Time Capsule

8-26-14
Hello everyone. I am really starting to run out of things to tell everyone because every week ends up being about the same. Oh well, don't worry, in two weeks I will be transferred and I will have a new area and a new companion. :) 

This week I will tell you a joke that me and Elder V made up.

 A blind man walks up to some missionaries and tells them that if they were from the true church, they could heal him. So the missionaries smiled because, haha, they can. And they say, as everyone always does, 'Do you have the faith to be healed?' and the blind man said, 'I'll believe it when I see it.' 

We went and saw John again last Wednesday. He still hasn't got an answer, and he is going on holiday to another country now so we can't see him until he comes back. The only thing is, he isn't coming back for over 6 months. So we put a reminder with an alarm in the phone (funny side note, last week I discovered that we have the same exact phone as missionaries in mexico haha) for when he gets back and some missionaries are going to get a time capsule referral. Haha. 

This week in church we had a lesson about Job for Gospel doctrine and then we had a lesson based on President Uchtdorf's talk on gratitude from our last conference. It's funny, I don't know if they coordinate the lessons, but I don't think they do, they just always happen to match up in church. It's crazy. But what I learned this week was that we have to be grateful for our trials, even, and probably especially, during them. Just be happy, that's always your choice. Just be happy that you have the opportunity to have these learning experiences to refine the impurities from your soul. You asked for this life, and you are incredibly blessed, especially to be members of this church and a part of this covenant. Some people didn't even get the privilege of physical bodies. So be grateful!

-- 

Elder Ferguson

mormon.org/me/C2WV

Teaching experiences

Hi,

This week, we pretty much just still went tracting. We saw the man that read Alma 32 again. I will call him "John" just because I might actually end up emailing about him because he's a real investigator. He was really nice, and we had another 'coincidence.' Me and Elder W, who I was with on exchange, he's a greenie from Utah, were getting off the train and walking along the platform and a man in front of us turned around and did a double take. It was John! It was great, and we started talking to him. After a couple of minutes of talking to him and walking with him, he said, "So what are you doing here today anyways? You aren't here to see me, are you?" Haha, we said yes. So he invited us in for tea, and we politely asked for water, and he let us in and he said he can't believe that Joseph Smith saw a vision, but that's ok, because he hasn't prayed about it yet. He said that he would and we said we'd come back this week again. So yay!

On Saturday, we decided that we have probably tracted Newtown pretty well by now. In fact, I would guess that we've done at least 85% of it. So we decided to ride our bikes to another neighboring village just for fun and tract that out. We did two streets, and we almost hit the halfway mark. We're going back on Thursday. We met a man. I will not say what church he belonged to, because that might not be very nice, but he told us that we were not the true church, a lot, so we talked to him. We reasoned with him. We bore our testimonies to him. We got him to contradict himself. He still didn't listen. He told me that I was "Saved" because I believe that Jesus Christ is my Savior. Then I told him I still believe in the Book of Mormon, and he told me that I was deceived by the Devil. I asked him if it mattered, and he changed the subject. He gave us a paper that told us about some of the things we believe that I didn't know about, and we told him we'd have a look at it and come back, but unless something miraculous happens, Thursday will be the last time. ;)

Also, we had our interviews with President Ulrich this week. He knows a lot of stuff. He asked us how we were doing and pretty much just made sure that we were healthy and we weren't going to kill our companions and that we had testimonies and then asked us if we had any questions, and we did, he knows a lot of stuff, and I know a lot of stuff. Read the scriptures. They will tell you lots of nice stuff. One of the scriptures I read with him was Alma 13 https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/alma/13?lang=eng.

  Have a nice week, bye!

--

Elder Ferguson

mormon.org/me/C2WV

Special Missionary experiences

If you are a missionary, I have a chase for you! Go to your "Adjusting to Missionary Life" Missionary Resource booklet and you need to find the missionary that looks just like me. I will give you a hint. I have the same tie. GO!!

Anyways, this week has been really good, it's super weird cause last week, we mostly just went tracting, and pretty much nothing happened and we just got frustrated, and then this week, we pretty much just did the same thing expecting different results. (just like Alber Einstein supposedly said was the definition of insanity haha.) But, we actually did get different results. We actually found tons of prepared people this week, including this man that I will describe....

