Hallo Hallo meine liebe Damen und Herren!
Well here I am again, staring at the computer screen, just
trying to figure out what I should start off with. I don't know this week was
rough, albeit it was nevertheless a testimony builder. Seeing as my district
just got a lot bigger I now have to be on exchange every single week of the
transfer in order to exchange with every elder in my district and also exchange
with the Zone-Leaders. I guess it is kind of exciting because I get to
look at other areas in the mission without actually having to serve there the
entire time. But at the same time it is sometimes quite the hassle having to
plan for these exchanges, especially because we don't really have the miles to
spare on the car we have in our area. Mostly because we make a weekly trip all
the way out to the border of Poland. Haha more than enough jokes have been made
about having a small vacation in Poland.
Now to get straight to the nitty-gritty parts of the week, I
will now explain to you the fiasco we had out our street display in the city
center (Innenstadt) of Neubrandenburg. So first and foremost it started off
with a not so excited attitude from the other missionaries. Fortunately,
unfortunately I was there to try to stir them up to action but they eventually
got to it so that is good. The beginning is always the hardest part. But as
time goes on and things are moving steadily along, nothing to exciting, except
for a small incident where a 90 year old man on a bike stopped and tried to
contend with the sisters for no reason in particular but the sisters were not
having any of that and just told him bye and I guess he was disappointed with
that and just left, although he did ride by later and said something against us
as he was going by. But then...my good readers. Haha it all began! Sometimes it
really is just an uphill battle sometimes. So first bad sign which you wouldn't
usually think would be a bad sign but it is. There was someone standing
relatively close by, looking interested or at least looking like he wanted to
talk to us. Bad sign, bad sign I tell you! So this middle twenty year old guy
comes up to us and asks us if we are Mormons. Naturally we say yes and couple
exchanges later we find out that he is from a Baptist community all the way
down in Minden which is literally almost all the way on the other side of our
mission. So I am thinking what are you even doing here?! And then moments later
I come to find out he is doing his own special kind of missionary work. Which
he then proceeds to try and bible bash with us and ask us what I like to call
Pharisee questions, which have no real intent other than to try and catch you
in your words and try and prove you wrong. He didn't do it very effectively
though because number one he didn't even have a bible with him, which isn't
going to get your point across if you can't even prove me where it supposedly
says something in the bible. And you just get so fed up of hearing people try
to quote revelations to you, trying to say there can be no more scripture
because it says do not change or add to this book, although it is talking
directly about the book of revelations and the fact that in Deuteronomy it says
basically the same exact thing, so at the beginning of the bible. Or the
biggest thing I think is the fact that revelations wasn't the last book written
in the bible or even more so that the bible as we have it today didn't even
exist at that point in time. Which just tells me that they are just quoting
their basher-scriptures at me and actually have never truly read the bible or
know anything about the bible itself or where it comes from......and after a
painfully long conversation with him,we just kept telling him that we didn't
want to contend or fight with him and just told him to leave. But oh wait this
isn't the end of the story because about ten minutes later I see three other
guys about the same age heading toward us and I immediately knew that they were
also a part of this community of Baptists from Minden. Knowing that I couldn't
avoid them and that we couldn't just leave our own street display, I decided to
talk to them first and start a more friendlier conversation that would lead to
contention. However unfortunately after they asked what we were doing exactly
and I explained to them and gave a short simple testimony. One of them and this
guy actually has a bible; dramatically flips open his bible and starts quoting
scripture at me. So now the real war begins, although I was really not in the
mood to do this again or ever really. And just for the record, don't ever try
to bible bash me because you will never win, enough said. But in this situation
there wasn't really anything I could do and I tried to be as nice as possible
in everything that I said and just tried to bring everything back to the fact
that we can get answers from God the ultimate source of truth, on the book of
Mormon, or even the meaning of scriptures within the bible. It was very
interesting though because he kept showing me scriptures that just sounded way
off. He even showed me a scripture from a chapter in the bible that I actually
gave a talk on in Prenzlau a couple weeks ago and I was wondering the entire
time...how could I have missed that. He really thought he had me at that point
for some reason. I was mostly just keeping this guy tied up because one of the
other guys was actually having a real conversation with the other missionaries
and eventually even took a Book of Mormon and some pamphlets. But back to the
point, so this scripture was bothering but then I had inspiration that I should
check the English version of this scripture on the gospel library app on our
iPads. And so I do and what do you know the verse in this chapter was just
different enough in English to mean something completely different. Later on I
eventually looked at every German translation of the Bible that I could get my
hands on to see if they were the same as this other bibles translation. And what
do you know their translation was the only one that was different from about 7
to 8 different Bibles which just irritates me beyond belief because that just
goes back to the whole not changing scriptures thing and the so many different
translations of Bibles and yadda yadda yadda. Sorry I am just going off on this
haha, I just really do not like talking to these kinds of peopl that we met
during our street display.
To end off this letter with something good. I did have the
opportunity to give a lady a blessing the other day. And I am very grateful for
the privilege of carrying the priesthood and being able to give people
blessings. Every single blessing I have given has truly been a reminder of the
truth of this church and the priesthood keys that are strictly bound within it
by worthy priesthood holders all the way up to the prophet. I cannot think of
one logical explanation of how such good feelings could occur from a simple
laying of hands on the head and a few spoken words uttered other than the divine
out-pouring of the spirit upon us by our heavenly father as we perform these
sacred ordinances in his sons name, even that of Jesus Christ.
Well I hope you all have a wonderful week and as always I
think about you and pray for you daily.
Tschüss,
Elder Foster
Random picture of the German backcountry
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