Of Trips, Books and Cups

Well, a new year has begun. I hope everyone survived. I know I barely didn't. The excitement of just sleeping through new year's eve was hardly bearable. On Tuesday, New Year, we went on a Zone trip to Delphi. Wow, that was a great trip. It only took us 3 hours to drive there and then when we got there we had great surprise waiting for us. The museum and the ruins were close for the holiday!

We even saw snow, sadly we didn't get close enough to touch it.

The hand of the Lord was in all our lives on Tuesday during our zone trip. I'm sure of it! When we got there and the museum AND the ruins were closed for the holiday it could have been a major day-breaker for all of us. But I'm astonished and happy at how we reacted to the bad news. I don't think there was one of us that started to complain and get upset as far as I could tell. We just took it in stride and decided to have a good day anyway. I know how that could have ruined any other group's outing. I'm so glad for the Lord's influence in all our lives and His guiding hand to help us deal with such disappointments and still find joy in each other's company and the simple pleasures of seeing the view and the sea. It was a grand trip.

For, we decided to go look at the little village close by and then we went down to the sea we could see twinkling in the distance. We stopped a few times on the way to enjoy the view and it was truly magnificent.

It was a dangerous shot but worth the pic...

On Thursday, being back to business as usual we met with one of our contacts. That was a really impressive meeting. We'd met him the day after Christmas last week and we'd given him a Book of Mormon then. Now as we sat down with him in his house, which incidentally is right next to the house of one of our investigators, we learned that he's read the whole Book of Mormon already. He devoured it... We spoke of what he learned and understood. He had good understanding and he shared with us how he would like to give this book to his friends. He'd felt that it was good. He told us that his priest had told him to throw it away but he then said, "why, it is good. I teaches exactly what the Bible does". He also came to church on Sunday despite some difficulties with health. I'm very impressed with him and I feel that the Lord has surely worked in his life.

We also had a great lesson with our six Ghanaian friends. They've been having trouble understanding what we mean when we say that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only true church on earth. We gave it a good deal of thought and even asked in district meeting and we came up with a way of explaining it to them. We set up some cups on top of each other forming a pyramid. On each of the cups we had something written that is need in the true church of Jesus Christ. Then we had matching scriptures to the cups. So we read the scriptures with them and explained them and set up each layer of cups until we had the pyramid. As the bottom layer we had Apostles and Prophets (as in Ephesians 2:19-20). So we asked one of them to pull out an apostle. He hesitated, "i don't want to break it"... we insisted and he did. As they saw the cups all fall to the ground I could see the light turning on in their minds. It was truly remarkable. They understood it then and we were able to help them how this same organization was re-built in the restoration through Joseph Smith. The Spirit was there, testifying to all of us present that this simple demonstration was representing the truth of the Great Apostasy and the Restoration of the Gospel. I'm glad for the Lord's guidance through His Spirit in teaching His gospel and helping people come to know the truth. How marvelous.

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