July 4th

This last week was pretty rough missionary work wise. We've been working pretty hard, but haven't gotten any breaks. We knocked on this lady's door on Tuesday, gave her a Book of Mormon and set up a return appointment for Friday, then on Friday, there was a note on the door telling us that she wasn't interested anymore. Oh well. Other thing that happened was on Wednesday was our mission's temple trip, well just the group that was going to the St. Louis temple, the OKC temple group and the KC temple group already went at different times. So we got to go to St. Louis and go to the temple. Then they took a group picture outside the front of the temple and I was still in the Celestial room so that was kinda awkward. Saturday night, we talked to this guy in our apartment complex who we've invited to church a couple of times and we also met one of his friends who was asking us who we were and what church we went to. We had a really good conversation with him. He doesn't really believe in religions, he's more of a personal relationship with God type of guy. So I told him why we need the church and what the purpose of commandments are in a way that he understood because I've had a lot of the same questions that he has about religions and stuff. Anyways, we gave him and his friend each a Book of Mormon and then they said they would come to church the next morning (which they didn't) and the guy asked us what our greatest doubts were about our religion. Of course my companion gave the typical: "I have no doubts" canned missionary answer,  but I felt like this guy would appreciate a real response so I just told him a lot of the time I sit back and think to myself that this whole religion and church is way crazy and sometimes I wonder if it really is true, but then I just think to myself that: worst comes to worst, this is a fantastic Christian community who actually act on their faith and who help each other in more ways than any other church I've encountered, and best comes to best, Joseph Smith really did see the Father and the Son and this really is everything that he said it is. So the guy really appreciated that and he even shook my hand after I said it. So we'll see where that goes with those two guys. They're about our age so we'd probably end up handing them over to the YSA anyways. They were drinking that night so we assumed that that was the reason they didn't show up to church the next morning. Well that's about all that happened. Happy Fourth of July. We live in the greatest country in the world.

Elder Naegle