Evangelicals again

People,

My letter sent to the mission President.

President Peterson,
Thank you for responding to my question about illegal immigrants. The members in our ward were pretty mad about the whole thing, and wanted to know your opinion. During my transfer in Utah we baptized an illegal Mexican immigrant. Most humble and sincere investigator I have taught as a missionary. Was working in Utah to pay for his wife´s in Mexico insulin shots which he wouldn´t be able to afford otherwise.
So this week. We worked A LOT with members. We had (past tense) a lot of good investigators. We however were hit down time and time again. Some of our favorite investigators came in contact with an Evangelical pastor who moved here recently and turned their house into a church. We brought over a member who was evangelical before and had a very good lesson, but when someone closes their mind, there isn´t much you can do so we lost all of them (they had kept many commitments such as going to a baptism). We are lending Books of Mormon now since we only have four of them. We had two other investigators hand it back saying they ¨just couldn´t¨ continue. One because of a ...not so good husband. But Elder Streadbeck and I just laughed about how bad things were turning out for us, and kept on working trying to bring members with us to meet our good intestigators. Yesterday it paid off. however. We found a normal couple with two kids. We brought a member with us who they immediately clicked and are now friends. The wife said she had never talked to religious people and didn´t realize why she did let us in, until having heard the message. They are getting baptized. So Elder Streadbeck and I are doing well. He is a really good missionary. We are trying to make the most of this really good ward that we are in (there were a hundred people at church yesterday, which I hadn´t seen before during my mission).
-Elder Reed

So to expand on the letter written. Monday night. We´re like, let´s go over and see how Pablo and Saira, our Bolivians are doing. As we walk over we hear ¨Evangelical noises¨. I´m like that´s odd because there is no Evangelical church in this neighbourhood. I then said ¨Is that coming from Pablo´s house¨. We go up to Pablo´s house and see speakers booming outside of his house (If I were a neighbor I would have kicked them over, very rude of him to do that). We go in, and there is a Pastor movie playing with computer and other images playing about the End of the World and those who study about it won´t be destroyed as in the days of Noah and whatever. There were images of people making out with dogs, gay people, computer images of people eating each other, a seven headed red dragon making a raaaaorrr noise, evil music, people puting in little chips in their arms that the Anti Crist will use to control their minds and make them serve him using a computer program that will be projected onto world wide television, etc. The house was full of Bolivians watching it. Pablo was anxiously taking notes. Elder Streadbeck and I got up and left when they started showing images of naked people, making us feel more uncomfortable than we already were.

We came back the next day to talk to Pablo and Saira, our awesome investigators about what was going on. The Pastora Boliviana was there and we had an Evangelical showdown, I mean we talked. I have experience with these kind of people from Plottier. So she started talking nonstop reciting scriptures to show me she know what she is talking about. So I asked a couple of questions and listened to her rant for a half hour making statments occasionally to clarify that I was listening and understood what she was saying. I then tired and started going into authority and apostasy, which Evangelicals don´t believe in, it destroying their priest craft. She like a typical Evangelical would cut be off and change the subject, but I don´t let that happen anymore. I backed up everything we said with the Bible which is how they run. It wasn´t contentious for the first part. She started to attack our beliefs seeing she couldn´t answer where she got her authority, etc. I then did what was necessary, which I have done before. I said, ¨Are you willing to be humble and ask God if the Church of Jesus Christ is the Church of Jesus Christ and then act upon that answer? That is our invitation for all people. She tried to change the subject, but I wouldn´t let her. I said that three more times. She ended up saying she did not want to know. I said fine then, we didn´t come to talk to you anyways, we came to talk to Pablo and Saira, so now stop talking. We can talk all day about what we and you believe and back it up with the Bible, but we are here to do that. We are here only to invite people to do what God would have them do which you can know by asking Him.

That's me, looking at pictures

Comodoro at low tide

We then talked to Pablo and Saira. He asked us why we don´t talk about the end of the world which is important to him. We said we do, but in Church. He said he wouldn´t read the Book of Mormon because it was different from the Bible. I said how can you judge something before you have read it. The Evangelical lady cut in again. We said we are leaving now but would like to come back, because we feel a lot of contention here right now. So we came back of few days later with a lady who was evangelical before and let her do her thing. She had relatives who are pastors and all that. She understood them. Pablo had been taken in by a pastor as a kid or something like that, so he would never abandon him. His Pastor was rejected by the people in Bolivia and had just recently come to Argentina making Pablo and this lady sent by the Pastor want to try to get a church started in Comodoro called Cristo viene. This ward member was very helpful and anwered all of his questions. Saira said to the member ¨We don´t know which is the true church¨. Pablo said he however will never abandon his Pastor and he feels reading the Book of Mormon will confuse him and will be going against his Pastor. We then bore our testimonies. I said ¨It hurts me to walk thousands of miles, learn to live with difficult companions, give up all of my time and things I enjoy doing, learn another language, etc. just so you can read a couple pages and pray about it, and you are not willing to do even that.¨ It was a very spiritual lesson. We hugged and left.

We saw them yesterday morning as we were walking to church. The entire street of Bolivians were all getting ready to go to the new Evangelical church, because Pablo is more or less their leader, so they are all following him.

Moving on from that, I was hurt a few more times when for example our investigator Clara handed back the Book of Mormon saying she ¨just couldn´t read it anymore or meet with us¨- A convert member was with us and asked, what is the husband like?¨ I can tell she wants to learn more but she is scared of someone. We had met the husband before. He is Catholic because he is Catholic. He had told her she can´t meet with us anymore because we believe in other things. Whatever.

At the end of the week however everthing paid off. We found a super awesome family.

I will write more about them next week.  -Elder Reed

Final Zone Conference

Familia Laurence