Hermit Jew

Hermit Jew:

Way back in November Elder Rowley and I got a referral to deliver a Bible and a Book of Mormon to an inactive member living in a town up north that we rarely went to, whose records weren't in our LDS tools. He lived too far away for us to just "pop in" on him unannounced so we tried calling and texting him several times to set up a time for us to drop by and give him the books. He never responded. 

A week rolled by and we finally emailed him and our email said something like this:

"Hey Brother R***, we have your Bible and Book of Mormon when would be a good time for us to drop them off to you?"

A few days later we got an email that was sent out at like 11:00 pm the previous night and all it said was:

"You could drop them off now."

We were a little mad that he tried using email as a fast form of communication so we emailed him again, told him that didn't work for us and told him to call us gave him our number and everything. We never heard from him 

The following week we found ourselves near his alleged address late at night and we tried looking for his house but the last house on the street was one number off from being his address and then after that house the road just stopped. An unfrequented country road shot out to the right and went deep into the woods. From our perspective though, there were no houses in sight plus, according to the address we were given it wasn't even the correct road. We turned around and forgot all about it.

Last week though, we again found ourselves in Wortham this time on foot. Elder Petrucka for some reason really, really wanted to deliver the books to this guy. So we returned to the street and asked around. No one had heard of the guy until we made it to the last house on the street and we asked, "Hey do you know where R****** R*** lives?" 

The man who answered the door just stared at us and pointed down the dirt road next to his house and said, "He's the only house on that road. Now go away and leave us alone." He quickly rushed back into the safety of his own house and locked the door. 

Like I said, we were on foot because we had thought Wortham was smaller than it actually was so we walked about a mile down this dirt road into the woods. Suddenly there was a clearing there was this run down white house with a whole bunch of weird stuff like bike parts from little girl's and wagons without any wheels. Against out better judgement we Knocked and a pitbull appeared in the window trying to claw it's way out. We could faintly hear music coming from the back of the house but no one answered. We left and planned on coming back the following (this) week.

So, there we were on Thursday on bikes this time doing our missionary thing during the day we went down the road toward this house twice. Still no answer, the only change was that there was a rusted axe on a chopping block with a bunch of wood around it. And the dog was gone. That raised some questions.

We got in the car as the sun began to set and decided to drop by one last time. We pulled up and the lights in the house were on, the dog was tied to a clothes line and we could see a man inside. He saw us and we began walking toward each other as we stepped onto his lawn the pitbull jumped on us wanting to play the man then ran up grabbed the dog and threw it violently to the ground. This happened at least 3 times before we started talking.

He was a hairy man. Muddy jeans, a ripped long sleeved shirt and a ratty baseball cap. Basically, imagine Forrest Gump when he "just felt like running" but instead of running he hunted small game with his bare hands and lived off of nothing but raw meat. That was this guy.

He was really friendly with us talked about how he was baptized when he was 14 back in Washington and how he had done some renovation work on some things in the Tabernacle at Temple Square. He told us he ended up in Texas after he divorced his wife and his stepson said he could come live with him in Mexia until he found work. Then, the stepson skipped town 3 months after he moved in leaving him all alone in Texas. Then he told us that last year he lost his wallet while fishing and he can't find his Social Security number card. So he had no identity so finding work was pretty much impossible. I asked if may be the church could help him with something like if we coukd find his membership records or something then he could use that as a form of identity, but he declined.  

"Yes sir I was baptized when I was 14 and loved the Mormon church... what about you two? Are you eh... are you very firm in your faith?" 

Of all the questions a member could ask a missionary that one may be the most strange.

"Of course we're firm in our faith," we replied uneasily.

"I used to be firm in the Mormon faith you see... but then... I started asking questions... and The Mormons didn't have the answers," He spat. "Like, why don't we celebrate the Passover hmm? And when was Jesus born? Why don't we follow the Mosaic code?" 

I could tell this was turning into a Bible bash and I really wasn't in the mood, so I figured I'd just look for the first opportunity to leave but apparently Elder Petrucka and I weren't on the same page because he proceeded to bash. Elder Petrucka talked about fulfillment of the law for about 30 seconds but then the man cut him off by poking his forehead with  his dirty finger and said, "You're a sinner boy. Why aren't you wearing a hat sinner? You're a sinner." 

The man then told us he'd been taught the truth by a black Rabbi formerly addicted to heroin (of course) and how he knew the truth about everything now but also how he knew nothing. 

I could physically feel The Spirit leave and made an attempt to leave, "You're entitled to your own beliefs sir but we need to get go-"

He cut me off, "All you need are the first five books," he growled at me, now with saliva running down his unkempt beard, "The rest is just a history lesson. HAVE YOU READ THE FIRST FIVE BOOKS BOY?!? YOU DON'T EVEN NEED TO WORRY ABOUT THE REST OF THE BIBLE!" 

Without even thinking about the consequences of my response I replied, "I finished Deuteronomy back in November."

"CANT EVEN TOUCH A PIG." He said, and with that turned to Elder Petrucka, "What about the 400,00 mentioned in Revelation? Hmm? What does that mean?"

"You mean 144,000 right?" Elder Petrucka responded.

"Also, you just told us that you didn't worry about the rest of the Bible so why does the Book of Revelation matter to you? Is that a history book to you even though it talks about the future?" I added still wanting to leave but not wanting to give this apostate the satisfaction of confounding us.

"Um... NEXT QUESTION: WHEN WAS JESUS BORN?"

"Doesn't matt-"

"FALSE. HE WAS BORN IN THE AUTUMN. DO YOU CELEBRATE ALL JEWISH HOLIDAYS?" 

"uh... no."

"SINNER!" 

"Would you call yourself a Jew?"

"RELIGION ISN'T EVEN REAL MAN! NONE OF THIS IS REAL"

at this point I regained my senses and just decided to mentally check out like I usually do when crazy people preach to me and thought about the chicken I was going to cook up when I got home. After a while it got really dark and pretty cold and I stopped thinking about my imaginary chicken and realized this guy was still droning on about Judaism. 

Now I was cold, tired and it was dark and we had a lesson coming up soon. I wondered if I could just walk away but a good rule of thumb in rural Texas is that everyone has a gun and he was probably crazy enough to blow my head off. So I just stood there and suffered. 

Finally, he paused to breathe, and we jumped at the chance to leave. We bore testimony on the Book of Mormon and fulfillment of the law, said we needed to leave and ran to the car before he could keep going. 

On a more spiritual note:

President Whitney has told us that there were 3 times in his life where he seriously doubted the gospel. Once was on his mission, the second time was when he was a Bishop, and the third was when he was a Stake President. To overcome his doubts each time all he had to do was read the Book of Mormon and pray about it and each time he was given the answer that it was true. We will all struggle with our testimony's at some point in our life, I believe the first thing to do is follow the council Alma gives us: 

"But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words."

  If we continue to read and pray with only so much as a hope for them to be true we will receive our answer.

Love y'all,

--Elder Murdoch