A missionary experience

If anyone reading this does not know, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Otherwise known as Mormons.

I wanted to write about an experience I had with the missionaries. There was a less active woman they visited a few weeks ago and she said she wanted some sisters from the ward to visit her. The missionaries were over for dinner and I told them if they ever needed us, to let us know. They told me about this woman, so I and another sister visited her 2 weeks ago with the missionaries. What we didn't know, was her husband was going to be there. She is from Mexico and probably in her 40's. Her husband is Muslim and I'm not sure where he's from originally. The first visit went moderately well. The husband had a lot of questions and basically the lesson was all over the place because of the questions. He kind of dominated the time and his wife is a little more quiet, but she had a lot of questions too. I came home feeling good about being able to do a little bit of missionary work. Ever since serving my mission in Italy, I've always wanted to share the gospel with others, but I just haven't really had the opportunity, so this was kind of fun for me.

We went back yesterday and made it through the first lesson. However, after that it went downhill. I'm writing about this, because I came home upset. The husband became more and more closed. He wasn't really wanting to know more, but rather prove us wrong. He showed us this video, made by anti-mormons, that was awful. He wanted us to tell him what was not true about it, but at the end, it seemed he believed it. It was a cartoon that kind of went through the plan of salvation, the pre-existence, etc. Some of the outright falsehoods were that those of the 2/3 of the hosts of heaven that weren't valiant are the black people on earth today, and that God himself went down and had sex with Mary. It actually showed God knocking on Mary's door! The whole time referring to God and Jesus as the Mormon God, the Mormon Jesus. What really made me mad was how distorted the truths and facts were portrayed. They had some things right, but obviously it was portrayed in a way that made it look or sound ridiculous. What makes me sad is that people will see this online and believe it. Dan told me that a while ago it was going around on Facebook and one of his fellow art teachers asked him about it. I know the adversary is behind this and we will always be attacked for our beliefs, but experiencing it firsthand was frustrating. I told him this video was obviously made by critics and those who don't like us. I gave the example, if you read a book and you have a question about it, who are you going to ask? the author who actually wrote the book or a critic, who had read the book, but didn't write it. His wife, was like, I would ask the author. The husband didn't really answer.

The other thing that upset me is he kept asking questions like how do you know a prophet saw God? It doesn't say that anywhere. Or how can you prove that Jesus was the Son of God? How do you know Jesus was conceived by the Holy Ghost? For the last two, I wanted to say it says in the Bible, but I couldn't think of any scripture references, so I didn't. Plus, in the moment, it's hard to think of what you really want to say. I came home and after some thinking and searching in the scriptures, all the answers to these questions are in the Bible. Exodus 33:11 says how Moses saw God face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. I actually knew about this and tried finding it during the lesson, but couldn't. The one about Jesus being conceived by the Holy Ghost is found in the first three books of the New Testament. Matthew 1:18 is an example. The question about Jesus being the son of God is also found all over the place, Matthew 3:17 is an example.

Even though this was a frustrating experience and kind of a downer, I realized I need to study the scriptures more. Especially the New Testament. Had I been more familiar with the actual verses of the New Testament, and not just the doctrine I know is true, but can't give a verse as backup, I would have been able to answers that man's questions and teach him using the scriptures. I do read my scriptures every day, but it's generally from the Book of Mormon. This was definitely a motivating experience for me to be better about studying and knowing where things are in the Bible.

If anyone reading this is not of my faith and have questions, please let me know or visit www.mormon.org for more information. Please do not visit other sites not endorsed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. If you have a question, go to the actual source, not a third party.