It's been a good week.
Started off with watching General Conference for district meeting, since none of us saw the final session. It was good.
Then I exchanged with Elder Yip, from Hong Kong. We were in his area, Glasgow Chinatown.
It was a fun experience--we go to the City Centre or near the university and street contact only Asians!
We start in English, and if they seem confused or their English is broken, we ask where they're from and if they say China then Elder Yip will just start speaking Mandarin. It's great fun.
Sometimes we get people who look Chinese but they have a Scottish accent because they were born here.
It was a fun experience, pretty much walking down the street, getting an Asian family in our sights and making a beeline to them.
Later in the week we got thrown out of an investigator's house--the first time on my mission!
It was a bad one though--the lesson was with a homosexual lady to whom I had already explained the Church's stance on the matter...although she didn't like it the first time she accepted that that's the way it is and that we still loved everyone.
But we had a member with us, who started arguing back with her this time...telling her she was too stubborn to see the truth, and about 30 minutes later of this he started making personal attacks against her and gays in general.
So she said to him "I'm gonna have to ask you to leave." SO although she wasn't mad at us, we had to leave too because he was our joint teach.
We went back a couple days later and apologized, especially because she was moving the next day to England to live with her partner and we didn't want her leaving with a bad taste of the Church. She was kind about it, but she said straight out that she did not like the guy we brought with us.
She accepted that our beliefs are what they are, but we all agreed that our member didn't handle it in a very loving way.
We also had a three hour lesson with a guy who I mentioned last week. (He is CRAZY) part Jehovah's Witness, part Buddhist, part Hindu, or so it seems.
This was our second lesson with him...and it wasn't a lesson.
It was just him rambling (and sometimes yelling) about how Joseph Smith was a Freemason and we cannae trust him and how some church leaders are even questioning his integrity and how the Book of Mormon was changed and how the Joseph Smith story was changed in 1960 and how Masons worship Satan and how he used to be a Mason and he left it cause it was evil and his super rich and powerful family disowned him because he left it and our temples are just like Masonic temples and the Salt Lake temple is white just like all Freemason temples are white and how Jeffrey R Holland is a Freemason and he's met him and he's a Freemason and Freemasons use the King James Version of the bible and the Freemasons go two by two and can't be alone with another person just like our companionship and Joseph Smith is a liar and how I just convinced myself that I received a witness that it's all true and yeah it was just a CRAZY stressful 3 hours.
We couldn't escape.
The next day he called us to tell how he had no money or food or electricity and asked if we could help him.
So we told him to come to church and ask the bishop and he yelled at me saying, "Do you understand how humiliating that is?!" and when we told him that that's just the way it works he hung up on us, and then phoned back 10 minutes later and said to never come to his door again.
Phew!
We tracted a bunch in some high-rise apartment buildings (high-flats) throughout our area...found some cool people.
We played football on Saturday and it was fun.
I finally scored after blowing like three chances by panicking and trying to one-time a shot on goal rather than control it first. Hoping to get into intramurals at USU.
After church on Sunday we stayed after to see the baptism of a super nice Thai couple. It was great. Then we went to Sam's church! He's the Christian that we teach, who is very active in his church and in a Christian student ministry group. It was fun, and kind of spiritual.
It was like being at a Christian Rock concert, which was awesome. The sermon was kinda boring though.
Lots of really nice people though--a few weird looks when we came in our suits and ties and everyone else just wore casual clothes. Not sure if they were thinking "What are the Mormon missionaries doing here?" or "Those guys must have thought this was a fancy dressed church or something"
I dunno but it was a good experience. Not really any false doctrine that was taught, just not the fulness. Oh well! Now Sam hopefully feels obligated to come to ours. :)
Well that's my week. It was a good one. Thank you all for everything. Love yous!
Elder Spencer Burt, District Leader.
Photos:
Elder Gibson's kebabtism at the Chinatown four-man flat.
Mom, I have met Elder Penman a couple times and here's a photo of me and him at the bus station on moves day. He's being trained by zone leaders!
