STAYING IN COMO

January 12, 2011 Wednesday

Today we went to the South River Zone’s Specialized Training. That is what they call the presentations of improved teaching methods that have come out that are supposed to help us be better teachers. It was really good. President and Sister Cahoon presented doctrine about the Holy Ghost and then we watched a DVD presentation about “Teaching People, Not Lessons.” After that we practiced what we’d been taught. We had an interview with President Cahoon. He wants us to stay here in the Como Ward and work on contacting all the referrals that come here. This ward actually gets the most referrals of the mission according to him.
Orson had done some calling yesterday on the referral list. We had an appointment at 3:30 today with a fellow but it turned out to be a bad address. So we did some grocery shopping since we knew we were going to be here for a while. We had dinner and then went to visit John Sinzo who had sat in on a lesson some sisters were teaching in Freemantle. He’s from Burundi in Africa and has been here 5 years. He spoke really good English although French was his native language. He immediately told us he was looking for the true church and had received a Book of Mormon from the sisters and had a lot of questions about it. So we tried to give him enough background to help him understand better. He resisted trying to find out if Joseph Smith is a prophet. He just wanted to see if there were truth in the Book of Mormon and add it to what he already knows. Then he asked us if we believed in the 10 Commandments and not 9 like the world does today. He really thumped on the idea that the Lord commanded us to keep the Sabbath Day holy and we’ve forsaken that in favor of worshipping on Sunday. He told us he was raised Catholic and had jumped ship to Pentacostal. The longer we listened we realized he was 7th Day Adventist and just wanted to convert us to his way of thinking. He refused to pray about whether the Book of Mormon was true and whether Joseph Smith was a prophet. At that point we packed up and left. It’s too bad—his wife seemed nice and they had a seven month old daughter named Mercy.