Witnesses and Crashing Parties

So there were a few pretty fun stories from this week. I think to start off I'll talk about the poor returned missionary. For his name I'll just call him Howie baby because that's one of his nicknames and what he have his phone as in our contacts :) So Howie baby's return is one of the weirdest experiences that I'll probably has as a missionary. It was like seeing someone who recently died and came to haunt you and really missed being alive. It's given me a bit of hope of how my life will be after I die but it's still odd. He's already come out with us a few times to go teach so that is wonderful :) He's a great guy and a great missionary. He still answers to Elder so when we're trying to get his attention we just call him Elder instead of his name :D 

So the next story is a three part story. The first part was when we had to make an emergency trip to wallyworld because our cards finally got money on them. But we meet this lady at wallyworld who Elder Peterson originally thinks is Filipino so he says "Como esta Po" In the which she says "What did you say??" Come to find out she's 100% Cree. Whoops :) Anywho she had talked to missionaries because her ex husband had mormon friends whatdayaknow? So we go on with our day and we found this lady that we started teaching in a stairwell because fellowship rules. While we're teaching her we see this dress coming down the stairs and we're like "that looks familiar..." Ends up same girl completely different place. That was funny :) So I guess you can imagine we see her again but the story is so much better than that. So fast forward again we've got 30 minutes left of proselyting. We decide to go a different way than we normally do and happen across this lady going out to car to get something. She says that she's going back to a birthday party so Elder Peterson asks if she has some birthday cake for us. After she gets a bit wishy washy about it he says "I'm honestly kindof serious about getting some cake" So she agrees that we can have some cake to go. We get into the house and get some cake and then we're like "We need to go sing to the reason we got cake from a stranger" So we go out back and THE SAME LADY IS OUT THERE. She starts uncontrollably laughing and Elder Peterson and I are just confused how this happened. It was quite the turn of events. We sang happy birthday and it was all good :) 

Finally we decided to go talk to some Jehovah's Witness friends of ours. I'm not sure if I told you that story but we met some Witnesses and compared faiths with them. They had talked to some missionaries before and were decent friends with them. So anywho we weren't going to go visit them because Jehovah's Witness, The Church of Jesus Christ the two highest active proselyting churches in the world both think they're the true church it's risky biscuits. But, Elder Peterson felt prompted to go visit them so we did. We end up basically discussing the differences of the Fall that we believe and talking about the whole Plan of Salvation. It was wild. Honestly in situations like that you would think that there would be a contentious spirit but I think we both went away edified about our own beliefs it was so good :) When we got out we realized we had been there for about three hours. We're going to be going back because I was wondering if I could get one of their Proselyting bibles. You don't need to worry I'm not converted and I'll tell you why. We determined that the biggest difference between the two Faiths was the relationship with God. In their Faith you can only become a son of God by being part of the 144,000 whereas we believe that we are all children of God. Honestly every other difference stems from that relationship. I think that's why the first thing we teach as missionaries is that God not only loves us but is our Heavenly Father. He is a literal father to our spirits. Another thing was that they believed that we were just bodies thus making it so we could just be a creation. It also makes it so we part ways with the progression deal. Something that Elder Peterson and I had been talking about progression is such a big part of the gospel. It was really amazing :) I have a ton more of respect for them and honestly a little pity because I don't know how I could live a life without knowing that God loves us as children. It's good :) 

I hope you all have a great week and Potatoes gonna Potate

*from my email*

This last week has been so great for missionary work as well :) We've felt like we've just been led by the hand by Christ and just been given a lot of success. I think when you feel that way you know that you're following the spirit in missionary work and thus being a good missionary. Because we all know that even though we think that we've got it all together it's really the Holy Ghost doing all the work ;)