J-DUBS, BIKINIS & BEER

November 9, 2010 Tuesday

This morning as we walked out of Bran Nue Dae, the care center, we heard a voice say, “Hello, there!” Turning around, we saw Tony standing there. We had talked to him over the weekend and mentioned that Tuesday morning we would be there until 11:00 am. Tony’s sister works in the kitchen there, and he stops there occasionally to grab a bite. As we asked how he was, he began to squirm a little and then began to talk about the reason he hadn’t been to church over the years is because he felt his relationship with Christ is personal and in his heart. When we asked how his reading was coming, he said he’d been reading Psalms and Proverbs (not the BoM). Orson had felt there had been a change in him lately. We must have talked to him for an hour or so about how Satan would try to get him to wander away from what he’d been doing with the church. We told him he would be tried and that if he would just hang in there during this period that things would improve. We ended with Orson and him giving each other a huge hug and both of them in tears. We sure hope he continues with us. Pray for him, Tony Connelly.
This afternoon we went to visit Ally, the J-dub we’d talked to about a month ago. She had a lot of questions about what we believed. We had hoped to teach her and her husband, but he’s not interested at all. So we went back and asked her to explain the big “hang-up” they have about the name “Jehovah.” We were having a great conversation with her when her friend, another J-dub dropped in. She was very friendly too and commented that some of the younger witnesses had told her about running into us. They said they changed areas and found out we’d been there ahead of them too :o)
Anyway, we didn’t get back into the doctrinal conversation but she told us to drop by next week and we’d talk some more. She gave us a Watchtower with an article about the name, “Jehovah.” Also, she’d printed off 3 articles that had been published in past Watchtowers about Mormonism. She asked us to read them and see if we agree with what was printed. I read through the shortest one and it was pretty accurate.
We then taught a quick 1st lesson to Fay, a young married (we hope) who is 6 months pregnant. She told us that she let us in because we seemed like such nice people. How about that! She feels like she doesn’t have time to read much right now. She’s contented with thinking that there are a lot of different ways to God. We will try her again after her baby is born and see if she wants to talk. (Whatever happened to “strait is the gate and narrow is the way” that Christ preached?)
Orson hit a few houses tracting and then motioned for me to come with him. He’d come on a house where there were 4 young adults out on the patio and in the pool. They invited us in to talk. Both girls were in bikinis and in the pool. The two guys were sitting at the table which was covered with liquor bottles and cans. One of the guys was smoking. They invited us to sit down at the table with them. The girls got out and came over to visit with us. What a picture that would have made! They proceeded to ask us all kinds of questions about us, our mission, our life and what we hoped to accomplish by going around knocking on doors. Then one of the girls starting asking if we thought she was a bad person because she was doing all these bad things. She said she would probably change as she got older. The other one got into a big thing about abortion and then started onto how many girls get pregnant and raise their babies on their own and it’s “no big deal” now. We finally gave them a couple of pass-along cards and invited them to check out the church on the internet. It was a riot! We laughed a lot as we drove away.