 |
| Elder Peters was limited on internet café time this week, he had to take a 3 hour tro-tro ride to Accra to see the Mission Doc and get an ingrown toenail taken care of, then the 3 hour ride back to Kade so he could wash all his clothes (by hand of course) and in the middle he was able to squeeze in an hour to write to us. The excitement of mission life!!! |
Dear Family & Friends,
"Prove to me that God
exists" I said. The Pastor reached for his bible. "Without the
Bible" I said, "the words of a man are not evidence...”. He admitted
that he could not prove to me that God existed. I, my companion, and a
ward missionary had come to the home of one of our investigators in Akwatia.
Esther had another "friend" over who agreed to sit in the lesson with
Esther. Turns out it was a small pastor from her church, I've run into so many
of these guys on my mission and I know exactly what they do, everything they
say they have a reference to something in the Bible. And they want you to play
their game. Throw your belief, backed by a quotation, and I’ll prove you
wrong with my quotation. I sensed that this was the direction that our
discussion would take after about 5 minutes of discussion. My companion and our
ward missionary were both searching for their own arsenal of biblical
quotations at this point and I stopped and explained some things about Evidence
and Faith. "I know God exists, but I cannot prove it to you, I can only
testify that He is there. You see Peter, Isaiah, Paul, they were all men just
like you and I, and these things," I said holding my scriptures "are
only a testimony of their words. The things we have to share with you cannot be
proven, just like their words cannot be proven. At some point every man is
backed up to the wall of Faith, there he must take his stand." I then briefly
and accurately shared the message of the Restoration and bore my sincere
testimony, adding it to the testimony of those who wrote the bible that Jesus
Christ is our savior, that his church has been restored through the Prophet
Joseph Smith, and that the only way anyone can understand and follow Him is
through Faith and works. Anyway it was an interesting lesson I hope that the
man felt something, if he didn't I certainly did. My testimony has grown so
much as it has been tried like this on my mission.
 |
| Helping make dinner. |
We have this mouse in our
apartment, actually mouse family, and it keeps eating our food. We've got 2 of
them in our trap so far, but we have at least 3 more to go. It’s kinda funny to
come home at night and the first thing we do is check to see if our trap got a
mouse.
This past week we had a
Multi-zone conference at Ofankor Stake Center. It was really insightful and I
learned a lot. We got up at 5:30 so that we could travel to Asamankese and
catch a car with the rest of our zone to Ofankor. There was a lack of seats in
the tro tro so we had to sit 4 missionaries to 3 seats. As we passed through
one of the Police Barriers, a police man randomly stopped our car (this is
normal, they do random checks) Turns out our driver didn't have his license and
we were sitting 4 to a 3 seat bench. The Police officer's were kinda throwing a
tantrum, but somehow our driver talked (maybe bought) his way out of it. It's
been kinda funny to watch how that works here in the bush. If your license or
registration isn't good, just tuck 3 cedis inside and hand it to the officer
and he'll hand your license back to you. But only your license.
 |
| With some members after church. |
We have a new investigator who
has come to church 2 times now, his name is Daniel. He is 17 and is going to
the local high school. He also goes to seminary everyday and is really excited
about the church. He has a baptismal date for the 16th of April and he looks
promising. His mom has remarried a man who goes to the Church of Christ and so
it will be really difficult for us to make much progress with her (the woman
kinda has to follow the man to his church I guess.) But she is a really sweet
lady who can't speak much English but is always really happy and smiling to see
us.
Daniel's area doesn't have
electricity, and it was getting dark so we went outside to teach him. I could
see an incoming rain storm and the weather was changing really fast and I said
a silent prayer that the rain wouldn't come until we could finish our lesson.
God answered my prayer and as we were walking home it started to rain really
hard. We were soaked from head to foot and jumping over puddles and I couldn't have
been more happy.
 |
| "I couldn't have been more happy" |
Another funny thing that
happened is after church we were waiting outside the bishop’s office to
introduce him to Daniel and while we were waiting elder Ofusu Hene started
calling our most non-committed unserious investigators. I asked him why he was
calling them; we didn't expect them to come to church. he said, "I
sometimes just like to hear people try to come up with creative excuses."
he started putting them on speaker and it was so funny because these people had
been called by missionaries so much that as soon as they picked up the phone
they just started saying, "oh I had to go to... my uncle died and so I had
to...." we laughed and laughed.
Mission Rocks,
Love, Elder Peters
No comments:
Post a Comment