What a week! We had zero time to work in our area this week it feels like. We did divisions wednesday thursday friday and saturday with other missionaries in the zone that needed some help and got to work with some cool people. We found out some pretty unfortunate stuff about some really disobedient missionaries and had to talk with the assistants and president which was bummer. One of the sister missionaries in our ward got super sick this week and we took her to the hospital and got some medications for her and she spent the week down and out so we also spent some time teaching in their area to help them out. She is doing lots better which is great!
We were bummed because roberta and mary who both had goals to be baptized yesterday weren't able to. Roberta is under age and her mom won't let her be baptized
until october 19th, and Mary's inactive husband doesn't want to get married until the weddings are free at the courthouse so they are waiting
until october 22nd to get married and she will get baptized on the 25th. We are teaching a joven named jaime that is 16 and is super awesome. After her first time in church she asked us if she could go out to lessons with us! She is golden. Her mom angelica also is starting to warm up to us and is coming this sunday to church so we are excited.
Jessica started listening more to the jehovahs witnesses and they have been filling her head with some real crud about joseph smith, temples, and missionaries. Their most recent claim was that we didn't believe in jesus christ so we left her 2nd nephi 25 which mentions christ 19 times in 30 verses. She told us that she didn't want to keep listening to us which is bummer. I was for real sad when she said "I am more comfortable with the other guys". The gospel isn't easy, it is hard, it requires responsibility and it requires us to get out of our comfort zone.
This week I will have one year in the mission which is pretty nuts. I feel like I just got here but I am happy that I have a full year left to serve the Lord 24/7.
I am robbing this next thing from Elder Chris Anderson because I liked it a lot.
- You must be between twenty-three and twenty-four years of age.
- You cannot be a college graduate. In fact, you can have only three years of formal schooling.
- Whatever you write must be on the basis of what you know and not what you learn through research.
- You must write a history of an ancient country, such as Tibet, covering a period from 2200 B.C. to 421 A.D.
- You must write a book with 102 chapters, twenty-five of them about wars, ten about history, twenty-one about prophecy, thirty-two about doctrines, five about missionaries, and nine about the mission of Christ.
- You must include in your writings the history of two distinct and separate nations, along with histories of different contemporary nations or groups of people.
- Your writings must describe the religious, economic, social, and political cultures and institutions of these two nations.
- You must weave into your history the religion of Jesus Christ and the pattern for Christian living.
- When you start to produce this record covering a period of over twenty-six hundred years, you must finish in approximately eighty days.
- When you have finished, you must not make any changes in the text. The first edition must stand forever (this does not include grammatical errors, etc).
- After pauses for sleep and food, if you are dictating to a stenographer, you must never ask to have the last paragraph or last sentence read back to you. You must start right where you stopped previously.
- Your history or record must be long, approximately 777 pages with over 500 words per page.
- You must add 180 proper nouns to the English language (William Shakespeare added thirty).
- You must announce that your "smooth narrative" is not fiction, but true—yes, a sacred history.
- In fact, your narrative must fulfill the Bible prophecies; even in the exact manner in which it shall come forth, to whom given, and its purpose and accomplishments.
- You must publish it to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, declaring it to be the Word of God.
- You must include with the record itself this marvelous promise: "And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost."
- Tens of thousands must bear record to the world for the next 178 years that they know the record to be true. Because they put the promise to the test, the truth is manifested to them by the power of the Holy Ghost.
- Thousands of great men, intellectual giants, and scholars, must subscribe discipleship to the record of its movement, even to the point of laying down their lives.
- There can be no flaw, whatever, in the entire book (except in grammar, or other errors of man in transcribing, etc.).
- Your descriptions of the cultures in these civilizations, of which you will write about, is not known when you publish your manuscript.
- Yet, you must not make any absurd, impossible, or contradictory statements.
- Even so, many of the facts, ideas, and statements given as true in your record must be entirely inconsistent with, even the direct opposite of, the prevailing belief of the world. Yet very little is even claimed to be known about these civilizations and their thousands of years of history.
- You must invite the ablest scholars and experts to examine the text with care. You must strive diligently to see that your book gets into the hands of all those most eager to prove it a forgery and who are most competent to expose any flaws in it.
- After 178 years of extensive analysis, no claim or fact in the book is disproven, but all are vindicated. Other theories and ideas as to its origin rise and fall, leaving your claims as the only possible ones.
- Thorough investigation, scientific evidence, and archaeological discoveries for the next 178 years must verify your claims and prove even the minutest details of your history to be perfectly true.
- Internal and external prophecies must be confirmed and fulfilled in the next 178 years.
- Three honest, accreditable witnesses must testify to the whole world that an angel from heaven appeared to them and showed them the ancient records from which you claim your record was translated.
- You must hear out of heaven the voice of the Redeemer declaring to you and those three witnesses that your record is true, and that it is their responsibility to bear testimony of it—and that they do.
- Eight other witnesses must testify to the world that they saw the ancient records in broad daylight, and that they handled them and felt the engravings thereon.
- The first three and the second eight witnesses must bear their testimony, not for profit or gain, but under great personal sacrifice and severe persecution, even to their deaths.
- You must talk a friend into financing your book with the understanding that he or you will never receive any monetary remuneration from it. This person must mortgage his farm to have it printed. You must sell the book at cost or less.
- Finally, after suffering persecution and revilement for twenty-four years in the process of producing and defending this book, you must give, willingly, your own life for your testimony that the record is of God.
Everything, any doubt you have about the church can be solved if you come to know ONE thing. If you come to know only that the Book of Mormon is true, you can know that Jesus is the Christ, that Jospeh Smith (and brigham young, and john taylor....etc and Thomas Spencer Monson) are prophets of the Lord and that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the kingdom of God on the earth. It is the KEYSTONE OF OUR RELIGION because if it is true, everything else is as well. I join in the invitation given in the introduction of the Book of Mormon to read the book, meditate the message it contains, and then ask in prayer to God the Eternal Father in the name of Christ, if the book is true. I testify that it is!
Have a great week
-Elder Draper
Sorry no pics this week my camera broke and just barely bought a new one today!
