Good stuff is happening to us here. We may not have many investigators, but we are in symphony with the spirit and each other. His attitude requires patience, (I don't think he likes the US) but we are doing well. One horribly false doctrine that we are confronting right now is that God's omniscience means that he controls us. So many people have said that he knows if we'll be saved or not, so it doesn't matter what we do. We met a man like that on Saturday. He was sitting on a wall in front of his house when we passed and we both felt strongly impressed to go back and talk to him. His name is Samuel and he doesn't believe in hell, the devil, God, life after death, or really anything (Just about the first atheist I've met in Brazil). After talking to him for a while this false doctrine popped up and it was blocking him from wanting to pray. I suddenly felt inspired to grab our house keys and hold them up in front of him. "What will happen if I let go of these keys?" I asked "They will fall," he sounded a little irritated that I would ask such a stupid question. I let go of the keys and...they fell (duh). Then I pointed at him and said, "It's your fault that the keys fell!" He started a little and asked be how it was his fault. "Because you knew that they would fall, therefore, by your reasoning, your knowledge caused them to fall, not me by releasing them, or gravity for being an eternal law of physics!" "But my knowledge wouldn't change anything, it just means that I can predict what will happen!" He protested. "In the same way, God's knowledge doesn't make us sin. It simply predicts it!" (Translator's note: in Portuguese "predict" is literally "prevision" or "pre-see", kind of like "foresee" but more certain). He seemed surprised by that and started to open a bit. Unfortunately, he quickly closed off and said that he would not pray, because he would never join our church (you have to join a church to pray to God?). In the end it just became a growing experience for me.
I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior. That He prepared this world and the amazingly perfect plan of salvation under God's watchful care, just with the purpose to "bring about the immortality and eternal life of man". I love this gospel and this mission. I love all of you and I can't wait to talk to you (48 days 'til Christmas). But at the same time I'm getting trunky. Not home-trunky but mission-trunky. I have less than eight more months to live this life and do this work every waking hour. It seems like so little.
Com carinho,
Elder Page
No comments:
Post a Comment