Sunday, August 14, 2016

August 8, 2016 - Augusta / Evans, GA

Hey Y'all

This past week was one that was quite memorable and I'm glad y'alls was memorable too! Montana sounds so much fun and what I would do to feel 44 degrees again in dry air! I'm glad that Mom survived that tubing experience haha and it sure sounded like a fun time! 
 
This past week was a scorcher and people here in Evans said the summer has never been that bad since the time that they moved there. It's record heat down here in Evans. I don't know what it feels like to be dry anymore. When you come home everyday you have to peel off you clothes because of the sweat and the humidity. Its so muggy! 

On Tuesday, we had our district meeting and I gave a training on what does a successful missionary mean and how do we deal with failure. I felt like there was a lot of correlation between that and potential. I described various missionaries and great prophets in the Book of Mormon and the bible. Like how Nephi was strictly obedient and even though people wanted to blame God or lose their faith he trusted and loved God so much that he didn't care what people said about him or thought about him. He only cared about how God felt and that relationship he had was the most important thing to him. Or like Peter, after Christ was resurrected he appeared the apostles when they were fishing and Christasked Peter "Lovest thou me?" Three times and in essence Christ was saying then why are we fishing for fish instead of fishing for people to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ. The training went pretty well. Everyone of us have potential to be a great everyday, we cant just be great all at once, all good things take time. Understanding that trials are opportunities to grow is crucial. We have a quote on our fridge that says," God does not send thunder if a still, quiet voice is enough." So if we are humble and have a good relationship with God, you will be more in tune with the Holy Ghost. Later that day we had English class where both Elder Weston and I taught the verb ponder to the class. It went very well and its awesome hearing their stories and why they want to learn English. The gift of tongues is a real thing because there is no way that I could remember how to construct a sentence in Spanish from a year ago, but now I can say sentences in Spanish and I know its cause God needs me to do that.

On Wednesday, we did service and finished grouting a patio for an investigator. A hard thing here in Evans is trying to find people to teach in the afternoon because everyone is at work and it makes it hard to catch people. A lot of the people here are very into their church and don't want to do with the Mormons because of rumors they've heard or think the Book of Mormon contradicts with the bible. So you can say we get into lots of "bible bashes" and the same concerns are always brought up. This one guy we tried told us that he thinks the history of the church is nonsense and said if they cant find evidence of the Book of Mormon that he wouldn't read it. He also thought that he doesn't need to ask God if the Book of Mormon is true because if it doesn't add up with history then its not true. No matter what we said he wasn't listening, but we both stood up and testified and made sure he understood what we believe before we left. It's funny because we left with a prayer and he followed with his own after ours. He prayed that we may come to the knowledge that the Mormon church is false and prayed that God would forgive us for believing in the church. We had a lesson with the Kings and we had a great lesson about the Plan of Salvation and the spirit was definitely there and they accepted to be baptized!

On Thursday, we went to the library to meet up with Madison and she was planning to go to the Pastor of a church to discuss the LDS' churches beliefs and we talked to her about what she should be ready for and how to go about talking with him. Keep in mind she isn't a member of the church but she is so faithful that she is going to other churches testifying that the church is true! So Awesome! We later had service planned for a member and the Lord had a hand in it because we got there and it was raining and the things she planned for us to do were things outside. We started the mower up and even though it worked like 5 minutes before we got there it wouldn't fire up. We looked to their neighbors and they were moving and they looked like they needed help. We asked them if they needed help and they asked..."What do you charge?" We said nothing we just want to serve! He said wow that's awesome! So we helped him pack the furniture into the truck. He told us hes not believed in God for a long time and it meant a lot for him to see good men of God serving because they want too! Later that day we drove to Augusta to spend the night with the other zone leaders because we were car pooling to MLC the next day. Whats crazy is, is that I was in that apartment a year prior with Elder Jones to the day! But I was in training and it was a crazy flashback moment.

On Friday we woke up at 4:30 to drive to Macon. We passed through Milledgeville and it was fun to see it again. We had a great meeting and it was fun to see everyone again. The main topics were trusting in God, putting on the whole armor of God, and how to effectively find people. They were all great training's and I learned a lot from the Spirit. We traveled back and got back to the apartment at 11:00. It was funny we had to fuel our van at a gas station late at night and they were bumping like gangster music and there were drug deals and we got out of there as fast as we could but just picture 2 white Mormon missionaries pulling up  in a red mini van, wear everyone else is thug-gin out and got chains around their necks and we are like "What up!"

On Saturday, we planned a lot of the day and celebrated Dads birthday when we went to dinner with a member and it also happened to be Elder Billmans birthday so we sang to you 3000 miles away haha:) We started our fast and we sweated a lot that night and it was so hard to not drink anything after we got home and I worked out haha.

On Sunday, we had a great fast and testimony meeting. I shared my testimony about small and simple things and how if we don't nurture our seed and let it grow than we wont ever gain a witness if we know its true. We broke our fast at the Crisweels home, they have a chicken, turkey, and goat farm in their backyard that is super cool and I got to hold a goat:) We had a bit of an interesting conversation with this guy later that night and it was quite the experience. We walked out of our apartment and this black guy approached us and it started off more or less where he wanted to understand what we believed and then it turned to him telling us why our church is false and his reasoning behind it. He was very well versed with the bible and the history in the Old Testament and he brought up various verses in the Old Testament where it talks about how he thinks Jesus is black and how everyone in the bible was black besides Esaw. He kept on using the phrase "our people" and 'your people". He was making fun of Joesph Smith and how he saw the gold plates with Magical glasses and saying how the White picture of Jesus is the anti-Christ and how he is raping and killing people. He invited us to come and be with his race and be saved by God. his exact words" Y'all are finna be shocked when Christ comes again and there's a black man coming from the sky." But the fact that he was the promised Israelites and that the Book of Mormon is false because it says that "Blacks are cursed" he said the whole book is false. He said" Elder Hill will you humble yourself and deny your faith if I can prove to you its true?" I said No, because I know its true and it would be a waste of time." It was quite the exchange and we quickly had to clear our minds through prayer to prepare for a lesson with the Kings. We ended up putting them on date and we are pumped!

I LOVE Y'ALL and thanks for everything!

_Elder Hill
#Churchistrue  #Evans
 
Baaaaaaaaa! 

MLC in North Augusta!

The Bros!
 

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