2.06.2014

Mormons and cell phones

I am very pleased to say that this morning included Krispy Kreme. I don't think there have ever been seven more delighted Americans in Mexico. Two ladies (sisters) came to the class--I had personally hoped that some of the people we invited would have come, but they didn't--and one sister, who has apparently been pretty indifferent to the gospel, went home and started asking her sister about the Bible. Awesome. We had used the creation story to practice ordinal numbers and then recounted each day of creation as a vocabulary review.

This afternoon we went back out to the neighborhood where we had started a gospel distribution yesterday. We made some more good contacts; my group only got to three houses, because we had been talking so much. But I got to share my testimony with one man, and--praise God--I was able to defuse some hostility from a lady. They did promise that they'd read the Gospel of John we gave them. This particular neighborhood is very exciting; it just seems like there's some openness to the Bible there. Please continue to pray that God would break down walls between people.

Some friends from CPD invited us over this evening for dinner, and they ended up sharing their testimonies. I had heard part of their testimony a couple of weeks ago, but I'm glad I got to hear more.  The couple had left Mexico to move to Canada. The day after they arrived, they met a couple from Mexico who gave them a cell phone, and they started to charge it. That evening, in the hotel room, they started talking about God for the first time, and they prayed for the first time--genuinely talking to God rather than just reciting a prayer. They told Him that, because He had provided everything for them, He must love them, and that they wanted to know Him, even though He was very far away. Not much later, the cell phone buzzed with a text message that said, "I love you, and I am not as far away as you think." Dumbfounded, they went downstairs to the hotel pay phone and called the number from which they had received the text, to find that it did not exist. They didn't sleep much that night. The next day they went walking around the city, looking for a church, and they ran into some Mormons. "Are you looking for a church?" the Mormons asked. "Yes," they replied, "but we don't speak English." The Mormons said, "That's okay, we speak Spanish."

My friends met Christ in the Mormon church. They attended for two years, because they so needed the sense of community, but they were always bothered by the way the Mormons, who professed to believe in Jesus, would stand up and give testimonies about how thankful they were for Joseph Smith. When my friends came back to Mexico, they tried to go to a Mormon church, but it just wasn't right. Eventually they ran into a missionary who helped them to understand the Bible correctly, and they joined CPD and were re-baptized in that church, as a testimony to others.

Our team was so encouraged to hear their testimonies tonight. The testimonies remind me that God is always working, cannot be stopped, even in enemy territory. It was incredible.

Tomorrow is a prayer walking day. We're starting in San Bernardo and Medina, then heading to Sierra Gorda to pray over the city, then back to the house for lunch, then out to a colonia about an hour away to pray there, then back for dinner, then devotional and debriefing, then to the CPD prayer meeting. It is going to be a very long day. Please pray for our endurance. We were all punch drunk from exhaustion tonight; we'll need all the energy we can get for tomorrow. Please continue to pray for open doors here. Pray that the Gospels of John in all of these houses would bear fruit--that people would actually read them, maybe for the first time ever.

The lady I talked to this morning tried to share a tract with me about the Virgin of Guadalupe. She said over and over that the Virgin of Guadalupe is the Queen of Mexico. It sounds like something out of Jeremiah, with the women worshiping the Queen of Heaven. Please pray for salvation and release from idols.

Thank you for praying!

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