Sunday - Tuesday

(my apologies if the blog is a mess... I have signed in several times and it hasn't looked right once, so I'm going to post & pray! that should work!)

Yeowza! What a full couple of days. It will be interesting to see how much I'm able to post. I'm dividing my time between the home of my lovely hosts, the local Christian church, and a College coffee house.

The main thing right now is that we are requesting prayers for the efforts of the Christian missionaries, pastors, congregation, and teams from here and elsewhere. Any prayer notes that come in are posted on the doorposts for encouragement to the teams.

So far, we are feeding about 40 people at each meal. It's a good thing there are ex-LDS in the congregation who are used to feeding small armies! Awesome!

We have mostly been reviewing terminology differences between Mormonism and Christianity - grace, God, Jesus, salvation, exaltation - the basics, that are ALL different. The main thing to emphasize is that these Christians love love love this people group. They are so excited about sharing the Good News that life isn't about fitting into a pre-planned mold! ...That living for Christ isn't based on what you can do, it's what He does through you.

How do you tell the LDS that the Christians are here because they LOVE them, NOT because they hate them and want to persecute them as they've been raised to believe?! If they only knew how thrilled these people woud be if a group of 'em walked into dinner time and said, "Hi!"
=)

SO... we prepare, we worship, we sing. We set our minds on the example of Jesus and how He reached people. We know that the weight of the "laws and ordinances of the (LDS) gospel" is too much to bear along with the weight of the law of God... we prepare to be able to articulate that and offer the answer - Jesus... who bore it all... on the cross... once and for all.

The hardest thing for the exLDS converts to deal with, I think, is that this time last year, they were on the other side of the fence - participating in Pageant, working for the pageant, and all the time yearning for answers to their questions about the LDS church. So, to them, these Christian groups may still look like marauding persecutors, and this is a great paradigm shift to see how excited the Christians are to meet them, know them, and embrace them in the family of Christ. They still have to live in the community after it's all over, so please lift them up in prayer! It's hard to tell them "it's all worth it" right now, but... it is!

Tomorrow we head for Salt Lake Temple Square for a field trip out of this beautiful, sleepy little town in the valley of the Mountains of Utah.

Blessings, all! Please pray! The efforts to teach, transport, entertain, house, and feed these groups is mighty, but very fun!