Bom Dia,
For those of you who don't speak portugues, the subject line says. The Parable of Two Pastors. So yeah, I had an interesting week. It started out with working like normal. A lot of knocking doors, which is very inneffective. And frustrating because my comp is determined to knock every single rich house in our area. Our president in a zone conference a few weeks back said that we should try to find people that are wise, rich, learned, or noble. It is so frustrating because my comp took that as we should only teach people who have all 4 of those traits. Which means we have knocked a lot of doors, and had basically no success. Of about 13-15 hours of door knocking this week, we sat with 2 families, one of which I think may have potential. They also were probably the only door we knocked that didn't look super rich. It is super frustrating because there are a lot more efficient ways to find and we haven't been doing them. We have also had a huge problem with marked lessons dropping. We had an average of 5 a day this last week. I finally had enough and this morning during personal study spent the time analyzing this transfer and last, and drawing differences and made some rules for marking lessons. My comp wasn't very happy about that because I am a Junior Companion in training, but our current efforts are yielding nothing. He agreed to try it for a few weeks to see if it would work, so we will see if we have any success. I will definitely pray that it works, not necesarrily because I want to be right, but because I feel completely inefficient and ineffective right now.
Anyways for the story of the two pastors. This week I learned a big lesson about intent. Especially when it comes to the book of mormon. We sat with two different pastors this week: Pastor Davi and Pastor Pedro. They are both trained in theology at college and have huge knowledge of the bible. The first pastor we sat with, Davi is set on proving us wrong. I didn't want to sit with him in the first place after the contact, but we did anyways. He likes to cut us off and throw in random things that have nothing to do with what we are teaching. He has a book of mormon and says he has read it, but he will never reference it, and spent the entire visit trying to disprove priesthood authority. I felt like it was a waste of time because he just wanted to argue, and it didn't matter what we tried to do. It was really funny though that after 3 and a half years of seminary, and 2 and a half transfers I have a better knowledge of the bible that someone who is university trained in theology. I think people should focus on being university trained on thinking and common sense, because basically no religious person here has any. Now for the other pastro Pedro. We sat with him the same night. He is serving a mission for his church with his family as a pastor. When we entered the home, there was just a different feel. We talked and followed up on the book of mormon that we gave him last week. Then when we asked if he had any questions or doubts he stopped us, was silent for a few minutes and then looked me square in the eye and said. "I have read some of the book of mormon, and I have read the bible, and in my house, they are one book." I was taken aback and we talked to him about how that was the real purpose of the books and he stopped us and said: "I know, now what do I need to do, because if I give up my mission, the church will take my house, I have no job without the church, and I have to provide for my family" We shared 1 nephi 3:7 and told him that he must choose, he is completely willing to lose everything, because of the fact that he had,"Read the book of mormon, and received revelation from God that it is true." The Lord truly knows our hearts, and he touched the heart of this man because he had real intent. If we have real intent, I know that we too can recieve revelation from God. It truly was a miracle and a tender mercy from the Lord to help make a really hard week a little better. I know that God knows each one of us individually. I know that he cares. I am so grateful for the little miracles I see every day. This mission is so hard, but I have yet to have a day that wasn't so worth it.
Thank you for your love and prayers,
Elder Anthony Holt
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