Opposition Miracles

So these last two weeks were awesome! The first of the last two weeks was pretty wild. We got more anti and bashy people in the span of a week than I have in my entire mission. The first guy was this atheist dude who came outside and told us how leaving Christianity was the greatest decision in his life, so we tried to convince him everything he hates about average Christianity is not what we were trying to offer. He wasn't having it haha.

He finally shut the door and Eder Dodson turns to me and says, "It looks like he hasn't brushed his teeth since he left Christianity!" (Two years ago). We were both dying and accidentally were not super charitable for God's children. We will try to be better. 

We had this one guy literally show us an anti-video on his front porch, but the dude in it was Christian and used Bible verses to prove the faith wrong. I've seen all these verses taken out of context about a million times. What a great Christian for trying to destroy faith of other Christians! 

And then last one we had this guy from our Elders Quorum, who's not very active and who is extremely opposed to the church, bring up some doctrine that is extremely false in church. Good thing all these RM homies doing summer sales threw down on their doctrine haha. 

Basically we got hit like that like 8 times throughout the week, but who cares! When you know what you know it's true, all it does is strengthen your faith. Like significantly. According to their standards all the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day saints are saved anyways. 

The Book of Mormon is the most amazing resource I've discovered time and time again. It's amazing how it's written specifically for our day. The prophecies are being fulfilled left and right. I'm grateful that we're able to have a direct connection to God through personal revelation and also a connection through prophetic revelation. We don't have to be tossed about by every wind of doctrine like everyone else that is currently still apostatized in the world. 

We invite others to read the Book of Mormon and they say, "I don't need to because 'I've researched it.'" And then they tell us that they haven't even read the Book of Mormon and so clearly they haven't done their research. All they've researched is why Joseph Smith had so many wives, and then they don't have the foundation to understand why. Basically I know that the Book of Mormon is true and soon after that we were able to find some ultra-prepared people who were willing to receive the restored truths of the gospel! Opposition requires faith, and faith creates MIRACLES! And I absolutely love seeing some miracles! 

Anyways after that week was over we decided to ride the train to Chicago, and ride our bikes around all the sights in the city! It was so fun and we rode all around where my first area was! We rode like 40 miles around the city looking at all the awesome things to see there and it was a super awesome p-day! Of course it wouldn't be Chicago if we didn't see some people getting arrested right in front of us haha. I really hope to be able to serve in a bike area in the city again, it was super awesome. 

So this week we had transfers and we are both staying here! (yay) I love my companion and we're having a really great time. But guess who is coming to the zone? My main man ELDER JARED B. JENSEN!! He’s going to be the new assistant so we get to do some of those gnarly exchanges! There is nothing better than doing an exchange with a past companion. 

Also this week we knocked this African American lady's door and we were talking and she told us she had this Bible study thing every Saturday, so we asked her if we should come and she said yes. We went there and like a TON of her extended family were there and so we got to teach like 10 new people and they all want us to come back! It was such a fun experience. And one of them came late and she was like "wait what is the Book of Mormon, what did I miss?" And the other were like "Y’all finna watch Joseph Smith Ask of God on YouTube and you'll be caught up!" It was probably the greatest thing of all time. 

Also we have this awesome family that just got married, they remind me of Janika and Brandon and they LOVE missionary work so they came to a few lessons with us and they are unstoppable! We took them to a lesson with our Nigerian buddy and he loved them haha. We went to the mission office and grabbed a book of Mormon in yoruba (that's the African language he speaks) and we gave it to him and he freaked out haha "THIS IS MY LANGUAGE! THANK YOU SO MUCH!" it was super awesome. 

We also got some Books of Mormon in Hindi because I swear literally half the population in our area is Hindu. Not going to lie I'm starting to get pretty good and getting their accent down. But they still just think that it’s another Bawagita. (I'm pretty sure that's what their holy book is called haha) so it's kinda fun to walk around with a Hindi Book of Mormon along with our English one. 

That's about it for the last two weeks! it's been a really good time. I have a great companion, a great zone, a great mission president (who goes home soon and is actually going to play racquetball with us today haha) and basically the greatest life of all time. The church is true. I have a lot of pictures and they're all worth a thousand words so I'll just send those. 

Have a great week!

The black in white Pic was of our district. The one in the middle Elder Harker literally comes from a polygamist family before his family left the culture and joined the church. We always still make the polygamist jokes with him though and so we took a picture of a "polygamist family" with two wives and 5 sons.  The sisters didn't totally approve of the idea but finally let us take the picture. The other pics are just from the city and our Nigerian friend with the bell family, and the standard works (including Hindi style).