Doug is doing super well and is completely prepared to be baptized this Saturday!!! It is amazing to see what is possible in life with God on our side. Doug has been to numerous addiction programs throughout his years (some of them for 11 years at a time), but a lot of his addictions he was never able to fully get rid of. He has overcome all of them, including smoking which was the hardest for him in a matter of 2 months with God on his side!!! It we have enough faith and our desires are in the right place, God can work miracles in our lives! Please keep praying for him to stay strong!
We taught a lady named Stephanie we met a while ago and she was able to help me understand something I have known, but never truly seen the significance of. She said she walked away from God when she was 16, and hasn't really known Him since, yet she does believe in Him. She, at 28, is not in the place she wants to be. She feels that she has failed in a lot of the roles that she has like mother, sister, friend, daughter girlfriend, and that she is not the person that she wants to be. She says she wants to figure herself out. As she was telling us all of this, I kept thinking "Stephanie!! It is only through God that you will come to know yourself, love yourself and become who you are meant to be!!" She thought she needed to figure out who she was before coming to know God but it is only through coming to know God that we can figure out who we truly are.
We taught Raymond and his wife and two kids (the family from Kenya) and they are such a wise, spiritual people! They asked very good questions and are very curious about the doctrine of the church! Raymond said he would have lots of questions prepared for us when we go back!! Also, after the lesson at 8:30pm they invited us to stay for dinner...we were a little confused and asked if they were having dinner right then and they said yes of course, like everyone did that! We said we already had dinner, and they asked what time, so we told them 5 and they were blown away! haha they told us not to eat dinner next time we came and they would feed us Kenyan food!
We taught a man named Matthew and his wife who are from India. They both study different religions and were very intrigued by us. Matthew was super big on objective evidence, verses the subjective evidence that we receive individually. We talked to him about how the Gospel of Jesus Christ was restored to the earth through a prophet and we have the Book of Mormon as evidence of that. He said there needed to be more objective evidence of the Book of Mormon before he would read it though (this is after we had already given him plenty of objective evidence in our opinion, not to mention the fact that he had bookcases lined and labeled about other religions in his basement) I asked him how he knew the Bible was true and he said it is because there are so many different witnesses to Jesus Christ's life and spouted off all these different facts and references to support that. As Sister Murray and I reflected on that experience a scripture came to mind in Matthew 16 which says:
"13 ¶ When Jesus came into the coasts of Cæsarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?
14 And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.
15 He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?
16 And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
17 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.
Peter knew Jesus Christ as his Savior not because of evidence or the miracles he had seen, but he knew it because he had faith and it was revealed to him by Heavenly Father. Evidence is not enough to have a sure foundation on Jesus Christ. It is the combination of Faith and then evidence that produces pure knowledge.
Faith + Evidence = Pure Knowledge
Have a great week!
Serving with a Smile,
Sister Bradley
Pictures
1. Sister Murray and I being dorks in our comp unity shirts :)
2. Yali's son is AMAZING at making paper airplanes!! This is one he gave me!
No comments:
Post a Comment