In my third area we were teaching this one sister and things were going pretty well...until we found out she was meeting with missionaries from the Jehovah Witnesses too. We found this out because one day when we showed up for our scheduled appointment with her, the JW's arrived 2 seconds after us for an unscheduled appointment with her. Talk about awkward.
The lady answered the door but didn't let us in. She didn't let them in either so it was all good. My companion at the time liked to bible bash (moron) so he started getting into with the JW's. I had a moment of weakness though and responded to one of their "attacks." They had said that Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost were all one person. They were very snarky and condescending about it and I couldn't help myself.
I got very smart with them and did not use my nice missionary voice. I read the account of Jesus's baptism from the New Testament and pointed out that we had: 1. Jesus in the water, 2. the voice of God coming from heaven, and 3. the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove. I held a finger with each person as they were mentioned and then looked at my hand in "shock" afterwards ("Oh my, would you look at that, three separate beings!"). I then also counted each of my fingers for them in a very...well, what's a good term for I treated them like they were a bunch of naive little children.
Looking back on that day I'm not super proud of my actions and know that is not how the Savior would have acted. The lady we were teaching did let us in that day and not the Jehovah Witnesses so that's one thing, but she didn't end up getting baptized at that time either. I hope my actions did not impede someone from being able to take advantage of the rich blessings of the gospel.
Moral of the story for current or future missionaries: the Lord wants us to speak boldly of his gospel and preach repentance with love, not bible bash and cause contention with bad attitudes.
After all, it was a sweet story.
ReplyDeleteAmen to this. There are few things I did right on my mission (this is not fake humility…), but thanks to my trainer I did learn how to handle the bashing moments. Here’s how they took place: the moment you could tell a bash was coming on (those who’ve been there know that precise moment), I would close my scriptures, smile, and say something like: “at this moment we could start flinging scriptures at each other to prove the other one wrong. But rather than doing that, would you join me in prayer?” Then I made sure that during prayer I found common ground, asked for common blessings, and ask that we’ll each be faithful to the Spirit, and to respond as the Spirit guides. If it was a JW, I always made sure to end the prayer in the name of the Great Jehovah, which was a wonderful show of solidarity. Frankly, we may disagree on finer points of doctrine, but in action and practicality, we share much of the gospel. The spirit that follows this is undeniably strong.
ReplyDelete--LDS Sunday School Teacher