Monday, June 5, 2017

HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

I needed those pictures because we're going to try to do presentations at high schools about America for their English classes. Missionaries in other cities have been doing it, and they say it's the best way to find investigators and English class students in the world. So we thought we'd give it a shot, but we have to hurry because the school year is over in a month.

Wow, everyone is just visiting Poland right now! I'm definitely going to want to visit Poland again like a year after I get back. We should totally do a Euprope trip and go to Germany France and Poland and then Caity should go on a mission to Russia so we can have WWII covered!

For all the people who's baptisms I've seen or been a part of, about half are still active in the church. The less active ones all have their own reasons, but they're still remembered by the branch, and are still trying to be reactivated. I'm sorry I can't give many more details than that; people really like their privacy here. But the ones you asked about are as active as they can be considering their situation. I'll be able to tell you more in a few months!

Yeah, tell me how that class goes, and you can prep me on what it's like taking a semester's worth of classes in one week so I'll be ready for that math class!

Ok, get this- it's been a while, but we've added a couple new inspiring chapters to the volumes of priest battles (conversations). Just this last week, I was handing out flyers for our English class, and this lady walks up to me and is like "what's this" and I say "free English classes" and she walks away, but then walks right back to me and askes "who's it run by?" And by this point I know exactly what's coming, and I tell her that it's run by our church, and then she just goes off on our church for being a Satanic sect, and that it doesn't even belong being called a church and that we shouldn't be coming in with our American ideas and Masonic, Christianity-destroying ideas and tells me that I shouldn't be preaching a false Gospel on Catholic territory. This goes on for about ten minutes, and then a Priest walks up, and tries defending me a little bit, but then the lady goes off on him for not also calling me a sect and evil. After another ten minutes, she walks away, and the Priest walks up again. I thank him for his help, but then he's just like "actually, I think you're a sect, also." and then explains how apostate the idea of three seperate beings as the Godhead is. I read the scripture in the Book of Mormon where Abinadi is preaching what sounds exactly like the Catholic idea of God but also helps us understand what we believe, but the Priest literally does not listen and says that what I read isn't true because it's not from the Bible. After a short argument, he asks me if he can pray for me, and I'm like 'sure', thinking that he meant at home in his prayers for all the sinners and whatnot. But no. Right there, in the middle of the street, with tons of people looking around, he lays his hands on my head and then starts saying this blessing! I was so shocked that I couldn't move, and then he high-fives me afterward and walks away. That actually happened. Right after, the other missionaries walk up to me and are like, dude what the freak just happened, and I'm feeling really weird at this point and uneasy, so I ask for a priesthood blessing from the Elders and we go back to the chapel and do it, and honestly the difference between the blessings was so real and amazing that I'm just so much more convinced of the apostasy - I didn't know that could have been so much more strengthened.

THEN the very next day, we go to the Catholic Church itself, it's very heart- the Seminary. This one is actually a lot less eventful. We were invited to Seminary by a couple of Catholic Deacons, and we went, and there we were able to discuss with them some things about our church and we were able to figure out things about their church, and it was all really a pleasant experience. They gave us some Rosaries, and if we go back they'll teach us how to pray using it. I don't really know what to do with it... It was really nice, though, to talk with some really pleasant people from another faith and just be able to discuss our beliefs and not argue for once.

 Still no Priest converts, though :)

Things have been going good here otherwise, we keep slowly getting more investigators, and more opportunities to teach. But that guy that I talked about in my last email has disappeared from the face of the earth. He even had a baptismal date!  I think I'm not super confused by what happened because somewhere along the way I found out that if you count up all the little miracles and tender mercies then it always adds up to more than what seems at the time as some huge crazy impossible miracle that seems to be the thing that changes everything. Because those miracles don't really always change everything. We should still be grateful for them, of course, but we shouldn't count on them to be the means of our salvation.

We also had exchanges with Elders Einfeldt and Lange in this week and they went well. Nothing out of the ordinary to report, but it was fun because Elder Einfeldt and I rode on a train to a far off city to teach an investigator and we were able to chat a bit about how life's going and about the mission (he was in the MTC with me). I got a little trunky again talking with him, but then I whipped myself back into shape and things are going strong again!





Love you all!
Elder Liechty

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