Also, Brad Wilcox (pretty sure some of y'all have heard of him... BYU professor, was a mission president and some other cool things... he has a great talk here that I love and has helped me a lot) came to IF recently, because he did a cool forum where he and an evangelical pastor from a huge church in Boise had "a conversation about grace, God, and faith". I'm confident that a lot of good will come from it. It was mostly attended by evangelicals but a good LDS population was there, also... Us missionaries weren't allowed to go (dang it) but Heather and some other people we're teaching went and they said it was awesome and the spirit was SO strong. It was basically the pastor asking Bro. Wilcox about all the things that people here have issues with regarding the Mormons -- Are we trying to "earn our way to heaven"? Are we saved by grace? Do we worship a different Jesus? Why the 3 heavens? And of course the mass multitude of issues that people have with modern-day prophets, especially Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. It was good to hear about it from them.
He ALSO did a little zone conference with us missionaries in the afternoon before this forum! I was expecting it to be on the atonement, grace, etc, since his most known talks and the book of his I've read are about those subjects, but it was all centered around our "birthright". He talked a lot about the gathering of Israel, the millennium, the 12 tribes, patriarchal blessings, ALL of which are things that wanted to know more about. It was amazing.
Thomas is progressing wonderfully! He's into Jacob in the Book of Mormon now and we've set a date for him to be baptized on July 8th!!! He's so excited, as are we, and his family, and the ward, and it's great.
SO last weekend, one of my favorite ladies in the stake (Sister Meikle) experienced a miracle. She's a member of the church, and helped out a lot with the IF temple open house, since they were on the committee; they were there 14+ hours per day! Last weekend, her neighbor came and knocked on her door, saying "What time is church? I'd like to be baptized." SO AWESOME. This neighbor has known that Sister Meikle was a member of the church, and had never shown much interest in the church, though Sis. Meikle had always invited her to ward parties, the open house, etc. BUT, this neighbor of hers, Donna, went to the open house on her own, and the temple was such an amazing spiritual experience for her! She felt so strongly that it was true. SO, Sis. Meikle invited her to meet with us missionaries, and Donna agreed. The day of our appointment, Sis. Meikle invited her OTHER neighbor, who was more than interested to ALSO come to hear the first discussion. It was so fun talking to those two ladies about their experience at the open house. They're both so open and willing to learn and had amazing questions. After the lesson, Donna told us she went home and her husband (who didn't want us in his home) asked "how's moroni and his girls doing?" to which Donna responded "they're lovely, thank you very much." and moved on haha. Cracked me up.
I know that Jesus Christ is in the details of our lives. I know that He is aware of what we're going through and I know that we can have a personal and real relationship with him.
Be good.
Loves,
Sister Mc
Exchanges in the Shelley Bilingual area!!! I got to wear my hermana name tag and teach some cool people. In espanol. With Hermana Reyes who is from HOUSTON also.
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