Wild One! (Week 44)

 As the title of the email suggests, this week was a wild one for sure! We've got to go back to last Monday. We got up and went to the church to play some basketball. Classic missionary thing to do on P-day. It was just me and my companion. We decided to do a couple of shooting competitions and what not until right at the very end. My comp wanted to go one on one. Good times. During our little game, I drove to the hoop and came to a jump stop and did a pump fake. It worked and I got my companion to jump, except it wasn't too much of a jump. I had accidentally stepped on his foot and when he jumped he came back down on it all weird  and that pretty much ended the game. He had a pretty gnarly ankle sprain. We came home and took it pretty easy the rest of the day. His foot was super swollen and only looked slightly dislocated so we used our judgement and deemed it best to wait a day or 2 before calling someone about it. The next morning his ankle was still super swollen and it had also bruised and after much consideration, we decided we should probably just tell the nurse now because she is going to find out about it at some point or another. She suggested that we go to the Urgent care to get it x-rayed for fear of it being broken. And she also had us set up an appointment with a doctor that does stuff with feet (what are those called?)............... So we went to the urgent care for the x-ray and after about 2 hours they came back and told us that he had just had a moderate ankle sprain. It looked a lot worse than that but hey, if that's all it was, then we are good to go! 

The next day we had his doctor appointment and I had to wait in the lobby. After about an hour of watching this super intriguing shoe about houses, my companion came out in a boot... The doctor had reexamined the x-ray and apparently my comp broke his tibia and his fibula near his foot. Good stuff. So now he is in a boot for the next 6-8 weeks. Crazy stuff right there haha.

On Friday we were going about doing good and we got a text from this man. This dude had bashed with the missionaries in the past but has since made amends with the missionaries. He told us about his friend that wanted to learn more about "the Mormon view of the trinity." Seemed like a potential bash, but you never know. We said we could help out his friend and the dude gave us his friend's number. The friend (I should just start using names) named Greg reached out to us. He asked when we could meet and where. He lives in San Clemente about 15ish minutes south of us. He said he would come up to Mission Viejo to talk with us. Definitely smelling like a bash at this point. My companion said he has never been in a bash so he was going to let me handle it. Thanks, haha. Anyway, I had an awesome personal study preparing for our meeting. I put a few scriptures up my sleeve that I might need but I was actually directed to President Nelson's talk from April 2020, 'Hear Him." In the talk President Nelson gives 4 different accounts of when Heavenly Father speaks. The Father speaks to proclaim the divine sonship of His only begotten, Jesus the Christ. I decided to use this as the main way of teaching Greg. When we got to the park we decided to meet at, we picked out a table and started our comp study until Greg got there. He pulled up in a white SUV and on the side of his back left window he had a car sticker. The sticker said COMPASS BIBLE on it. Great. It was definitely going to be a bash. Compass Bible church and Saddleback church are 2 big churches in this part of California who are big time bashers, haha. In my mind I had thoughts along the line of, well at least this will be fun to write home about. So here we are, a one on one bash. As we start talking I come to find out that the dude isn't actually wanting to bash. I end up not having to use my bashing scriptures but end up reading with him the four accounts of Heavenly Father speaking directly to his from Him. It was super cool! We had an hour conversation of how we know it to be the Godhead instead of the Trinity and we got into a lot of fun, deep, stuff like Exaltation and becoming like God to Premortal Jesus. Good Stuff. We taught him the Restoration and invited him to read the Book of Mormon. He declined the invitation and told us how he has a Book of Mormon and how he has problems with Joseph Smith. I asked him if he has read the Book of Mormon and if he has read it recently. He said no. Well, there is the problem, haha. We walked over to his car and before he got in the car I said, " If you never try, you'll never know with the Book of Mormon." Isn't that just the truth.

In 3 of the 4 accounts mentioned above, Heavenly Father says, "This is my beloved Son, hear Him." Those words fill me with the Spirit each time I read and ponder them. It is a loving, caring invitation to Hear His Son and to be led to Life Eternal. How have you been able to 'Hear Him'?

-Elder Shockley :D