A Palm Sunday Miracle

A Palm Sunday miracle:

Church is always a stressful time as a missionary, you could spend all week convincing and trying to sell people on coming to church, inviting as many as possible and they'll all say yes just to call us during the opening hymn to tell us that they only got 7 out of 8 of their required hours of sleep or that their friends cousin is doing a revival and they have to go there to support them or something. 

Currently we have one investigator that puts up no argument with coming to church, he is also the hardest investigator to communicate with because he speaks Portuguese and only very little French. We're not exactly sure why he keeps coming to church because we only have it translated into French but he just sits there and tries to feel the spirit. What a boss. 

Other than that though, no one will come to church, either they'll give one of the excuses listed above or will tell us flat out that they won't come because they think we are both the Freemasons and the Illuminati, as evidence they point to our steeple and say it's like an antenna or some sort of land-air missile, you know, reasonable guesses. 

So there I am, sitting in fast and cry-imony meeting with our investigator who is probably more than a little concerned as the woman at the pulpit is gasping for breath because she's crying so hard. Suddenly, I heard the chapel doors open and 2 men shuffled in and sat down next to some members. 

I looked at Elder Alleman who was sitting with our translator a few rows ahead to the left. "No way," I mouthed. 

Yes way. Sitting down was the 2 people I would have never guessed would come to sacrament (at least on that particular Sunday) One, was a man we've spoken with maybe 3 times, and he'd never picked up a Boom of Mormon. The other was the Brother of a less-active member who got deported a month ago. Elder Alleman had talked to the guy maybe once 7 months ago and he said he would call us when he was interested. 

We asked, "what prompted you to come today?" Their answer, "It is Palm Sunday, there are few better days to come to church."

Miracles.

How have you not been baptized?

I've mentioned Sister Julius before and how her grandkids are all members and how we're teaching her daughter Angelique right? 

This week Sister Julius and her daughter took us to Grand Buffet, a chinese buffet, and also possibly one of my least favorite Texas restaurants right next to Whataburger. Why do I dislike Grand Buffet? It was the first place Elder Rowley and I ate at and also the first place Elder Rowley threw up during our time together. 

Anyway, we were talking with Angelique and she was telling us about her kids, George, the second oldest just turned 14 and was preparing the sacrament every Sunday and her 6 year old and 11 year old were both very jealous of him so to compensate they've made their new favorite game "Sacrament meeting" they'll break bread and pass it around and then they'll pretend to give talks and I just wondered why she hadnt been baptized yet. 

Eric talks about modesty:

We've had this investigator named Eric for a while now, he's very cool but he's also very passionate about random gospel topics. He also refuses to turn on the lights in his living room so its always a little creppy in there. This week the topic was modesty. 

He had noticed in one of the pamphlets that there was a woman wearing pants and he got very riled up.

He talked about how modesty was important to God as found in Galatians and for that reason women cannot not wear pants. 

"You will never see me in the, the," he was making a cutting motion just above his knee. 

"Shorts?" I asked 

"Yes, those they are disgustingly immodest. You will never see me in those... shorts. Except for maybe my wife." 

"Men do not look attractive in pants but women do. They are too tempting."

 And then he got into some weird stuff talking about when African Pentecostals go into a frenzy when they "feel" The Holy Ghost and things got pretty weird. 

"They just go into the movement, and then pow!" 

We werent sure what "pow" meant but neither of us wanted to go down the dark road to find out.

Kwaheri,

Elder Murdoch