described exactly what she was doing by regarding the Book of Mormon as unnecessary. It's just another testament.
We have living prophets today, let's not be hypocrites but rather follow their words exactly.
We were re-teaching the restoration to someone a few days ago, and when what the message means finally sunk in, she asked, "If this is true, why isn't everyone flocking to your church?" In case you didn't know, that's a really frustrating question to ask a missionary, especially in Korea. Every time God has called a prophet, it has required faith from people to follow them. It is ineffective to give us blatantly obvious proof that prophets are prophets. If that were the case, Heavenly Father would just chill on earth demonstrating His power continuously and, in a sense, taking away our agency. Faith is the center of our purpose on Earth. People have always rejected the prophets. Believing Joseph Smith's story requires faith at first. When Christ was on Earth, people did "flock" to Him at first, but they came and went. No divine manifestations can replace faith.
There was a world-wide missionary broadcast this week and huge changes were made to the missionary schedule, I like them a lot, it's designed to give more freedom to the missionaries and allow us to use our agency righteously. My mission's P-day is also changing to Tuesday starting next week. Agency is rough sometimes. The Spirit is constantly pushing way harder than I want to go, and I sometimes wish I didn't have the choice to ignore promptings. Agency is essential to grow
A couple days ago we were just walking down the street and we saw a group of people around two foreigners and a turned over food delivery scooter. Elder Benefiel helped interpret for the Korean police because the foreigners didn't know Korean. Apparently they were crossing the street on a red walk indicator, and a food-delivery guy ran a red light and slammed into Liam and threw him over ten feet. Danny got out of the way in time. Liam was beat up, but standing and walking, they took the food guy in an ambulance. Liam is from England, has been here for five months, and has a super intense beard. Danny has been here over a year and also has a sweet beard. They are teaching English. As the police were working things out and we were translating, we introduced ourselves and explained a little bit about missionary work. We connected really well and were joking about Korean and how ridiculous of a situation we all are in. As we were driving in the police van to a place to get more information, Liam kept saying how lucky he was to have survived. "This is my first real near-death experience, It's making me think about religion.. all these burning crosses are looking compelling." (Gunsan has the world record for highest number of churches per square mile of city) I said "Well.. have you heard of the Book of Mormon?" and they laughed, but I guess I didn't seem serious. I wish I had been a little more persistent with it, but we totally gained their trust and they were so grateful for us. We are going to meet them again.
Life is so good, and I'm totally out of time. There is so much good stuff happening, I'm learning good stuff, I love you all.
-Elder Brown
-Elder Brown
An ad in Lotte Mart that reminds me of Skylar for some reason |
"Premium Gift Set": canned tuna, spam, and some oil $25 Happy birthday! |
After church if enough people don't come then we just eat food and talk, the smiling sister is our golden investigator. |
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