Hermit Jew- Pt. 2

The jail cells in Wortham, TX. that are still in use

Hermit Jew Pt.2:

On Friday we had a really interesting day, we had a what was basically a Q&A with a Baptist youth pastor that we met last week for like, an hour and a half. (I'll talk about that later.)

We met a woman who was baptized into the church back in Tennessee and we began to teach her granddaughter. Also, someone who looked suspiciously like Tito Jackson tried to break our Branch Mission leaders hand. A pretty normal day if, a bit busy.  

It was about 6:30 and I had to use the bathroom so we biked over to the Cefco in Wortham before we got back to tracting. When we were walking in we saw some guys in the parking lot trying to fix their car or something and we resolved to help them after I had taken care of business. 

When I walked out of the bathroom Elder Petrucka was talking to the gas station attendant. She had tears in her eyes as she finished her life story about how she got stranded in Texas and is trying to find a way to get herself and her kids back to Arizona. I don't know how Elder Petrucka was able to get her entire life story in the 2 minutes I was gone but somehow he did. 

As we walked out of the gas station the same guys were still working on the car so we walked over to help. From behind one of them looked familiar but I thought to myself, 

 There's no way... He doesn't even have a car he rides a little girl's bike. 

"Hello there! Need any help?" I asked enthusiastic to be doing my good turn daily.

The man turned and my heart sunk.

The Hermit Jew. 

"Can I help you boys?" He asked with his hand by his hip like he was about to draw a gun from his imaginary holster. 

"Can we help you?" We asked in unison a less enthusiastic than before.

"We're trying to break into this car." He said and then started laughing like The Joker. 

The other man with him said, "Tha woman in the gash shtation locked 'er keysh inshide." He took a swig of a bottle covered with a paper bag and sighed with a blissful look on his face. 

We agreed to help because there was no way a these two guys would be able to help the poor woman inside. 

They had managed to get the trunk open but the back seats were locked so they couldn't be pushed down. At this point they were kind of just lightly swinging clothes hangers at the car hoping that if they hit it enough it would open. 

The gas station attendant lady kept coming out and thanking us for trying because she couldn't afford to pay anyone to unlock her car for her.  

Periodically people would come and investigate but eventually everyone left, even the drunk friend leaving just the 3 of us. 

Elder Petrucka kept saying that we should leave and we probably should have because it wasnt the greatest use of proselyting time but my superego reminded me of when Tadashi from Big Hero Six says, "Someone has to help." And that was enough for me. 

We said a prayer and felt prompted to try unlocking the car from the passenger door. Did we? Not at first. 

We tried unlocking it from the drivers side first but we discovered that the door handle was completely broken. 

The Hermit Jew tried to unlock the back door but really he wasn't doing anything helpful. He kept denouncing the government though. 

At one point a cop rolled up and all he said to us was: "Did Erin lock her keys in her car again?" Then he drove off. 

We kept trying far fetched ways to unlock the car all the while ignoring the prompting to unlock it from the passenger door. 

Finally, we decided to listen to The Spirit and try it in a last ditch effort. The Hermit Jew kept telling us it wouldn't work and that we should just bash a window in. We liked our plan better.

We were reaching the wire towards the door handle when we got the genius idea: let's just fish the keys out of her purse.

The Hermit Jew observed as we made a hook in our coat hanger and nabbed the woman's keys and carefully lifted it out of the car. The Hermit Jew started dancing around in excitement and we raised our voices in prayer of thanksgiving.  

Erin came out and hugged us we asked if she might be interested in hearing more about The Gospel and she said she was too busy. 

"There is one person I know of you could try though," she said, "she used to work here and she was super nice but I don't know where she lives."

"Oh, was her name M***** B****?" We asked with a pained smile

"Yeah! Do you know her?" 

"Yeah... she's already a member of our church..."

I could have learned a lot of lessons from that experience but the most important one I learned by far is: how to break into a 2003 Corolla.

On a More Spiritual Note:

I mentioned the Baptist youth pastor earlier, we'll call him Reverend Arbuckle.

Rev. Arbuckle was someone we met last week he let us in for about 30 minutes and we gave him a Book of Mormon and he invited us back. 

I said it was a Q&A earlier because even though we had made a lesson plan that's pretty much what it turned into. 

He asked the basic questions about what our story was, how missions work etc. 

Then he dove a little deeper asking about what our beliefs were on Heaven and Hell and where people that lived during the apostasy go to.  We taught him the Plan of Salvation up to the Spirit World. He said he couldn't believe it and we asked him to Pray about it. Up until this point things were pretty spiritual.

Then he revealed that he had indeed read from the Book of Mormon which was super cool because getting people to read is like really hard. 

Then he started using the scriptures he read against us. He said that it never explicitly States that Alma the Younger was baptized which supported his false idea that baptism was not a saving ordinance. Elder Petrucka gave him an answer that seemed to satisfy him. Rev. Arbuckle then asked some extremely profound questions. 

"It says here in the introduction, that The Book of Mormon contains the fulness of the everlasting gospel. Are you saying that The Bible doesn't?" He looked about ready to throw his Book of Mormon on the ground.

"The fullness of The Gospel of Jesus Christ is: Faith in Christ and His Atonement, Repentance, Baptism, Recieving The Gift of The Holy Ghost, and Enduring to the End. Which is found both in The Bible and The Book of Mormon," I replied.

Rev. Arbuckle replied, "Then why have The Book of Mormon at all if The Bible has all you need?" 

Elder Petrucka jumped in, "We need the Book of Mormon because it adds a second witness to the divinity of Jesus Christ, and is proof that the Priesthood authority necessary to perform sacred ordinances rests solely with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And you can come to know The Book of Mormon is true by asking your Father in Heaven as you've read in Moroni 10."

Rev. Arbuckle then asked, "You keep talking about this Spirit but I can't say that I fully understand what you mean by it. Yes I've felt the Spirit before but I don't believe you have." 

Can't remember exactly what I said but Elder Petrucka bore a powerful testimony that he had felt the Spirit and that The Book of Mormon was true. 

Rev. Arbuckle kind of backed away from the subject after that but he still refused to accept the idea of Priesthood authority. He said some not nice things about the organization of the church primarily because he didn't understand and refused to let us explain it to him. Then he apologized for the heavy nature of the conversation and after we finished he asked if we could go back next week. 

We did get confounded a lot though, he asked questions about some super deep doctrine that we had no idea about so it was really a wake up call for us to step up our study game. 

Love y'all,

-- Elder Murdoch 

Main Street Wortham at dusk

Me presenting Mexia