Everyone Is A Snitch

Everyone is a snitch:

Recently as a Zone we started a challenge of how many referrals we can ask for in a week. Not to brag but we've been doing pretty well on that and even though we didn't have much faith in people selling out their friends  and neighbors at first that quickly changed. We now know why Preach my Gospel tells us to ask every one for referrals. It's because EVERYONE IS A SNITCH.

At first we only asked Africans for referrals and we saw moderate success then one day we asked these Hispanics using the only Spanish I could remember after taking it for 4 years tied in with words I pick up: ¿Africanos aqui? And they snitched on every African door for the entire block. White people and just non-Africans in general are also all to eager to help. One of the people we're teaching has started compiling a list of everyone he knows from Africa it's great. I thought the reason for all this unexpected help was because we were looking for a specific demographic and so non-Africans see us as a non-threat when we tell them they aren't the droids we're looking for. 

We asked one guy and he gave us the name of the other places he crashes at all the way in Arlington which for us is dangerous, uncharted territory and yet it's so alluring. Now with this referral and with one of the AP's coughing up all the Africans he knew back when he was trying to poach in Arlington we finally had a foothold sturdy enough to branch out there. We love Arlington now. 

Then while I went on exchange with Elder Dayton, my zone leader, I learned that people will snitch on just about everyone, not just Africans. We were in a really nice neighborhood and everyone we talked to was telling us where their neighbors were, where there mom was, where Bert from accounting was, pretty much just giving us anyone we wanted in an effort to get us away from them. 

We did this for about 3ish hours and it was great we followed the chain of referrals to a Muslim lady who was talking very calmly like she was controlling her rage and she told us she already knew everything about Jesus and that we couldn't tell her anything that the Qur'an didn't already tell her. we had a similar experience with a Kenyan woman an hour earlier and both of them got extremely confused when we told them Jesus visited America.

Anyway, the muslim lady told us to go bother her neighbor so we knocked on his door. He looked at us through a slit in his blinds and told us to hold on a second. He came out of his garage and said he already knew who we were and that he used to be a Jehovah's witness. He told us how after they had predicted the end of the world for the millionth time he decided it was a cult and he left. He said his in the JW if someone is excommunicated the family basically acts as if that person had died so his wife took his kids and left him he hasn't seen them in decades. He said he looked for a long time to find the right church and was convinced that no such church existed he said he didn't like us on the grounds of some of the stuff Joseph Smith did. Elder Dayton stopped him and said that he knew Joseph Smith wasn't perfect but that the doctrines in the church were and that the Book of Mormon was true. The guy became interested because he'd never heard a member of the church say anything about Joseph Smith's imperfections so he started asking us about life after death. He had a lot of good questions and it was getting late and the mosquitos were having a rave on us so we gave him Alma 40 to read and set up a return appointment. It was really cool to finally see all that 3 hours of asking for referrals pay off. 

I love this work and despite everything I know it's true.

Je vous aime, 

Elder Murdoch

Sorry no pictures I'll send them next week.