Tough Investigator Questions...(09/25/2013)

Hey Everyone!!

So this past week was really good! We had a few lessons with Gaby, Steven, Victor, and Jobari (Jo-bar-y). 

 

Gaby had been dodging our calls and our appointments for about a week now and we were really just ready to drop her because she never kept any of our appointments.  Also, she wasn't reading or anything. So then finally on Monday we had an appointment that we had that she didn't cancel! Unfortunately I was out on exchanges that night so I wasn't able to attend. :(  But, I was told that the appointment went super well.  She said she noticed her spirituality declining and that she didn't like or want that.  She knew she needed to meet with us and she started reading again! So then Tuesday we had another appointment with her.  We were teaching a discussion called The Gospel of Jesus Christ (the lesson consists of faith, repentance, baptism, Gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end) and we kinda got stuck on Faith a little to long, which was partly my fault, but it was still really good for her. She wants to focus more on repentance, So we're going to hit hard on that next time :) She is also on date for the 13th of October!

 

Then we went to the visitors' center with Jobari and the sisters were supposed to teach the restoration, but they completely skipped over priesthood authority and the apostasy so we're going to have to re-go over that with him.

 

Then we had a difficult discussion with Steven on the plan of salvation. When we were talking about Adam and Eve he had a confused look on his face and when I asked what was wrong he said, "Nothing, it's just a matter of believing it." He was really concerned that perhaps God created Adam and Eve as children and then they grew up and then they fell. We tried helping him get back on track with the basics, but he's a journalist so he "has to know". Then his other concern was about God having a body of flesh and bone. So we are going to address that next time.

So Victor is a 27 year old from Vietnam with Hmong background, but he doesn't know any of the Hmong because he grew up in Paris.  He is very interesting. We had a long Q&A with him where all we did was answer questions about gays, divorce, pornography and a couple other things he had questions about.  We finally got to the root of his real concern, which was "Why was my life so hard (which it was), and not my siblings? They got everything they ever wanted and I didn't, why is that? I prayed to ask why, but I haven't received my answer for over 16 years." so we have to work on that with him as well.

Then I went on exchanges, like i mentioned earlier, with my ZL into the Spanish program! Holy cow!  They feed you a ton! Everything was in Spanish so I could only catch a few snippets here and there.

 

Well, that's all that really went on this past week, I love you all!

Elder Gold