So on Saturday, we were going along, minding our own business, knocking on doors and telling people how to live their lives, when suddenly, a man opens his door and looks at us and says, "Are you Mormons?" We said, "Yes." And then he said, "Come on in," and he opened the door wider. Now, I know what you're thinking, I was thinking the same thing. In fact, the whole reason I am writing all of these seemingly unnecessary sentences is so that you can ponder upon the same things that I was thinking at the time and feel the same sort of anticipation that I felt. Is he about to tell us off? Is he going to offer us drinks and try to poison us? Does he have a massive Bible on his coffee table waiting to bash us? Well, I will tell you, no. He was actually really nice. He said that he used to live in London somewhere and he lived right across the street from one of our chapels and we had helped him to find his ancestors, but he didn't know anything about what we believed and he'd been curious for about twenty-five years.

Haha, we didn't even know what to say so we just started teaching him stuff and he asked us about the plan of salvation and we pulled out the picture and he read ahead and sped things up so we ended up teaching him the whole thing in about five minutes. And then we left, and we have an appointment with him next week. It was pretty amazing. 

In other news, we have started proselyting with family history instead of just the Book of Mormon and it is working wonders because people feel the spirit when we talk about families. I think we probably knew our families before we came to earth and that is why people feel so closely attached to their families and not so much to Jesus. So yup.

Woops, I forgot the best story from this week. We started talking to this man, and I can't remember what we told him, but he talked for a few minutes and then he invited us in. He was really curious about what we had to say and he had an amazing story to tell us as well about how his son was lost in an Asian country and he went to go find him. It sounded like a movie. He also talked about how he wasn't sure how to gain faith and he didn't think he would get an answer to his prayers. But he was interested in what we said and when we asked him to read the Book of Mormon, he said no. We bore our testimonies about it and then he asked if he could just take a look at it. He started flipping through, and then a miracle happened. He said "oh, look at this" and he starts reading Alma 32:26. The Book of Mormon resolved his concern and we didn't even have to say a thing. He read it and he kept going. He said something about what a great coincidence it was, but we could see in his eyes that he felt there might be more to it than that, and then we said, there are no coincidences and he said maybe there aren't. He kept reading, and, as we knew this chapter so well, Elder Van Bakel pointed out that the next part would compare it to a seed. The man was amazed that we knew it that well, and he kept reading and the Spirit was there WAY STRONG! He tried to give the Book back to us and we almost laughed. All three of us knew that he was feeling it and he couldn't give it back now. And we are going to see him on Wednesday. It's so exciting!

Have a nice week, bye!

-- 

Elder Ferguson

mormon.org/me/C2WV

"My purpose is to invite others to come unto Christ..."

Hello. This week was really boring. I am staying in Newtown for another transfer. Yay! I am starting to recognize people that I just pass on the street. That is how small Newtown is. This week we tracted a whole bunch. It was super fun. I don't know if it's different in America, but the auto-correct here doesn't like the word tracting. I don't think it's actually a real word. Today I am listening to the mormonchannel radio music stuff. It's kinda nice.  Too bad there are no jazz hymns. 

If you are thinking about going on a mission and you are worried that it will be scary or that people will yell at you and it will make you sad or stuff, don't worry, after a year, you won't even care. It's kinda funny. Yesterday a man came out of his house just to do us the favor of telling us, among other things, that we should just give up and go home. Haha, that would have made me really mad at the beginning of my mission, but I don't mind now because getting mad isn't my job. My purpose is to invite others to come unto Christ, and that's it. Once I've done that, it's their problem if they don't want to listen. As a joke while we were tracting, (this is only a joke, of course I know it doesn't work this way!) I suggested that we carry a black crayon with us and write tare on everyone's door when they told us no.(D&C 86:7) Haha. 

But we have talked to some really nice people lately as well. Yesterday we met a witch. She was really nice. She said she doesn't do any curses anymore because she has to pay for those. She said she only gives people protection spells. 

This week we also went to the Kingdom Hall! I got a free JW Bible and a JW Hymn Book! Their bible is really nice quality. The Jehovah's Witnesses are all really nice. I wish I could just convert them. They would make good members, but they don't really like the Book of Mormon. Oh well.

--

Elder Ferguson

mormon.org/me/C2WV