Good morning!
How's it going everybody? I hope everybody had a fantastic week! Our week was really slow, but it was a lot better at the end because of an amazing lesson that we had with Selamawit and her kids. We were also able to celebrate elder Stevenson's birthday! Which I'll talk about a little later. Also this past week we've had to drop a lot of investigators due to different reasons, which I will also talk about later.
Selamawit and her family are from Ethiopia. They speak English relatively well. There is still a language barrier, so that causes a few problems in helping them understand what it is were trying to teach. I think we've taught the restoration at least three times for Selamawit and I think twice for her husband' Danyu (dan-u). Each time they've gotten a little bit more understanding, but we don't think they understand everything. It's been really good practice to teach simply and effectively with them.
Well about 2 1/2 weeks ago we lost contact with them. We don't know what happened. They just wouldn't answer their phones. They wouldn't reply with text or do anything that would get them in contact with us. So one day we decided to just drop by their apartment to see how they were doing. This was a long-shot because their apartment complex is locked, so we had to rely on the blessings from Heavenly Father that, somehow, we would get in. We got to their apartment complex and there wasn't a person in site who could let us in. We waited, and waited, and waited but still nobody came. We didn't pray out loud, but I know we both had prayers in our heart that someone would be able to come through and open the door. After about 10 minutes of waiting, we looked through the door and there was a guy standing there looking at us. We motioned for him to come open the door, which he did kind of hesitantly. When he open the door we told him that we were here to visit some people that we had an appointment with, but that they wouldn't answer their phone to come open the door. Once we told him who we were, and what we were there for, I could tell that his mind was put at ease and he let us right in. That right there was a blessing in and of itself!
We went down to their apartment and knocked on the door. Once they knew it was us, and they let us right in so we could talk to them. Selamawit explained that they hadn't been replying to us because she had been sick and she didn't want us to get sick. I kept thinking to myself "I don't understand why you didn't just call or send a text letting us know that, but whatever".
While we were there, we asked her how her Book of Mormon reading was going and how she felt about it. We asked her if she had prayed to know if it was true scripture. She told us that she had been reading it and she thought it was exactly like the Bible, which is good, but not in the way that she was thinking. Her thinking of "it was just like the Bible" is that it literally was like the Bible! She also said there's a lot of things that we both believed in there were similar, so she didn't understand why The Book of Mormon was so important. She wanted to know what the differences were between our religion and her religion. It was semi-frustrating to hear those concerns again because we had taught her the restoration three times. We had answered those question each time with that lesson. We think it was one of those language barrier problems that got in the way so she didn't fully understand what we were trying to teach.
So we explained to her why the Book of Mormon is important. We explained that the Book of Mormon is another Testament of Jesus Christ, meaning a second witness of Jesus Christ. We also explained to her that if she can come to know that the book of Mormon was true, then she would come to know that Joseph Smith is a true prophet of God, because Joseph Smith was the one who translated the gold plates into the book of Mormon that we have today. We explained to her that in the scriptures it says "by their fruits ye shall know them", and that the book of Mormon is one of Joseph Smith's fruits. We tried to make sure she understood that if you come to know the Book of Mormon is true or that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God, then the knowledge of the other gospel topics will come.
We explained to her about how our churches are different. I explained to her that one of the main important differences between our religion and other religions is that we have the priesthood authority of God in our church. We explained to her what the priesthood was and that it was only through the priesthood that certain ordinances could be performed and be valid in the eyes of God. We re-explained to her that when Jesus was on the earth the way that he was able to raise the dead, heal the sick, restored sight to the blind, (and so on and so forth), was through the priesthood authority or in other words through "God's permission". Then we explained what happened in the great apostasy. We told her how the priesthood was taken from the earth after Christ and his Apostles died. That same priesthood that Christ used to do all of those miracles had been taken from the earth due to wickedness. People didn't understand that they had lost that authority, so they continued to baptize without it. I think we had said though it wasn't done with the priesthood authority, or "God's permission".
After we explained all that, we seemed to have made a lot of progress. We both felt that she had better understood what it was we were trying to explain to her what the differences were between our church and other religions. So we said a closing prayer asking that she would be blessed with the understanding that she needed and that she was looking for. Then we left.
