JIM

October 15, 2010 Friday

Today we were going to take a P-day, but a lady we’d contacted a while back asked us to come this morning at 9 am. So we were there at 9 am. We knocked, she didn’t answer. Then the phone rang. We heard her answer that. She has the cutest little fluffy white poodle that was out on the porch. We decided to go try a couple of other things and then come back. We did, the dog was now inside and she still didn’t answer the door. So we came home, did some wash and a few other things and then headed to a different internet café than the one we usually go to to put some stuff on our blog. It’s a café where kids can play all kinds of video games, etc. The girl who greeted us gave us a big smile and in her heavy Irish brogue said, “You’re uh, ummm, starts with an ‘M’.” We helped her out and admitted we are Mormons. She has a friend back in Ireland who is LDS. She says she wants to change her lifestyle, but not quite yet because she wants to “fit in” in Broome. So we got on the net, but couldn’t make the Blog download what we had on that computer.
So we left and went to the other internet café; it had closed early. We decided to stop at the library to see if we could do just some e-mail there. Hah! All the computers there were down. I went over to read the world news in The Australian (the big paper put out in Sydney). I noticed that Orson was talking to Jim Bartlett. Jim is a guy in his later 70’s who comes up here from Perth in the winter. He knows some about the church, and he had sat down to visit with us when we had the Family History Exhibit in the library in August. He’s Anglican. Anyway, he asked a lot of questions which we answered but he wouldn’t let us make an appointment to teach him. We’ve kept running into him since then and Orson would push him a little bit more to learn about the gospel. Well, Orson’s been trying to figure out how to get people to listen and really think about the approach he’s been using about the Book of Mormon. He’s shown people the scripture in Ezekiel about the “stick of Judah and the stick of Joseph,” and then talked to them about the BoM and the witnesses who never denied their testimony even though 2 of the 3 witnesses were excommunicated. So he asked Jim for some advice about how to improve that approach. Jim listened and explained that most current Christians really don’t know much about the House of Israel so we need to explain the Ezekiel scripture better. Then he read the scripture again. He listened attentively to the stuff about the witnesses so Orson showed him Moroni 10:4-5. He read it and then kept reading to the end of the chapter. Then he asked, “So then would I have to become a Mormon?” He also mentioned that the only reading in the BoM he’d been able to do was in the one in the library. He was pleased when Orson gave him his own copy. It will be very interesting to see what his response is the next time we run into him. He used to be an English teacher, so he’s used to analyzing what he reads. We are so grateful that we were finally able to get him to listen to a little more about the church and the Book of Mormon.