First time getting bashed!

March 25, 2013

We’re trying to do a bunch of service for thrift stores around the area and before we start we need to fill out paper work. One of the things requires your social security # so i totally forgot mine. If you could let me know ASAP that would be great!

Recently we've talked to a few members who have told us about when they served their mission back in the 70's and 80's, one served in Cali and said they had to memorize the "Mr. Brown discussions" and had to put stickers of Moroni and Joseph Smith on a board as they taught. It sounded strange that that’s what they did on their mish. Times have changed!

Dad, I wanna hear how your mission worked out and some things that have changed since you’ve served. I got a good kick about dad talking about golf season starting up. There’s this place in my area i serve called Kiln Creek, it’s this big utopian society  that has a golf course right in the middle of it, you should look it up. Anyways, whenever we go by it I think to myself "my dad would be on this course every single day"...one day we tried to take a shortcut by going across the course to the other side of Kiln Creek and got lost somehow. It’s a really hilly course and it destroyed our legs cause we had to bike across it.

Here’s something that gave me a good laugh last Monday. We were walking through Wal-Mart buying groceries and this guy in a motor shopping cart rounds the corner and almost hits us, he looks at us and shouts out "whoa! y'all are overdressed...Who are you guys?" he reads our tags and says "oh the Mormons." then he goes on about MoTab and a trip he took to SLC as a kid. But this guy had a green mustache.....I barely caught anything he said because of that green monstrosity, it was probably because St. Pattys day was the day before. But this guy started talking about how he works as a clown for his church....??? and on special occasions he even gets to go to church events as Peter Rabbit...hahaha...Walmart is the same everywhere you go! I’m excited to see what happens later today when we get groceries!

On Tuesday I went on an exchange with my Zone Leader Elder Garcia, he's from Kanab and knows the Robinsons. That was a cool connection we made. Elder Garcia is awesome. We talked to so many people that day. We found like 5 potentials so that’s good. I ripped this huge hole on my butt trying to get on my bike. The suit we bought online fits me the best but it rips every single day. I’ve had to stitch up the butt 2 times and both of the front pockets. It’ll be a miracle if this suit makes it 2 years. Anyways on Tuesday evening we were tracting and the last door we knocked on this lady opens and is like "oh! Mormon missionaries!" she started talking about how much she and her husband wanted to talk to us before. So we set up an R.A. for Thursday. This ladies name is Rachel and she's super Mormon, not to set a stereotype but she's friendly, plays the piano, and makes good desserts.

So on Thursday we go over to their home. Meet the husband David for the first time, and sit down. Rachel pours some water and gets us cobbler. We expected this to be a great teaching opportunity for me. Before we were able to say it David said he likes to start with a prayer. So that upped our spirits even more. We pray then to get into how to begin teaching. We say "we know our message is true" then David just starts BASHING us, total Bible belt bashing. It was insane. He started throwing out all these scriptures about how man has never seen God and how John the Baptist was the last prophet. I'm a pretty chill kid so I was keeping my cool. I didn’t know how to reply to anything though, and I need to do lots more studying! But Elder Brooks kept his cool too. And we had a member with us. I could tell Bro. McFarlane at times was ready to bust a cap. He’d get all red behind his ears when he got hyped up.

Anyways, we somehow got through the restoration. It took us 2 hours to do it though...Rachel has really good potential though. She’s willing to listen and agrees with the things we taught, especially how there's a prophet on the earth today. David mentioned at one point how John's the last prophet and there will never be another prophet and Rachel looked over at him like "what'd you just say?"

Here's one example of how desperate David was trying to break down everything we were teaching....we started talking about Moroni’s promise, Moroni 10:3-5. and in verse 4 it says "ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true" we all bore testimony of how we did what Moroni directed us to do and how we received that witness for ourselves then David says "hold up, all you guys said you prayed to know if it is true, that verse says to ask if it’s NOT true, so you did it wrong and that’s why your church is false"....me, my comp, Bro Mcfarlane and even Rachel looked at him like that made absolutely no sense. If you ask God if it is true, you'll get an answer "it is true"...if you ask God if it’s NOT true, you'll get an answer "it is true"....man....I get all heated up just thinking about everything he said in that lesson. Anyways, we think that Rachel will be a good investigator and David hopefully will settle down a bit so we are going to teach them again in April.

Just to clarify, we taught calmly and boldly the whole time so we could teach by the spirit :) David bashed the whole time!  

The past 2 days it's snowed pretty good! It was cool, I got a picture that I'll send, you can’t see how heavy the snow is falling though. They delayed school because of like 3 inches of snow....pansies haha.

I love all y'all! Hope everything’s doing good in Cache Valley. till next week!

--Elder Geddes

In honor of Mustache March.....

         Missionary stache