Hello there!
Well speaking of the nice weather,
we had our first few days in the 100s. Elder Brothers is going to die I think
haha. He's not too used to that yet. Saturday hovered right around 101-102 and
then Sunday was supposedly around 105. You can definitely feel it when you come
out of church wearing a suit jacket.
Ok so the important things first:
You know the website dearelder.com?
Well the man who is the creator/owner of it has a nephew that is serving here
in my zone. Apparently they need photographs taken of missionaries for the
website so he came down here and talked to President Taylor. President gave
permission and there are like six of us missionaries who will be getting our
pictures taken and we will be on the website! Kinda cool! Might as well just
start pullin' out the red carpet... haha
It's been really hard getting people
to come to church lately. Super hard. We commit everyone and in turn they
commit to us that they will be there. Some send us text messages 15 minutes
before the meeting telling us they are coming. Even then, none show up. It's
quite disheartening. Honestly, the extent of the hurt that I feel because of it
is a feeling I would say I haven't felt yet my entire mission. This is because
in the past I have always been able to say, 'Well I'm still gonna be here for a
while so we will just alter our teaching/committing method and hope and pray
that they come next week.' That doesn't seem to work anymore. We had interviews
with President this week. During the interview he asked me if anything was
going on that I wanted to talk to him about. I told him my concern. Tears
rolled down my face as I told him how hurt I am because our investigators won't
keep commitments. I told him I've never felt such urgency and desire to have
these people come to church. For what seemed like about five minutes, we just
cried together. I know that we have done all that we can to bring it
"unto" their hearts but it takes their wise use of agency to bring it
"into" their hearts. It seriously hurts. He responded to me by
recounting the last week of the Savior's earthly mission. He must have felt
some of the same pains that I have been feeling. He too must have wondered
about the commitment level of the saints. He knew that He would have His
apostles to carry on what He had done, but He must have also known that they
too would be rejected and killed. I at least have the knowledge that Elder
Brothers will carry on and help these people make and keep commitments. At
least I hope that he doesn't get rejected and killed. It helped to heal the
pain/discouragement I have felt. It reminded me of my talk I gave a few weeks
ago, "He's Been There Before."
We had a pretty neat experience on
Tuesday night. We have been teaching a man named Chris who is about 6'4"
and 270 pounds of muscle. He works out to be an MMA competitive fighter. He's a
super nice, humble guy though. We were standing around in his kitchen as he was
baking a cake when he told us that he had read the Book of Mormon the previous
night. It got quiet in the room and we asked him how it went. He said that he
prayed about it. My heart started beating really fast and I asked if he got an
answer. He said that he thinks he did and went on to tell us that later that
night he woke up randomly with a scripture going through his mind over and
over. The scripture was the one from Revelations 22 that says that if any man
shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues... blah blah
blah. We get that all the time...... Now my adrenaline was rollin' pretty fast
and I felt like it was going to be a pretty good throw down lesson. He also
said that he feels like whenever we teach him we only ever use the Book of
Mormon and he wants to hear from the Bible. We then started making an appeal to
the Bible to answer his concern. As we started going from scripture to
scripture, Chris's next door neighbor walked through the front door to join us.
He is a non-denominational Christian who loves his Bible. Once again, I thought
it was going to be quite a throw down. He pulled out his phone and read along
with us. We started in Amos 8:11-12 which talks about the apostasy, then we
went to Amos 3:7 (God reveals secrets to prophets), then to Acts 3:19-21 (there
would be a prophet to bring about a restitution of all things, or a
restoration), to Ephesians 4 (one Lord, one faith, one baptism - to bring a
unity to the faith). They agreed that the modern faiths were not unified and
there needed to be unity to have the true church on the earth. We then went to
James 1:5 and related the Joseph Smith story. The room got really quiet as we
stated the first vision. It's amazing how as soon as the words "I saw a
pillar of light" are said, the spirit fills the room. It was awesome to
see Chris's entire countenance change. Charles (the non-denom Christian) told
us that we were spot on with our teaching. That was exactly what Chris needed
to hear. Chris went on to tell us that we were always welcome in his home,
anytime we needed anything. He really wants to come to church but is just super
busy with his kids and work. We ended the lesson with a prayer. Charles
actually offered it and it was cool to hear the things he said regarding us as
missionaries. After Charles left, Chris told us that he is really searching
hard for truth. He wants this to be true, he just wants to know without a doubt
so that he won't join another church just to leave it a few months later. We
were ok with that.
Sorry this is such a short email. I
hope all is going well back home! Thanks for all that you do! I love you all.
Talk to you on Mother's Day!
Elder Mouritsen
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