"I suppose that since most of our hurts come from relationships, so will our healing..." WM Paul Young





"Only after one experiences the incredible pain of loss, can he appreciate the unbelievable joy of restoration"

Larry Reimer

Monday, February 19, 2007

Brief update

Just thought I’d better put something up here since it’s been a week again. I can’t let anyone get the idea that I’ve forgotten about my blog; and I certainly can’t let anyone think they can forget about it because I’m not doing my part!!!

This week has been pretty “normal.” Classes started at the beginning of the week and somehow I managed to make it to all of mine. I’m still hoping that I’ll get my schedule soon. Yes, that’s correct; I don’t have my correct and complete schedule yet and we’re a week into classes. This adds a few extra challenges. The week has gone really well.

Together with the 250 new students coming and a new term beginning, there are some changes in church life with service times being changed. Growing pains. It really is amazing how the changes the church has gone through in the last couple of months have not caused any major problems. There have been a number of changes in staff positions with a couple new people starting and many key existing staff changing roles. These are things that could throw many churches into turmoil yet they’ve happened virtually without a glitch.

I got an interesting phone call last night. As you recall, late last year I put a post up here about some conversations I had had with a couple of Mormons…well, those two have left but they gave my name and phone number to a couple of new ones that came in. These new ones called me and wanted to meet. I agreed under the condition that we openly and freely discuss who Jesus is, who Joseph smith (their founder) was, the completeness and accuracy of the Bible and the accuracy of the book of Mormon. I told them that there are things in the Bible that Mormons do not believe and there are things in the book of Mormon that are incorrect. If they were willing to discuss this in an open manner, I would meet with them. Being keen to do the mission work they came for, the new men agreed. I even told them that the last ones had cut off contact with me because I was not willing to convert to Mormonism and I had raised too many issues they didn’t know how to deal with. I was somewhat surprised at the phone call, more surprised that they would agree to these terms, and even more surprised when we met today and they followed through with it. Then the real shock came when they asked if we could meet again! So I have another meeting set up with them in which they want to share more from the book of Mormon and I told them before I’m willing to discuss much about the book, they’ll have to come to me with some sort of evidence that it can be trusted. They handled themselves very well considering they could not follow their trained routine in the presentation; and as is easily done with most cults, they were found tripping over their own words, reading some passages from the Bible that were contrary to their own beliefs and admitting what the Bible says in those verses. Now the issue comes with the fact that they choose to believe something else anyways. At least they’ve heard some more truth and have said with their own mouths – even if they still deny it. I’m not sure of the details of the next meeting but I’ll keep praying about it and I know as long as I’m willing, God will guide me and make sure His truth and glory is revealed as we discuss things.

Now that this has become longer than a short post, hope you all enjoy and it’s time to sign off.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well I just think it is great what you are doing and as long as you plant the seed, God will do the rest. I have talked to some JW's in the past and tried to create doubt in their minds about their form of religion, It works quite well. When they start to doubt their own way, they are more inclined to be open to another.

Karen said...

Larry, I've been really curious to hear how the next meeting went... if you've had it already...

karen