A week later we made another appointment to go over and visit with their family. The thing that we felt strongly that we should do this time is actually show her the restoration DVD. That way she could actually have a visual of what we were trying to explain happened to Joseph Smith. Unfortunately they don't have the Restoration video in Amharic, so we're not 100% sure what all she got from the video.
By the end of the video however, the spirit was so strong that we really think that she understood what happened to Joseph Smith. After bearing our strong testimonies, we invited her to be baptized. She said that she believed everything that we taught her and that she understood it, but that she wasn't sure about getting baptized. We told her that we understood that it would be a huge change for her. Also we told her that we empathized that it was hard to understand the people at church because they don't speak Amharic. We promised her that if she prepared to be baptized and came to church that the Lord will bless her with the understanding that she needed when she went to church. She told us that she would need to pray about it. We agreed with her that she did need to pray about it, but that she ACTUALLY had to pray about it, not just some off-the-cuff prayer asking God if she needs to be baptized. We told her that when she prays about it she needs to kneel down with a sincere heart and real intent, and ask God if she needs to be baptized, if that is the path that he wants her to take. She understood and she said that she would. So right now she's accepted a conditional baptism, where when she prays and finds out if it's true then she'll be baptized. It was truly an amazing and spiritual lesson!
Also on Sunday was Elder Stevenson's birthday! So the other Elders and I didn't really talk about it at all the prior week so as to make him think that we had forgotten. On Friday night Elder Humphrey and I went to the store and got a blue velvet cake and cream cheese frosting for Elder Stevenson's birthday. That night we went to the Spanish Elder's apartment (who live right upstairs from us) and we got into the apartment with a spare key and made the cake. It was kind of bad though because while we were in the apartment we were messing around and throwing this bouncy ball at each other. Long story short: The we accidentally hit the light fixture and it shattered on the table! After hitting the table a few of the pieces bounced off and hit me, but I was fine, none of it cut me. A bigger portion of it though just bounced off the table and hit the floor which then shattered. By this time the cake had already finished baking, and we were getting ready to go, but we stayed longer so that way we could sweep up and clean up the broken glass. The Spanish Elders called us the next day and we told them what happened. They thought it was hilarious, so that was a relief off our back. Ha!
Sunday night was Elder Stevenson's birthday. We asked Elder Stevenson's companion take him down to the business center in our apartment complex so that way we could put the frosting on the cake and bring it down to our apartment so when Elder Stevenson walked in to our apartment the first sight he would see would be the cake and candles. We got it all frosted downstairs and we put the candles in and lit them. Those candles burned a lot faster than we thought they would, and Elder Stevenson an Elder Crandall weren't coming back soon enough so we had to blow them out. Elder Crandall had said that he would call us when they were on their way up so we could get the candles lit and everything. Well, he called us and then five seconds later we hear them walking down the hallway outside the apartment. By this time I'm frantically trying to get the candles lit before they walk in. Elder Squires tried locking both of the locks to slow them down. Unfortunately I was unable to get all of them lit before they walked in. I was one candle short of having them all lit. It was still great time anyways! We sang happy birthday and had cake. Elder Squires had also brought summer sausage to eat. Haha! It was kind of a random mixture of food for a birthday party, but it was good :).
Finally, we had to drop six investigators. We dropped the father and son duo, because the father, decided that he wanted his son (who was 8 years old) to make his decision about baptism at an older age so he understood the decision he was making. The wife is a member though, so one of the senior couples said that they would work through her to see if they could help.
The other four (a family), had to be dropped because the father left on a business trip that he thought would only take a few weeks. Well it turns out that the business trip will take about three months. The wife says that she's been really busy lately trying to take care of the kids and work as well, so it might be a while before we can meet with them again. The senior couple I mentioned earlier said that they were going to try and stop by next Sunday and visit with her also. They feel that if she has a sense of urgency enough that she'll call them, but as of right now they don't think she does. So we'll see what happens.
Well this is been our week! Been a pretty good one, but kind of a bummer the same time. There were wonderful miracles that we received and we thank our Heavenly Father for them. I hope you all have a great week! I love you all!
Love,
Elder Gold
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