Week 11

Subject: French and Fanatics

Hej hej,

Weather is holding out nicely in this part of the world. This last week was really busy and weird, but it seems like a lot of weeks are weird. We usually get done with a couple of days a week with the general consensus that it was not necessarily good nor bad, just weird.

We have been developing speed tracting. I'm sure it's been done, but our idea is to knock on as many doors as we can before one of them gets answered and then talk to whoever comes out or just preach to the whole building at once if they all come out. It would be more time effective that way.

So an interesting tidbit. I didn't know about this, but apparently in the Congo and probably other parts of Africa religion has been turned into a lucrative business (and South America for that matter--a certain gold toothed minister asking for money on the bus in Guatemala comes to mind. Ok probably everywhere in the world). But when disasters or bad things occur preachers go around and tell the people that they are being punished or that this is just a type of things to come. Lots of Hell fire and damnation. Then they urge everyone to be baptized. All they have to do is give half of all they own, their car, their house to the Lord and they will be saved. People will believe and get baptized again and again. One of our investigators does not want to be baptized because of this. We've explained over and over how he can know if it's right or not, but he won't pray about it for some reason.

We had at least three lessons this week where the people were willing to let us come because they just wanted to chat and we were nice, but there was no real interest in anything we had to share with them. We made a few elderly ladies happy, though, I think.

We also went to visit a guy from Eritrea who spent an hour showing us a string of scriptures from the Bible about why Jesus Christ and God the Father are the same person. The funny thing was a lot of those same scriptures are ones we would use to prove otherwise. We kept telling him we interpret them differently. He said he was not interpreting, but just taking them literally. Semantics, my friend, semantics. I showed him Exodus 11:33 where is says God talked to Moses face to face and the first thing out of his mouth was, "But that can be interpreted...." Oh the irony. We showed him the Restoration and I bore testimony about Joseph Smith and tied it back to Stephen's vision in Acts. The Spirit was so strong and he seemed to have felt it, but he couldn't get over his own thesis enough to even consider something else. Oh, the best part about this is that when we went in, he asked if he could wash our feet. Ummmm...no thanks. Not as a sister missionary. Would have been uncomfortable. Sis Swenson has terrible warts on her feet (I had her permission to say that) because she hasn't gotten them taken care of, so we had 'her injury' as an excuse.

We had a few days this week where we just couldn't get anything to work. I had the realization that this is what it's going to be like. Event planning. Trying to get everything to work perfectly every day in an effective manner. Making phone calls, confirming appointments. Sales. Business. Doing inventory for books and other supplies. Meeting everyone's needs. Meeting goals, going hungry until you do. *Sigh* But, I was thinking today about the nature of Eternal Life and how we don't believe in Eternal Vacation. Work with no deadlines. No stress. That actually sounds nice--being productive without the negative feelings that accompany it.

We had a lesson with a guy that only speaks French this week. Interesting. A guy in our ward speaks French, but he couldn't come, so we showed a video and told him to save his thought for next time. We think. We also gave him a Swedish lesson since he was the only one that showed up for our class on Saturday. They say that's the best way to learn a new language, but it just seemed frustrating to him.

Well, life carries on. Sis Swenson's bike chain keeps falling off, but there are flowers everywhere! I need to create a tag line like Eric or Aaron. Don't forget about me from Sweden, where the children do what they want.

Love,

Amy

PS We don't actually Speed Tract. *Snap, snap* That was a joke.