I'm writing this a little earlier today, I'm writing it on Sunday night and sending it straight away in the morning. I'm doing this because I'm going to spend the day on the military base tomorrow for p-day to buy American food and play golf. My area is full of military bases and military personnel so I have been basically living amongst Americans while I have been here.
When I bore my testimony I made a cheesy joke that no one will let me live down. I said that I was born and raised in Utah or "the Mormon factory", now when ever I talk to a member they call me the Mormon Factory Elder.
This week has actually been very very challenging for me. I had some form of mental block with street contacting this past week that hindered my work. In my area you don't get to see a lot of people on the street, maybe one or two people per mile or so.
So every person you see you have to take full advantage of which I just wasn't able to do for some reason, and I am thankful for my companion for taking lead on street contacting. My tracting is actually very very good, the polar opposite of my street contacting, so we tract a lot while I was having my block.
Later on in the week we had companionship exchanges with our zone leaders in Norwich (don't pronounce the "W" when you say it). My companion for the day was Elder MuchMoore, one football stud from Wyoming. In the day we street contacted (we taught in the city so no tracting at all) and taught 2 lessons, one of the unexpected, I learned a lot from my simplistic but yet Socratic and spiritual giant companion for the day.
He explained to me when you put on your nametag with Jesus Christ’s name on it everyone one you pass expects to hear and talk about Christ; and if you pass by them with out sharing or even attempting to talk with them it's almost a slap in the face. Some how I'm judging them and deemed them unworthy of Christ’s love. It snapped me out of my seemingly endless internal battle that was going on inside me, being torn between faith and fear. For both are opposites and cannot dwell within the presence of one another. After our heart to heart over our fish and chips (which we had in a restaurant that was underground in old WW2 bunkers) we jumped up to work and got straight to it.
For the first time in a week (even though it felt like eternity) the spirit was able to testify through me the truthfulness of the gospel. When ever I talked with someone they new I had something to say but they still didn’t want to hear, I was able to teach more effectively and the spirit placed a lot of things on my remembrance to bring up, to say, and to most importantly listen.
I taught a lesson that day with an YSA aged girl who had been studying Christianity but also Judaism, Buddhism, and any other religion you could think of. It was a challenging lesson because her theory of how Gods love work was interesting and thought provoking, but was not built on Christ. She believed that anyone one and everyone was saved just for being a child of God. We explained as best we could that through Christ’s infinite sacrifice everyone has the opportunity to come back to live in gods presence; but you have to come unto Christ and have faith in him that drives you to follow him and his teachings.
It was frustrating because she would keep bringing up Judaism and the Muslim quarram saying that Christ was only a prophet not the Son of God. In the end Elder Muchmoore bore sweet simple testimony with the authority of god that everyone would be saved through Christ and that all we have to do is come unto him. We then gave her a plan of salvation packet because she started asking about baptisms for the dead and we connected the dots and found her concern.
I'll probably never see her again but even though I was frustrated I was frustrated because I just wanted her to let Christ save her. I think that is the hardest part of missionary work, you want to save every soul you meet on the street but they won't let you.
After Elder Muchmoore and I had a interview where he explained that I have much more potential than I'm giving myself credit for and that it's amazing that I even have that potential 20+ days on the mission. He explained that he knows I'm meant for great things on this mission and all I have to do to achieve it is be my intelligent, charming, funny self and the people will come.
I think I got caught up trying to be other missionaries I knew were successful, and trying to be them took a way from the spirit because I was lying to myself on who I am and lying to people on who I am and the spirit couldn't testify that I was a true servant of Christ. It reminds me of some of the last words of advice I ever had from my dad; his last words to me were "Benjamin don't care what people think or say, be yourself and have fun. That's what matters".
I thought that just applied in my adolescent upbringing years, but I now realize it is an essential building block of missionary work. You need to be yourself to be genuine and meaningful and not fake because people will be able to see it immediately and the spirit can not testify of the rehearsed produced message that you are recycling from a previous missionary and if you aren't having fun with your work it will turn into a written produced gospel message that you forced to share for 2 years.
It's amazing how simple building blocks of long forgotten advice can strengthen testimonies of not only yourself but now the people you share your testimony with. I love all of you and pray for you individually every night.
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