So, not much time today, we’ll keep it brief. BUT, it was a pretty wild week. I won’t get into the whole story with our friend F (Not gonna disclose his whole name), but we’ll go real quick with stuff that happened.
Called 911 to find him after he got dropped on the side of the road in -20 degree weather at 9pm
Learned he was gonna walk to Texas
Gave him a lil bag with food for his trek there
He faked his own death
Blocked me on Facebook
I’ll expound a bit on the faking his own death though, because it’s sadly not as cool as I wish it was. He shot us a message on Facebook Messenger, claiming to be F’s mother, telling us that he died. We tried to figure out if it was him, and then offered to say a prayer with “his mom”, but then he blocked us.
Pretty good time, and I think faking your own death and claiming to be your own mother messaging people about your death is definitely the furthest I’ve ever seen anyone go to drop us. But that’s the life we live, I guess.
Then our apartment flooded because our upstairs neighbor’s pipes burst, and a bunch of water got everywhere, so now we live in a hotel. Until Tuesday, because I’m moving to a place called Midwest City, which is in the Midwest. And I’m getting a new comp named Elder Ingersol. (I’m 72% sure I spelled that wrong, but that’s ok)
And to wrap everything up, I’ll just share a real quick statement of truth:
I know that this work I’m doing is changing the lives of the people around me. And I know that this message I’m sharing is the single greatest message of all time. It tells you why we’re here, where we’re going, and how to return to live with God again. I usually don’t talk about all the cool spiritual things, because honestly, I’m sure half of you don’t care, and they’re usually more personal, but just so everyone is clear: I know the church that I represent is the restored church of Jesus Christ Himself.
Thanks for reading gang, have a good one!
Over and Out
SHOUTOUTS:
Keaton – This is former Elder Anderson, he’s no longer a boy, but a MAN. He’s off vibing somewhere in Utah, just trying to keep all the ladies at bay. He’s a good guy.
Sunday Evening Fight Night
Well, we didn’t really have an out of the water week, but it was still good! Lots of being locked inside because the P O L A R V O R T E X is ripping through OK, and they’re telling all of us to stay inside. All I’m saying is that a “real feel” of -25 isn’t enough to stop the greatest work on planet earth. And it doesn’t, because we just work from inside now. The only problem is, we haven’t been able to get a hold of about half the people we usually talk to this week, so that’s unfortunate. But the work never stops.
As far as things that have happened, the most exciting was this Sunday. Last week I talked a little about the Free Book of Mormon post we threw up, and we decided to give it another shot on Sunday! It had been a full week, the weather was so delightful, and we optimistically posted it on Facebook.
Not even three minutes later we had the first comment:
“Still trying to give away this trash?”
And instantly we knew: It was gonna be a good night. Well, after this challenger entered the ring, he rallied his other bashing friends on their “Bash the Mormons” group chat, and the comments started raging. As missionaries, and just as decent human beings, we respond to all the comments as kindly and patiently as possible. Now, we might have been standing up and laughing about the comments people made, but they didn’t know that. Anyway, we were in the ring, elbow-blocking these chumps, as they threw around some of the most oddly specific threats and insults I have ever heard.
“Joseph Smith was a snake oil salesman” What does that even mean???? Who’s going around selling snake oil???? Because Joseph Smith wasn’t…
“I hope the law crushes you” Oh yes, THE LAW is coming to piledrive me into the sidewalk.
I hope you read those with my confused and sarcastic tone of voice in your head, because that’s precisely how we talked about those questions to each other. After a little bit of this, the main bashing guy (we’ll call him Steve) just got DROP KICKED (metaphorically) by this random lady in the comments, who responded to something he said with, “You’re being SO RUDE. They’re just offering a book.” I would’ve thought that such a comment would silence this man, but he didn’t even flinch. He backed up his actions, claiming that it was his “duty as a good Christian” to set us straight.
And then another random lady just gave him a finishing uppercut after that one, saying, “You really aren’t being a good Christian.”
OH MAN, I thought Steve had been knocked out of the ring for good. But the tenacity of that man’s ego was a sight to behold. I genuinely believe that his mind was INCAPABLE of even grasping the idea that he MIGHT be wrong.
But no.
He tried to prove his self righteousness with some of the most unrighteous language I’ve ever seen. And pretty soon, the battle was no longer against us. We were literally just watching comment after comment come in, as we read them out loud and freaked out when Steve got kneecapped for the fourth time in a row. It was the bashers against the “First Amendment advocates” (as I call them). They weren’t saying our religion was right or anything, but they were just telling the bash boys that they were being really disrespectful. And as the fire raged ever brighter, I saw some of the most petty things being said. Like, one of the basher ladies called somebody out for a SPELLING ERROR. Wow. It was a
C U T T H R O A T C O M M E N T S E C T I O N
And at one point, Elder Grace (whose first name is Summit) got called “Summer”, so that was a good time.
Oh sweet biscuits and gravy. It only lasted about an hour and a half, but it was so fun. The post got ripped down and we got blocked from the group, but once a new missionary comes in here (to replace me), that comment section might just light up again.
