Monday - Pulling them to the deep end...

Sunday Meeting - CO Visit with 2 other visiting groups

What a beautiful place!

Hey all!
It's Monday evening, we are back home resting after our first full day of the field ministry. Boy what a day! About 75% of the people here are of the Latter Day Saints faith, so almost every door you know what you are getting into...or so we thought. A good 3/4 of our group started bible studies today! The younger generation of the Mormons are the ones who seem to be struggling with the faith, hesitating as to whether it is true or not, and we can readily see that the foundations of the LDS church are breaking apart. And we found many young adults today who were quite willing to talk and interested in learning. But also a few of the older generation are responding. For example, at one door, a young boy (8-10) came and his eyes literally went into the back of his head and fluttered, afterwards he agreed to go and get his grandfather, who we were able to start sharing scriptures with. The young boy's sister called grandpa from the door, whispering to him that she wanted him to leave the house to talk with us; it seemed to traumatize the 4 children inside to have us talking there! It is obvious that there is a strong hold on these ones by Satan and his demons in the LDS church, to an extent we have never seen. Brother Weathers, the special pioneer here warned us that this was going to be the case, and in fact we had many interactions with experiences like this one. Many doors here you can expect to talk for at least 5 to ten minutes if they are LDS. We found a few offshoot religions but rare to none in contrast to the LDS population. We are also starting to realize just how much these people need to hear the truth. Orem has no congregation and 100,000 people who need to hear from us. These people really do need to hear this truth to set them free. We are so thrilled to be here! This has been the most incredible experience of our lives! We feel like every single witness should experience coming here. We are sharpening our skills in using the bible to reason with these people and most of all, to be bold! There is no messing around here, no sugar coating. When those ones open the door, we have an average of 5 scriptures planned to reason with them on. Today the groups focused on the political aspect of Satan's world and blatantly taught them how God feels about getting involved in this system's government. Either you support Jehovah and his kingdom, or you are supporting Satan and his. Plain as that. It is such a thrill to finally be able to firmly preach Jehovah's kingdom without hesitation. For instance, today a lot of us used:
Luke 4:43 (what was Jesus message) Are these governments today God's kingdom?
 Luke 4:5-7 (These government's are under Satan's control) So do we get involved in politics and governments today? Interestingly, most LDS emphatically say that we should!
That leads us to talk to them about wars and how they are alright with killing other LDS in war.
1 John 4:20,21 (if you hate your brother you are a liar)
Then John 13:34,35 ( Love one another)
We contrast Jehovah's Witnesses stand on politics and war to make a clear definition of what we believe and how we follow the bible. Many told us they had no idea.
At this point, they are still very calm and we are finding out if this sounds interesting for them or not. If it is then we pull out the teach book. If not, we leave them with maybe a magazine and go our separate ways on a friendly note. We really are giving a thorough witness to each one. Brother Weathers tells us we have to get them out to the "deep end of the pool" to find out if they are really interested or not. It's a fascinating process!We are going to need a lot of extra time at the service meeting to tell all of our adventures! More to come!

Posted by Avalon

Hi -- this is Stormie and I just want to add something really neat. When we go to the door, we introduce ourselves and immediately say we are Jehovah's Witnesses from Portland, OR. In Portland, if someone comes to the door and states their denomination and says they are not interested, we understand that to typically mean they want us to leave.  Here in Utah, we take a different approach.  We smile and ask them their opinion on the Bible verse, which most will give.  And then we take them from the "shallow end of the pool", where they feel comfortable with thier programmed answers, to "the deep end" where they can't answer by rote. We are hoping this will force them to question what they have been taught. To do this we are being bold and making sure we don't leave until each person has an opportunity to see Bible truth. 

Leon and Ken Preaching