This week was a great one! We had a really busy one with a lot of meetings! We were able to listen to Elder Renlund and his wife from the seventy—they came and spoke to us. It was a very uplifting experience! I learned a lot from his talk. He talked on faith and true conversion. My favorite part of it was when he said that the Prophet personally asked Him to tell us that he is so thankful for our service and commitment and that He loves us more then we could know. That hit home for me! It was a great meeting! We did that on Halloween. Halloween as a missionary isn't very fun--we didn't really do anything but work.
On Halloween night, I was lucky enough to interview an investigator in my district for baptism. It was a cool experience. I thought it went well and he passed! His name was Arthur Wang. He is from China. He had a cool story and a strong testimony of the church. He said that it only makes sense that God would still give us prophets and apostles!
We have been doing a lot of knocking on doors lately. We have had a hard time finding new investigators, but we had a couple awesome experiences that came from all the door knocking!
We found a lady, her name is Diana. We knocked her door, she answered and after giving her the whole spill about who we are, she said, yeah I know your church. I am actually reading the Book Of Mormon right now! We were blown away! She has been reading it for a while. It turns out that her sister up north just got baptized and she went up there and the missionaries met her and challenged her to read the Book of Mormon. Pretty cool that Heavenly Father has prepared her for us! We have an appointment this week with her; we will see how it goes!
Another cool experience we had this week was from tracting. We went up to a really rich part of town in Radford. After about an hour into it, we knocked on a door and a super nice family answered and invited us in. They had eight kids and called us the Mormons and sat us down. They were being super nice and bringing us drinks and candy and homemade goodies, and then suddenly everyone pretty much disappeared. It was just Elder Williams and I and the father of the house, named Don. We were sitting at the table and the first thing he said was, “Listen, you’re not going to convert me, but I’m going to convert you.” Elder Williams and I looked at each other and started laughing and we said good luck! We went on and he is super Catholic. He just started firing off reasons why we were wrong and how our church isn't right. We did our best to keep it under control and we stuck to our testimonies and continued to bare them to him. After about an hour of this, we were getting nowhere, I thought. We were running out of time and we were all a little upset. I looked Don in the eyes and somehow, as bold as I could, told Him that I knew His church was not true. Then I told Him that Jesus Christ has restored the true church back to the earth and if he ever wanted to learn about it, he knows where to find us. We left after that and were pretty torn up. I felt bad that I may have been rude and judgmental. We went on with our day and shook it off. The very next morning we received a text from the church in SLC. It was a media referral from someone in our area that got online at Mormon.org and requested the missionaries to come visit. We got the text and it turned out to be Don, the guy we saw the day before. So we called the number from the media referral and I talked to him on the phone. He said, “I would like for you missionaries to come back by and give me a Book of Mormon so I can read it.” What a change of heart?!? We have an appointment to go back this weekend. I guess our testimonies hopefully got through to him!
Marcus Cunningham is still in a coma; we’re waiting to hear more about his condition. Please keep praying for him!
The Vaught Family is still doing awesome! Josh, one of the sons, is going to be baptized on the 16th of November. We’re still working on Sister Vaught's husband. I hope he will see his son get baptized soon and want the same for himself!
It’s been exciting here! I have been having so much fun and learning so much still about the Gospel and about the work! I know this church is true!!! I love you all and Keep the Faith!!
-Elder Bingham
