16 March 2015

It's been a slow week. A few of our investigators dropped us, so we've been having to find more. One of them was an older Hindu woman. Funnily enough, she believes in Jesus Christ and everything, she just won't convert to Christianity because her ancestors back to Moses have been Hindu. It seems like a lot of Hindus here have at least some measure of belief in Christ (they even told us that one of their temples has a picture of Him that they pray to; that kinda gave me the shivers, to be honest). In a place like India, that sort of laxity with Hinduism would not be tolerated, any more than the tolerance of the Muslims would be in Pakistan or the Christians in Vatican City. There are just so many religions that everyone is very confused. Most of them don't want to say that anyone will not be saved, because if they say that, they are saying that their friends of another faith will not be saved. It's very confusing for everyone here. That makes it hard for us, because we are introducing yet another religion, but this one is not going to say that you can believe whatever you want. So, it's a struggle, but we're working on it :)

Another example is with an older less-active we went and visited, Sister Clarke. Since she is older and has a walker and everything, we just thought we would have to set up someone to take the sacrament over. The conversation went something like this:

SC: I can't go to church; I can't really go anywhere.

Us: Well, would you like us to have someone bring you the sacrament?

SC: Oh, no, no, they've offered, I don't want that.

Us: Why not?

SC: I don't believe in the sacrament.

Us: . . . If what?

Turns out, she doesn't believe in a lot of things we teach, never mind she's been baptized and coming to church for twenty years. It was a very interesting lesson. She was Seventh-Day Adventist before she was baptized, so she stillbelieves the true Sabbath is on Saturday, and that Ellen G. White (the founder of the SDA church) was a prophet. She does not believe in the priesthood, yet she believes Joseph Smith was a prophet. I don't think she understands that those are seriously contradicting beliefs. So, she's super-nice (she gave us two packages of cookies which we promptly gave to the elders), but super-confused.

Other than that, it's been a fairly normal week. We're just trying to find more prepared people :) We've been handing out #BecauseHeLives cards to everyone, and most people have a good response. It's a good conversation starter.

I hope all you have a great week.

Lots of love, Sister Aida Tibbitts

Maracas Beach last week.

A super-tall hill we hiked up to find an investigator; things missionaries do, huh?