On Monday, after we finished emailing home, the D1, D2, CH1, and CH2 all got together afterwards and we had a Nerf war inside the church gym! This is one of those moments that makes P-Days awesome! I guess this is my time to brag about my Nerf gun skills. There was one round we played where I eliminated everybody on the opposing team (4 elders). Now, that might not sound super cool, but I was the last one alive on my team. It was 1 vs 4 and I won it for the team! I guess playing all those video games was good for something.
Wednesday we had exchanges with the Chapel Hill elders. In my area it was me and Elder Evans. This meant that i was in charge of the area for the whole day. It's kind of scary, but fun at the same time. It was my chance to prove that I knew what I was doing. I had to plan out the day, and come up with backups if things fell through. That day we had an appointment with our investigator, Nick. With Nick, we talked about how we are saved by faith and works. Nick believes we are saved by our faith alone. We showed him James 2 where it talks about "faith without works is dead." But then he showed us in Romans that is says we are saved by faith, So in stead of having a Bible Bash situation, Elder Evans gave him a great analogy. He said, "Think of life as a marathon. We need to put as much effort in as possible, but no one will be able to run the entire race. The only one who ever ran the race completely was Jesus Christ. In order for us to complete the race, Christ had to be the one to finish it for us, but he expects us to put in 100%. Even if our best is 1 or 15 miles. He knows when we have done everything we possibly can, and then He steps in and takes us the rest of the way." I though t is was one of the best ways I have ever heard it explained. Nick asked, "What if we don't give our best? Will Christ still carry us the rest of the way?" I answered, "Since He knows what we can actually do, He will only take us the amount He needs to. So if your best is 13 miles, but you only run 7, He is only going to carry you to the 20 mile mark and you must run the last 6 miles. It goes back to the Plan of Salvation. If the Celestial Kingdom is the finish line, but we don't give all we can, God won't give us all He can. Why should we not give all we can, and expect God to give us all He has?" I don't know how correct my statement was, but it seemed he understood what we were saying. When the lesson was over, we invited him to be baptized when he comes to know what we are saying is true. He said he would have to pray about it.
We stopped by Jim's on Wednesday as well. He had been reading The Book of Mormon a little bit, but had some questions. He was wondering why we had said the Book of Mormon took place in America when it starts out in Jerusalem. We explained to him at the beginning of the book they are leaving Jerusalem and God is going to lead them to the Americas.
On Friday, Elder Rawlins and I went with the zone leaders to volunteer at this place called The Scrap Exchange. It's kind of like an arts and crafts place where they take recycled stuff and people come and make art out of it. This week they put us in one of the new places they bought. They call it the "Black Market." They had us taking old floor boards and bundle them together. Afterwards, I went on exchanges with Elder Hawks (one of the zone leaders) back in our area. The whole day was pretty much tracting. However, tracting helped produce part of the title.
It was about 7 at night and we were just trying to find someone to teach. We ran into an African - American woman who said she was from the tribe of Judah. In other words, she was saying she was a Jew. She started explaining to us that the real Jews were actually black and that Jesus was actually black. She then called us Edomites. My research on the topic of Edomites is very small, but what I do know is the Edomites and the Israelites hated each other in the Old Testament. She told us that we had changed the Bible and that we were going to Hell because in Revelations it says if you do anything to the Bible, you're in big trouble! We asked her if she knew anyone we could talk to. She then said, "I would never send you to my fellow tribe mates, but there are some Edomites over there." She pointed to the door across the hall and then shut the door in our face. Elder Hawks turned to me and said, " If she's a Jew, why is she quoting Revelations? Jews don't believe in the New Testament." This experience probably made the top 3 in the weirdest experiences on my mission.
That's it for the week! Talk to you guys next week!!
Elder Merritt
PS Question of the week :
PS Question of the week :
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