Speaking of people who want to talk to us. We were walking down the street last week and this guy came up to talk to us. He introduced himself and proceeded to tell us that we shouldn't even try to convert him because he is a devout Catholic but that if we wanted to visit we should stop by. He then gave us his address and phone number, then left. We thought it was a little strange because normally people don't do that.
We decided to stop by his house a couple days ago and see what his story is. We didn't see any house numbers so we were driving up and down the street trying trying to find his house. We determined that it must be the house with the two somewhat large statues of Christ on either side of the door. We knocked on the door and he happily invited us in.
He sat us down on the couch then went off into the kitchen to get us brownies and soda. His house was full of statues of Christ and Angels, and every picture on the wall was of Christ. His coffee table was covered in books about the different popes and the Vatican and stuff.
We learned very quickly just how dedicated of a Catholic he was. He's retired and so every morning at 3am he wakes up to pray and study the scriptures his reason was that Christ was killed at 3pm and that because the devil was opposite of Christ, 3am was 'The Devil's Time" He determined that he wouldn't wouldn't give the devil the satisfaction of having a time to himself, so the 3am hour was his dedicated study time.
He also attends mass EVERY day.
After awhile we introduced the Book of Mormon. He was interested and accepted a copy and said that he would include it in his morning scripture study to see if maybe he can learn something from us. He invited us to come back so he could learn more about what our church believes.
We taught a family this week who has a daughter who has been wanting to be baptized, but for some reason the missionaries before us had lost contact with her. Her dad was concerned because when his brother found out that she wanted to be baptized into the LDS church he started trying to bash on the church to convince her no to join. So her dad was concerned that someone would be so full of hate for our church and decided that he wouldn't let her join until he knew more about us, just in case there was need of concern because of how his brother made the church sound.
We taught them about the Restoration of the gospel and about the Book of Mormon, the whole family was really into the discussion and at one point to mom turned to her husband and asked, "Honey, why aren't we Mormon?" I'll take that as a good sign :)
They each were given a Book of Mormon and they agreed to read to verses we asked them to read. The dad made a comment about how he was concerned that if he wanted to join to church he would have to quit smoking.
On Tuesday we went will Brother Annis to do some service for an older woman in the ward. Because of the snow we didn't put posts in the ground for a fence like we had originally planned, so instead we demolished a fireplace. That was a lot of fun :) we used some power tools to take out the wall around it (under the direction of Brother Annis) and then used a hammer and chisel to take out the mortar and remove the rocks. oh ya, when we got to her house this little annoying dog came running out and started barking at us, I made a comment about it and Elder Sanders said, "Wait until you see the rest of the collection"
The Kamiah 1st and Kamiah 2nd Elders always have the best stories. Their areas are even more remote than Orofino and are full of anti-mormions, ex-mormons and a couple polygamists. They said they called a family one time and a little kid answered. When they asked if his mother was home the kid said, "Which one?"
Most of them are exes because a couple years back they were doing temple work in one of their barns, one of the apostles had to come down and he pretended to just be visiting them in their "Kamiah Temple" when they started an endowment session he announced that is wasn't approved by the church and that they were all ex-communicated.
They had one ex-member answer the door and give THEM a pamphlet telling them why they shouldn't be a member of the church. It started with "Dear missionary, I understand that you have been brainwashed by the church so the purpose of this pamphlet is to return your mind to reality. Here are the reasons why you should consider leaving the church" and then it was a couple pages of anti-mormon stuff.
I'm glad I'm not in that area those missionaries have a hard time finding people.
As for cooking, we have a fridge and a microwave in our room. The Chapman's let us come down and use their personal kitchen.
Well, that's about how exciting this week was! haha I'll send another next week
-Elder Rebalkin
P.S.