Sunday, January 30, 2005

Today was the final day of “National Bible Week.” I’m really glad that it is over because even though it was a great opportunity it demanded a lot of our time and hurt our work a little. I’m excited for next week that we’ll get to move on and just do normal missionary work. After church block today, Pres. and Sis. Beck came and paid us a quick visit. They went with us down to the Catholic Church to see the exhibit about the Bible. They also met Father Redz and complimented him greatly for his work. President even gave him some money to help build the church. I am really grateful that they were able to come out because it served to open Father Redz understanding even more of the church. I think that we’ll try to teach him.

Elder Cox and Me with Father Redz at the Catholic Church

As the final part of Bible week, we had a program at the municipal, in the “plaza.” I thought it would be good but it turned out to not be very good at all. There was absolutely no spirit there at all and I felt like I was doing something wrong. I felt sorry that we’d had the members come to a thing that was that bad. I was hoping that when Pres. Isla gave his prayer that the spirit would come but Pres. didn’t give a very humble prayer and he tried to imitate the other preachers in his prayer. He also used some fairly inflammatory language and I hope it didn’t just serve to close people’s minds against the church. I walked out of the assembly and we had to pray before the spirit came back.

Church today was good. I had a good talk with Bro Aldana before Sunday school and I told him about how this waiting really will help him. Of course he’s sad to have to wait but I really think it will be best if he does wait.

Again the experience at the closing program just really strengthened my testimony of the truthfulness of the church. I understand what a great gift it is to have the gift of the Holy Ghost an also the priesthood. I also understood more now why it is important for investigators to come to the church. Even when the meeting is really crazy the spirit is there in greater power than they have ever felt before.