Nyob zoo!
So yesterday morning, really early, there was a 7.1 magnitude earthquake at 1:35am. I had woken up right before it happened. The room started shaking a little bit. It shook enough that you knew it was an earthquake for sure. At this point, me and Elder Vang look at each other. He asks me, "What do we do?" At this point the intensity heightened and I yelled back, "get on the floor next to your bed!" I remembered the earthquake drills Mr. Crippen, by third grade teacher had us do when I lived in Utah. That is when it was at its hardest. For what felt like forever, had been the most intense roller coaster I had ever been on. The room shook and rattled. Amazing enough, nothing in our house (Besides my tooth brush!) fell down. After the peak had stopped, it went back to the low rumbling. You could hear the earth growling like a hungry stomach and it shook just enough to feel it. For a few hours afterward you could feel minor aftershocks. Our phone blew up with texts from other missionaries and members. The epicenter was way down in the Kenai peninsula in the middle of the ocean. Thankfully enough, the epicenter was also 75 miles down into the earth so, there was no tsunami potential really here in Anchorage. 2nd earthquake in a week! The other one wasn't really anything big. You could feel it but nothing like this. There was very little damage here in Anchorage but in the Kenai, some roads were destroyed and buildings had gas leaks and burned down. Every impacted missionary was safe and accounted for within 15 minutes!
We had a pretty good proselyting week. Me and Vue Yang threw it down on an eternagator. He has a huge testimony of the Book of Mormon and the truthfulness that it contains. Me, Elder Vang and Vue Yang went over there and did this lesson called the "Tearing the Book of Mormon" lesson. No we do not tear the Book of Mormon.
It starts out with you telling a story. Elder Vang told the story. "You are driving down the highway. While you are driving, a moose steps out into the middle of the road. You swerve to get out of the way but it is wintertime and icy so you slide off the road and you roll your car 5 times into a ditch. Paramedics arrive and they say to you: 'You will not make it and you will die. Write three things on this piece of paper that you would want to say to your family."
Then you have them write three things they would say. When they are done you take the paper. You read Moroni 10:27: "And I exhort you to remember these things; for the time speedily cometh that ye shall know that I lie not, for ye shall see me at the bar of God; and the Lord God will say unto you: Did I not declare my words unto you, which were written by this man, like as one crying from the dead, yea, even as one speaking out of the dust?" You talk about how Moroni is dying and this is the last thing he wants to say to the whole world. This is like his dying words to his family.
So after you read that you continue your story. "You hand the paramedic the three things you would write. He takes the paper and tears it into pieces and drops it on the ground." You proceed to talk about how the Book of Mormon teaches many different things. When we have a testimony and witness of the truthfulness of it, yet do not follow the teachings inside of it, we are tearing the Book of Mormon in front of Moroni, God, and us, his servants. We then talk about one of the teachings inside the Book of Mormon. We read Mosiah 18:10 which reads: "Now I say unto you, if this be the desire of your hearts, what have you against being baptized in the name of the Lord, as a witness before him that ye have entered into a covenant with him, that ye will serve him and keep his commandments, that he may pour out his Spirit more abundantly upon you?"
We then proceeded to ask him, "Will you follow the Book of Mormon and its teachings and be baptized by someone holding God's restored priesthood?"
This is where it got super awkward for him. He bore his testimony for about 10 minutes on the Book of Mormon. We didn't say anything the whole time and we sat there silent. He then started to laugh because of how awkward it was for him and he tried to change the subject. We sat there silent. He wouldn't commit to a yes or a no. He continued to say all these reasons why he isn't coming to our church anymore. There were about how we only had 20 people in the Hmong branch and met with the Americans. If President Lee wasn't there then he wouldn't have anyone to translate and Sunday school is in English etc. Vue Yang then began to talk. He destroyed every concern. Our branch no longer meets with the American Ward, we meet by ourself with everything in Hmong. We have an average attendance of 65-80 Hmong with 6-8 Americans and a few more Laotians that help out mixed in. Vue Yang is our Sunday school teacher! And he teaches in Hmong. When we do have an American speak we have 5-6 different translators for whatever language he wants it in. There will never be a time he doesn't know what is going on.
After that he asked the investigator one question: Do you truly believe in the Book of Mormon? He replied, "yes I do." Vue Yang then said back: "Then there isn't a reason to be going to the wrong church because you believe the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to be the right church. It doesn't matter the language it is the same exact thing. You are risking you salvation because of your pride." All the investigator could say back is, "I will come." We will see next Sunday if he does!
Another miracle this week. About a year ago, there was a super golden investigator named Sengduan. He is a Lao speaker. He was coming and bringing all his friends then all of a sudden he dropped off the face of the earth. Nobody could contact him or knew where he lived. They tried and tried. When I got here we tried and tried. No clue where he lived. Recently we started trying again. He did some "detective work" and had an idea of where he lived.
We were sitting in our Missionary Correlation meeting and talking about him. President Lee gets the impression to try calling again. So he calls him and he picks up! They start talking and turns out he had been in Laos and just got back when we started trying to find him again. He tried coming to church when he got back but he went during the wrong time and couldn't find us. So we told him the new times and he came to church yesterday with his girlfriend and his girlfriends mom! That was a miracle! He is still super golden and wanted to offer the prayers after Sunday school and priesthood.
That was the miracles and experiences from the week basically! Have a good week!
Elder Hayden Frey
According to Elder Frey, “It’s praying”.
