Loving our Missionary

Well another week has come and gone and I'm not too sure where the time went. Well this week started of pretty good playing dodgeball at the church eating mexican food at Montezuma’s and doin home evening at the Reyes. Speaking of the Reyes their niece Adriana got out of the hospital on Thursday and decided to bypass rehab so were hoping she straightens herself out.

We’re still seeing Tom whenever we can and were trying to get him to let us teach him at his home, which were not sure, he has or if he lives in the back room. But were going to see if we can get him on a church tour or something like that and get him to open up a little more.

This week I had an interesting encounter. We were out tracting not having much luck. We were knocking on this houses door when we saw the neighbor backing out in their van all of a sudden they stopped pulled back in and this guys wife and kids got out and ran into the house while he stood by his van. Usually that is a sign of something not that good happening. So we walk over to him and offer him a card he just shook his hand at us and stated that he was Jack Noll as if we should have heard of him. We kinda just were like cool I’m Elder Kartchner nice to meet ya he kinda looked a little shocked and started saying that he was a preacher or something of the prodestent church and that he knew all about our religion and how Joseph Smith was a false prophet and that he did power points at his church and all over about how Mormonism isn’t Christianity because we don’t believe in the trinity. I just kinda stood there chuckling to myself as Elder Stewart started to kinda talk with him a little. It was funny because he was saying that all these weird things were in the book of mormon yet when Elder Stewart asked if he had read the BOM he said he hadn’t but he had gotten his information from a good source I just lost it I started laughing and said your tellin me that you haven’t even read the BOM yet you know what’s in it he kinda looked at me and said yeah I have good sources. We just walked off after that both of us were a little frustrated with him because for some reason we stood there listening to him for 45 min.

That same day before talking to him we had started our fast for setting people with a date and finding people to set with a date. We were both kinda mad after Jack so we went back to the area right around our apartment close to the Reyes family house. Kinda reluctantly we both decided to just walk around the block that we had parked our car on and OYM. We met a nice older black lady on the street talked to her for a moment and then kept on walking. It was about 8:30 when we were walking down the last street on the block when I looked ahead about 2 houses and noticed that there was this black lady standing by some stairs. So we walked over to her and discovered that she was there with another black lady and this older bald jamacian guy. We started talkin to them just being friendly when they asked what church we were from. We said LDS. They started asking us all these questions about if we could watch movies and why we didn’t watch some movies. I was talking to the two black ladies while Elder Stewart was talking to the jamacian. I answered all the questions of the ladies that they asked me before they had to leave to go to a football game. So I said goodbye gave them all the info about the church and went to go talk to the jamacian with Elder Stewart who was now sitting in a lawn chair on the porch with him. As I sat down I found out that his name was Leon and that he didn’t go to a church right now but he read the bible. He said that he had been praying asking to find a church to be baptized in and one that felt right. He started telling us what he believed and what he thought from reading the bible and it was shocking. He basically taught us all the lessons including things that people who had been members for 3 years wouldn’t understand. He said that he didn’t drink anymore and that he was stopping smoking. He didn’t think that the world would be destroyed he said why would god destroy something he made that was so beautiful why wouldn’t he just change it to perfection and us live here. I started laughing when I heard that because it was just so funny to me that we went from a guy who antied us for 45 mins to a guy that believed exactly what the church teaches without ever being taught and what was more shocking was that he had been praying to find a church. While we were sitting there he stopped us and said you know I feel calm with you guys like peaceful so we read him Moroni 10: 5-3 and he loved it we gave him a BOM and he was so excited he said he was going to stay up till at least 1 am reading it so I’m really excited to see him again were going back on Saturday so hopefully we can set him with a baptism date. He didn’t go to church this week but while we were talking to him he said that definitely next week he would be there so I’m really excited for him.

That’s been the week pretty much went golfing this Monday even though it was a big thunderstorm this Sunday and cloudy all Monday with chance of rain all day luckily it didn’t start till we finished the last putt. But I hope everyone is doing well and I hope to hear from everyone soon.


Love Elder Kartchner

( FYI...OYM stands for Open Your Mouth...I was talking to my Aunt Diane on the phone a few weeks ago, kind of by accident as she called to talk to my mother...anyway in the conversation she said OYM and I said huh...so thanks to her and our conversation I can pass this information on to everyone...unless I'm the only one who didn't already know what this acronym was.)