11/18/2013

Hey all!

So...a little more time this week, which is lovely. :) I'll do my best to give the update as well as a funny story or two. We shall see. :)

THE UPDATE:

We've had a bit of an interesting week. Sister Ah-Chong has been sick (the climax being my teaching a family at our dinner appointment about service while Sister Ah-Chong up-chucked everything she'd just eaten in the bathroom. Pretty gross.), so that's slowed us down a bit...we stayed in a couple mornings this week, which gave me an opportunity to start Jesus the Christ, but ultimately meant we weren't getting as much done as I liked. We did get an investigator on date this week though! First one in the area...and...we did knock a lot of doors this week. Though the sun goes down at like...4:30 in the afternoon this time of year, which makes things tricky. Still, we're having less active families come back to church and people progressing bit by bit...just trying to be more patient and find the best way to fulfill my purpose while I'm here. It's the end of the transfer by the by, but it's pretty clear that I'm staying. President wouldn't 1 transfer me two times in a row. That would be super cruel. :P

A PROFILE:

Name: Atheist walking Rescue Dog at night

Accessory of choice: said rescue dog

Perspective: This religion, son of God thing, is all pretty silly and not backed up by one shred of scientific proof.

Irony: Believes that Jesus was definitely not the son of God, but that he could possibly be a star-person, or a hybrid star person. There's a PBS special on that's given some evidence of extra-terrestrial life (that star at Jesus' birth? A UFO! Obviously.), and though the evidence isn't super solid, this explanation is still more likely than thousands of years of Biblical history.

Salutation: You girls are very charming, but I've heard the sales pitch before.

Result of Contact: Sister Hale boiling in the car as we drove to our next appointment.

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT:

Wish I had one that was more concrete. Well...I'll just do the rather argumentative scripture that I found this week (sorry, you're going to have to bear with)

Helaman 5:10-11

        "...for...the Lord surely should come to redeem his people, but that he should not come to redeem them in their sins, but to redeem them from their sins.

           And he hath power given unto him from the Father to redeem them from their sins because of repentance; therefore he hath sent his angels to declare the tidings of the conditions of repentance, which bringeth unto the power of the Redeemer, unto the salvation of their souls."

Kay. So the basic Christian argument (sort of the non denominational kind) is that if you have faith in Christ (or if you 'Pray Christ into your heart'), you will be saved. All you have to do is say you believe, and you're good! Christ payed the debt when he died on the cross, and now we don't have to do anything but believe in him. Yes...yes, kind of. As long as that belief is strong enough to move us to repent, to make covenants with him and to keep going, then yes. But if you just 'believe,' but stop short of letting him get the sins and grossness out of your system, then you haven't done enough. It says in that second verse that Christ's power to redeem us comes because of repentance, not because of faith. Pretty significant. Which brings us, ultimately, to the salvation of our souls.

Sorry, that was a little argumentative. Let me make it better by adding a picture of me holding a snake!

We went to the Reptile Zoo for District Pday. Pretty fun. ;)

I love you all. Please write! I love hearing from you, and encourage you to keep doing member missionary work wherever you can. I'm starting to think that it's more fun that missionary missionary work, some of the time. ;P Keep going, y'all are awesome.

Love,

Sister Hale