Hello hello hello!
This email wont be as long as usual since I emailed you Tuesday, but I suppose it wasn't a bad week. Wednesday morning, we got to teach Anne (the lady we chop wood for) in her gift shop! She served us Huckleberry White hot chocolate...SO GOOD! Huckleberrys are a big deal up here. We taught Anne the first discussion, gave her a Book of Mormon, and invited her to be baptized. She said she has been baptized before (in the Catholic faith), but said she will think about it. Afterwards, we stopped to see a woman named Dee (from like week 1 or week 2). She hadn't been answering our phone calls, so we just showed up instead. We actually had a pretty neat experience there. Dee explained that she has been having an extremly difficult time. At first I felt prompted to use Alma 7 (which refers to Christ's Atonement) but then felt prompted not too, and to use Isaiah 53:3-5 instead which covers the same thing. As soon as I opened up the Bible, she says, "Oh, so that's not true! Someone told me that the LDS church ALWAYS refers to the Book of Mormon first. That is cool that you turned to the Bible first." THe Spirit saved us on that one! Our Articles of Faith mentions the Bible before the Book of Mormon as well. SHe has been meeting with the Jehovah's witnesses (who we think probably told her this), and they told her last that she is going to Hell because she watches Charmed (it has witches in it), and they refuse to visit her while her Christmas tree is up. She told us she didn't care, she was putting a tree up anyway and loves watching Charmed haha.
We visited with a less-active this week who was baptized a few years ago but has since then lost her testimony. She struggles with the extreme things like Polygamy. Fortunately her husband is very active. So, I have been studying A LOT about Polygamy and those types of things. Some of my interesting findings:
1. Issac begat Jacob through his SECOND wife. If God was against Polygamy back then, he wouldn't have allowed the 12 tribes of Israel come through the second wife of a Polygamic marriage.
2. Miriam (Moses' sister) murmered against Moses for having another wife. She instantly got Leprosy until she repented and apologized.
3. David had many wives because of his righteousness, but as soon as he committed adultery with Bathsheeba, those wives were taken away from him, and the child that resulted out of adultery died. Once he was legally married to Bathsheeba, he had Solomon.
4. The Book of Mormon is the ONLY scripture that preaches AGAINST having multiple wives IF NOT AUTHORIZED BY THE LORD (Jacob 2). The Bible does not condemn Polygamy once. It is an eternal principle. Almost every known Prophet in the Old Testament had multiple wives and they were commanded to practice Polygamy. For example, Abraham was commanded to marry another wife to have Ishmael.
5. I recently heard in the news that Chimpanzees are under consideration to have human rights. Next thing we know, the world will allow marriage to a chimpanzee along with Gay marriage. If we can't get over something that ended 120+ years ago (BY COMMANDMENT) but allow beastiality and Gay marriage (both of which highly abominable and condemed in the Bible) then this world is going down quicker than I thought.
Just some things to consider :) Thursday, was my first time ever in history to experience a negative temperature! It was awesome. We also visited the Gunslers and played basketball outside with their son in -1 degree weather. They actually fed us dinner, so we had two dinners that night. Woo!
Friday was amazing. The Creche was a huge success. As a reminder, this was the event that had over 300 Nativities from around the world and was multi-denominational, but put on by the LDS church. We had over 1300 people come! Half of which were not members. We were specifically told not to proselyte or preach, but just to welcome and answer questions if they were posed to us. Seemed contradictory to every reason I'm out here, but it was actually kind of nice to have no pressure for once. ANNE CAME! She loved it. There was a 12' X 12' five-piece mural that was hand-painted by an 85 year old woman, who's son is in our ward. See picture below. There was also live performances from the local high schools and a world famous violinist. We were there from about 11:30AM to 10:30PM. Long but great experience. And it was a "home away from home" since we usually go to the temple to see the nativities.
Saturday was our actual P-day this week. We spent the day in Columbia Falls for a zone Christmas Party! It was so fun. THe family that hosted it actually provided ALL the gifts for the gift exchange, provided lunch for 20 missionaries, and all the other games. SO nice and generous of them. Out of the white-elephant gift exchange I ended up with a box of Limited Edition Cap'n Christmas Crunch, and a $15 Subway gift card! Woot woot!
That was pretty much our week! Our Christmas party is this next Saturday and we will probably even be in the play! The theme is, "How the Grinch stole Christmas." :D Maybe I can be Jim Carey! It got down to -7 here, and that's the coldest I've seen so far. Billings sounds miserable. But I'm loving every bit of this! Transfers are today, but Elder Denslow and I are here in Bigfork for another 6 weeks. That will be nice for the holidays! I would just use the Bigfork address to send mail/packages now since I will be here another 6 weeks. That address is:
P.O. Box 1883
Bigfork, MT 59911
Hope you have a great week! I love you and miss you all!
