Sunday, September 19, 2010

No One Notices the American


I hope all is well up there in North America! This has been an amazing week!  We got to work hard this week and have been ridiculously busy! It has been a fun week. I have a lot of crazy stories to tell but of course we just came from playing basketball and I left my planner home... I’ll try and remember some of the fun stories.  To start on Sunday we had a man show up at church so we got his address and set up a time to go teach him last night. Well last night we went to find his house and of course he lives in the middle of nowhere half way up a mountain so we hike up the mountain for about 40 minutes and when we get to his... shack? He wasn’t home. Claro. So we decided to wait fifteen minutes hoping he would come home.  And wouldn’t you know it, just my luck, while we were waiting a ridiculously drunk guy came up and started talking to us. He really liked the fact that my companion is Japanese (I love having a Japanese companion because no one notices I’m American anymore! It’s all about him! BEAUTIFUL) Well, I thought we were up this mountain, we might as well try and preach the gospel, you know…. do our job, so I asked him why he was drinking and I got a long winded answer saying that its what he does with all his money.  Oh great.  I then asked him if he had work tomorrow and he said of course but he would get drunk tonight and then work tomorrow because he was a tough guy.  That sure impressed me.... not. I asked him if he had a family, he said yes, and five kids but his ex wives took care of them so he didn’t have to worry. He then went on to tell us that his dad had five houses but wouldn’t give him one and we told him that we thought we knew why maybe if he stopped drinking he would be responsible enough we then told him how God commands us not to drink and at this point he zoomed out of reality and started singing crazy drinking songs.  I was blown away that he was content to live his life like that and even though it was really funny at the time it made me sad to think that his five kids didn’t have their dad that this man was not fulfilling his obligation to his family.  How much happier they all could have been if he could just put away the bottle.  
Another fun story is this week we had to take a bus to lunch but the bus driver didn’t want to stop so he just opened the door and I got to jump on my first moving bus!  It was quite the adventure. Luckily he decided he could stop to let us off.
What else oh this chapel here is so beautiful!  It has air conditioning and a piano that plays by itself!  It is so nice to finally sing with a piano again.  Oh when I got here I was told we had a firm baptism for this week!  So went to go teach him and from the first lesson I could tell something was off.  And in the second lesson I knew why. He told us he was worried about tithing because his tithing would be thousands of dollars every month...?  (He is living with his grandma.) He then went on to explain that he found a way to create electricity from leaves and that he was going to create a house in which people could enter and pay fifty dollars to take a light bath. The idea being they would walk in between the light bulbs powered by the electric leaves. He told us he figured out the idea while he was on about six different (illegal) drugs after he got out of the mental hospital. He was in the hospital for five years.  Well as it ended up our firm baptism wasn’t so firm after all.  It was probably one of the craziest lessons I have ever taught. 
To wrap up this week we had the chance to study the Book of Mormon. I love the Book of Mormon.  It is such an important book I love the quote by Joseph smith that calls it the keystone of our religion.  On of the first things we need our investigators to answer are if the Book of Mormon is true.  Once we know that the Book of Mormon is true everything comes into place! Joseph smith was a prophet, the restoration really happened, Jesus is the Christ, we have answers to the most important questions in life, and we know that we can receive personal revelation all this is so important to our salvation.  Its not just another book or another bible but it a book that has the power to help us in our lives if we will study it and apply its teachings in our lives.  I hope you all take time to study the Book of Mormon and use it daily because it is amazing.
I love you all and im so grateful for your support! Have a great week. 

Love, Elder Mender

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