Walking, rain, and Jehova's Witnesses
Iowa weather never ceases to amaze me. It is pouring rain and 80 degrees. We can either burn to death in our waterproof jackets or get soaked to the bone. But hey, that's the work.
Mostly it has been just more and more walking. I had to replace the insoles of my shoes because I wore giant holes in them. I was kinda proud of that. My feet may be killing me and my shoulder bag may be cutting a hole through my shoulder, but we meet so many more people, and they recognize us as Mormons, and not as other churches, and that this is our full time work. Now that it is summer, the J-Dubs have been really picking up the work, and hindering our work quite a bit. They just flood a town on the weekends with 50 of them and knock every door, thoroughly annoying the people with their very blunt and rude nature of trying to share their beliefs. They live for the bible bash.
And yet I have yet to run into one. We will just start talking to people in an area and notice they are far less friendly than usual, and then we will see all the pamphlets in the doors and know why. But it is funny to see people's reactions when they realize we are Mormons and not J-Dubs. Mostly it is a look of pure relief.
This one man came out of his garage yelling "You have already been by here!", and ready to run us away. But when we explained we were Mormons, he paused for about 5 seconds, and then a smile just grew on his face. "Well that certainly is different. How you boys doing today?" We talked to him about God for 15 minutes, gave him a pamphlet, and he said he would read and that we could come back and talk more about it sometime.
I swear, we just need to wear signs saying that we are Mormons. But i guess that is why it is a mission rule to always carry an outward facing Book of Mormon in your hand, haha.
There are actually a decent number of other churches out here that do missionary work. But it is just amazing to see the difference between how other church teaches and others. They pound with information and a constant slew of scriptures as to why their point is right, and try to use nothing but knowledge and their own wisdom and power of speech to convince the people. But for us, it is so much simpler, so much easier. We have all the scripture to back it up, we have the evidence, but we start always by just telling them "We know that this is the word of God and can bless your life, and you know what, we can throw scripture at you all day, but you can know for yourself if you just ask God if it is true, and have sincere intent to follow that answer, and read it for yourself." We do nothing but invite people to go to the source, to ask Our Heavenly Father what his own truth is. I am amazed people don't think of it more on their own. I am so happy that I don't have to have read the bible 20 times and memorized half the verses to do missionary work. God does 99.99999999 to the infinite percent of the work, we just invite the spirit in, teach the truth without rule or guile, and then invite these people to figure out on their own. It is their choice to just pray and read, and God takes it from there to actually convince them through the Holy Ghost. We have that amazing guide, and infinite support. Others have their books and guile to convince people, and we have an entire chapter in our teaching manual on how to recognize and follow the promptings of the spirit. They teach that the spirit is dead and that God no longer guides his children because they don't have that guide for themselves. And that is just so sad, to me. I can't imagine how exhausting it would be without that spirit to lift, comfort, and guide me. I Love this work so much, and I am always amazed by how little we do compared to the work of the Lord. I will leave you guys this week with one of my new favorite scriptures.
Doctrine and Covenants Section 24:12
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