English Elder Lyfe

English Elder Lyfe:

A hastily organized blitz was put on this week. The Zone Leaders told me around 3:30 that they wanted to do one at 6 in their area so naturally running off of African time and back to back lessons we showed up at 6:40. We were assigned to tract out a complex next to one of our Less-Active members which we knew fairly well. 

As always I was a little anxious when we began tracting but after about the 3rd door we knocked I loved it. We quickly realized that the English Elders are living the high life of comedic situations. The 1st door we knocked on had all this "I  Jesus" stuff in the window. We were talking all this good stuff we felt from the window and how she was probably super nice and even if she wasn't interested would still tell us where to go. We knocked, she cracked the door open and told us to get lost. It was hilarious.

Literally the next door we knocked on a naked old man answered and also told us to get lost which was pretty funny but what was even funnier is that it happened  three more times. The last time it happened the guy was actually trying to bash with us talking about how his Baptist mega-church pastor was speaking wisdom. All Elder Shiday could see was thus guys head and his clothes behind him but if I looked at him I'd catch a glimpse of everything so I looked up trying not to laugh until the point where my face was purple and my big ol' forehead vein was about to pop. Then to get us out Elder Shiday offered the man a card which was good. What was bad was that the man felt it was necessary to swing his door all the way open and step outside to retrieve it. 

We also saw this mother and son struggling to get a bed frame from their car to their apartment so we gladly jumped in and helped. They were both very thankful and we safely dropped the bed frame off at their apartment. Then I bothered to actually look at them in the eyes and realized that the son wasn't a son at all and that he was actually a she with short hair. When we put 2 and 2 together a few moments later things got really awkward and we quickly left.

 Elder Murdoch Da Vinci:

Just before he left an elder suggested we draw out the restoration for our investigators. I don't know how it is for all the other missions but in Texas people just don't comprehend the restoration. It's the same for everyone English and French. With the Africans it's even more frustrating. If you teach them about Joseph Smith they will say he's a prophet about 97% of the time without comprehending what it means. If they see the front cover of The Book of Mormon they tell us it's true because it says "Jesus." 

So using my nonexistent art skills I drew up some pictures for our people. I labored for hours drawing pictures using my fancy pencils and erasers adding some shading here and there. Then I took my sketches and put them up to a canvas, blew them up added some more Vermeer like detail to the larger image. 

We took these pictures and after the opening prayer I presented the first one to our investigator. It was a picture of Jesus.

"C'est Jésus-Christ," j'ai dit

"Ooh, je voix, c'est Jésus-Christ en la manière de l'enfant" (yes I see, it's a children's drawing of Jesus Christ)

Despite being slightly insulted the pictures worked. When he finally understood the apostasy he looked very sad.

"That's it?" He asked "There's no hope of a restoration?" 

We were then able to successfully testify of the restoration and he finally understood. It was great.

Je vous aime,

Elder Murdoch

Again sorry no pictures having technical difficulties