Wow, those comments were stellar, I can’t do them justice in this email, but know that they were amazing.
Other than that though, nothing really noteworthy happened.
Hope everyone is staying warm, and enjoy this great month!
The 18th is coming up sooo….
THE RAFFLE:
Over and Out
SHOUTOUTS:
My Parents – Wow, I’m lucky to have such wonderful parents. They do so much for me. No wonder commandment number 5 exists (It’s “Honor thy father and thy mother”)
Pics:
It’s never too cold to do the work of the good Lord
The Goosinator
Shoutout to the four people that have stuck with these weeklies the whole time I’ve been out on my mission, you’re the real ones.
Now, before I talk about the rest of the week, I’ll have all four of you know that we’re getting some cold weather, and it’s sick. The ground is totally covered in ice and even though they told us we can’t drive anywhere, we’ve been running around and sliding across it for a bit this morning. It’s a blast.
This week honestly consisted of some great lessons and a bunch of lessons that didn’t happen because people disappeared. Sometimes it’s unfortunate that people can choose what they do. But it’s all good, we’re doing everything we can, and that’s the best we can do.
Now to completely change gears, I hate geese. Those little snitches are so lucky it is against the law to clobber them, because if it wasn’t, my goose kill count would be in the hundreds. They’d call me the Goosinator. Geese everywhere would fear me. The reason I’m saying this is because we were out in this park, taking aesthetic pictures of the Book of Mormon so that when we put it up for free on Facebook people can see how nice it looks. But as we’re taking these pictures, these geese just start steppin’ up like they OWN THE PLACE!! Hissing and honking like they were all that. And I told Elder Grace that if any of those geese were looking for trouble, they found it. And then he was like, “It’s illegal to kill geese.” So we just walked to another part of the park. Man I tell you, some of the strongest warriors are those who don’t fight. But oh my goodness, they were SO cocky, they didn’t realize the only thing keeping them alive were the laws of this land.
Then later this week, we actually posted a free Book of Mormon ad on this Facebook buy/sell group, and WOW, the people were up in arms. You could hear the torches getting lit and the pitchforks being sharpened. We were basically bashed the entire day, for things that aren’t even true. Here are the things we got called out for:
Worshipping a “different Jesus”
Preaching “damnable heresy”
Being “deceived by Satan”
Adding to the book of Revelation
Being in “the devil’s church”
Oppressing women in our church
Worshipping Joseph Smith
And much, much more!
Now, none of these claims are true, and we responded as patiently and kindly as possible, but they would just crawl on back, trying to get a few more licks in. By the end of the day, our post had over a hundred comments, half of them being people yelling at us, and the other half being us defending the church against literal blasphemy. Some guys said they could get in contact with their preachers in Woodward and they could “help us leave our devil church and come to the real gospel.” It was a wild day. And then they deleted the post and all the comments.
But yeah! Life keeps going, and we’re having a pretty grand time. The couple lessons that we did have were really good, and we’ve got some cool new people that we’re teaching now. We’re blessed out here.
I’ll catch you guys next time! Have a spectacular week!
Over and Out
SHOUTOUTS:
Guy that made kites – Today is NATIONAL KITE FLYING DAY, so I figure I’ll pay a tribute to the guy who decided strings and paper had so much more potential than what others saw in them. I don’t have a kite, but if you do, you gotta break it out. It’s the one day of the year dedicated to kites!
Chef Boy Are These
Like a relentless mosquito, I’m back at it with the weeklies. We’ve been having a good time doing work, and it’s cool to get to talk to a bunch of people around here. Even if some of them don’t want to talk to me.
And I’ll have everyone know that I did put a giant spoonful of peanut butter in my mouth last Monday night. At 10:27 pm, because I forgot to do it earlier. Which meant I had to brush my teeth again, but that’s ok, because it was worth it.
And then on Wednesday of this week, I had some mac and cheese from the store, and I had bought a can of Chef Boyardee mac and cheese last Monday. It only cost me 89 cents. So I go to make it, and it’s got 3 steps.
Open the can
Dump can in bowl
Microwave
Wow, that’s some top tier chef moves right there. Not really. I should’ve known from the 89-cent price tag that this was not going to be a high class meal, but I still bought it. And after heating them up and taking a single bite, I said, “Chef…. BOY ARE THESE THE WORST NOODLES I HAVE EVER HAD. And ended up throwing them out and making a PB&J. It was a good lunch.
I also ended up making some different kinds of cookies and bon bons throughout the week, so that was a good time.
Not too many noteworthy things happened this week. We were going to have a baptism this Saturday, but we’re gonna wait a bit longer so we can make sure this person isn’t going to join the church and then drop off the face of the earth.
That’s all we got, thanks for reading this, and I’ll catch you guys next week!
Over and Out
SHOUTOUTS:
Sister Jones – For whining about not getting a shoutout. That’s it. Nah I’m kidding; she actually met some gentlemen I know in my mission, Elder Dengin and Elder Trejo, because they were passing off a person they were teaching to Sister Jones over the phone, and then my snitch radar went off, and here we are. She’s cool though, she’s serving in Arkansas.
