Robert vs. Catholics

Baby Llyr looking at Robert's plaque in Boise

Ya'aat'eeh!!!

 

Alright so I had my first Spanish sacrament meeting this week.  I actually really enjoyed it!  I pay a lot more attention since I don't understand a lot of it.  We sat right in front of Brother Esmil who actually was a captain in the Marines forever and was a Spanish translator so one of his callings is to translate during sacrament so I didn't understand anything I just listened to him for a minute.  Most people in the branch speak English as the first language they just have a calling to serve in the branch, so the congregation is about half and half white/Mexican.  I actually was asked to read a page during gospel principles class in Spanish and people said they were very surprised that I didn't speak, they thought I knew Spanish by just hearing me so I guess that's good.

Im working on 9 months now being out here and lets just say that I am starting to just tell people how it is.  Im tired of playing the soft spoken missionary anymore so during lessons and stuff if people start to fight or disagree just to disagree without a question....I let em have it.  Plain and simple. I love it.  It builds my testimony tons and if people don't accept at least we gave it to them as pain as we could make it.  Ive been on a pastor tear this week.  We had 2 or 3 lessons with Spanish pastors, I will go into detail about the 1st one and I definitely feel I was given the gift of translation of tongues to help me out.  We were on exchanges and I was with Elder Chavez, we were working the west side of Farmington for the day.  We had a couple of lessons in the day and I really had to focus to get the gist of what people were saying but I got most of it and I helped answer a question through Elder Chavez translating so that was good.  Then that night...oh boy.  He took me to this Catholic priests house...they talked forever but I understood about 75% of it and I would just tap Elder Chavez and give a scripture and it seemed to work out pretty good.  During the whole time I wanted to say something in Spanish like bear my testimony at least.  Its so frustrating when you can understand a problem or concern in a language but you have absolutely no idea how to answer it.  One of the big things that we pointed out was how closely the Book of Mormon and the Bible are related, especially when it comes to genealogy stuff from Lehi's family.  Just read 1 Nephi chapter 5....all bible stuff. Case closed.  Anyways while they were talking and the lesson was about over I pulled out my little pocket dictionary and looked up a few words and then I just waited thinking of what to say.  Well it ended pretty suddenly and they went to a closing prayer before I had a chance to say something.  We got in the car and were driving away when I was like...Elder Chavez I was gonna say something I think I could have done it.  He stopped the car in the middle of the road and turned around back to the house....I'm all like what are you doing?  He said were gong back!  and I about had an accident in my pants like oh no.....Well we did it!  He knocked on the door, Elder Chavez told the man I had something to say and he looked at me....then I just blurted out my best testimony in Spanish I could.   He stared at me for like 5 seconds after I was done and he said "I know you know its true" and he started talking English to me!!! So he speaks English fine! That was kinda annoying but hey I did it in Spanish.  Then we talked a couple more minutes in English and straight up told him that Jesus Christ never had anything to do with the Catholic church and Jesus never even went to Rome!!!  How could have Jesus have put His church and His authority in a place he had never been to or showed himself....so yeah the guy was silent.  We shook his hand and we left with a smile.  It felt awesome.  Most likely will never see that man again in my life but I think we planted a good seed. 

Then yesterday Elder Delgado and I got cornered by another pastor and yeah, that was interesting....he would pull out these Bible verses trying to disprove something we said when the verse and the entire chapter wouldn't be talking about what we said at all...frustrating.  Anyways sorry for my rants and whatnot.  I just love telling people that this is the one and only true church of Jesus Christ that HE set up and He is leading it right now through a living prophet.  Basically President Batt gave us permission to just be straight up blunt with people because these are truly the last days and people need to hear the truth.  So there ya go!  This church....THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST.....is the only church on the earth that has the correct authority and organization from Jesus Christ himself.  I certainly would want to be a part of that.  I am very thankful for growing up in His church and it took me long enough to understand a lot of things but now I know!!  So I love being out here and spreading the truth.  

So to answer some of your questions...we have jeep compasses...they aren't jeeps, in fact I don't think they deserve to even have JEEP written on them.  They are terrible but its certainly better then walking which we are grateful we don't do a lot. 

Anyways that's frustrating that we cant even hold our own ground on the football field anymore.  Im glad that I don't have to watch all the disappointment.  thanks for everything! GO BRONCOS

 

love Elder Christensen