"Hey Everyone! Hope everyone is doing fine. We had a very interesting week. Rough but at the same time very rewarding."
"Let me start out by explaining what happened to us this last Wednesday. We had nothing to do, no one to see, so we decided to find more people to teach. So after we get done with all our preparation stuff we head out and start knocking some doors. We went out to Budd Lake, where there are some cool houses to go knocking. We start out on this one street, we are going along and we get to this one door and this Hispanic lady answers the door. We are relieved because usually they are very humble people. So we get talking to her. Turns out she is a born again. "OK so this isn't bad," I thought. Then her neighbor next door sees that we are talking to her and decides to interrupt our conversation and tells us to leave her alone. Well we ignored her and she still is asking us to leave. So we turn and start talking to her. She decided to come on over the other side of the fence and confront us on how we don't need the Book of Mormon. We were trying our best to stay calm and be Christ like. Then she nicely tells us we are going to hell. In the scriptures, Christ teaches us to judge no man. So we called her out on it, and she said she could do that because she uses the Bible. Once again we told her she doesn't understand the scriptures (Mormon 9:7-9). My companion looks at her and sweetly says "I cannot believe a disciple of Christ told us we were going to hell." Needless to say we told her she needed to read for herself if she wanted more blessings in her life. Then she tells us to put the Book of Mormon away and read the bible, even after telling her we do every day. In the end we asked her if she can pray for us."
"The very next door we get to, they tell us to come back later that week which we did, and we had a very good conversation, and lesson with them. They are Catholic, and are so nice. Then we found a family a few more houses down who used to meet with the missionaries in the Bronx. It was nice to see the blessings come from the Lord after our "Trial of Faith." At the end of the day we decided to stop by a less active that works at Duncan Donuts. She wasn't there, but we ended up talking to another family who had other family members meet with the missionaries. They had a lot of good questions about the Plan of Salvation. We have yet to meet with them again. It's amazing how we are led by the Spirit, without even realizing it."
"Thursday I had another really cool experience. We went on exchanges with one of our District Leaders, his name is Elder Consuli from Brazil, a place called Rio. We had planned to go knocking and go to some really good appointments. Well a few appointments canceled so it turned into a lot of knocking, which is totally cool with me. I LOVE knocking doors. Well we get a few really good potentials who told us to come back, and we've been out for about 2 1/2 hours. We had planned to go knock some other streets, so we were standing at the car. I felt like we should knock this one street that connected with the one we were already on, but it wasn't one we planned on. We decided to knock the doors zig-zag across the street (by the way these house are HUGE). The second door we knocked on, this girl answers the door. She was way cool. She is going through some hard times and doesn't know why, we then told her we felt impressed to knock on her door. We talked for about 30 mins about Christ and His atonement. I think she said she was 23, but she was really nice, and said she was going to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. She was the only one who answered their door on that street. CRAZY!!! Those experiences are so cool to have."
"We taught Christine later that night and set a firm date with her to be baptized, which is actually this Saturday!!! She is so excited to be baptized. So even though people have been dropping us like crazy we are seeing success with some of our investigators."
"Friday we went to end our exchange and were coming back home from doing so. Elder Clark was really hungry so we decided to stop by Quick Chek to get a sandwich. And you will never believe what happened next. My comp is waiting for his sandwich to be done and some guy who works there comes up to him and asks him if we were from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He told him "Ya we are missionaries from that church," then other guy was like,"Are you serious?" Again he says ya. Then he told us he wanted to join our church. He mentioned he had some really good friends who were members and wanted to join. How INSANE is that? This was something we have been working on this transfer. President Bahr told us about President Hinckley's promise to missionaries. If they plead with the Lord to loosen their tongues, people will come up to you and will ask to be baptized. It may have meant ones we teach, but this guy was something else, we didn't even know him! We got his information and are going back this Saturday." "That I believe is an answer to my prayers as well as the prayers of my family. Remember mom, you told me that you guys were going to be praying for me , and look what happens 4 days later. God does hear and answer our prayers. That's something I've always had a testimony of, and it just keeps building stronger."
"Enos lays it out perfectly how we should pray if we want answers to our prayers. Ponder, Kneel down, Pray Vocally until the Lord knows you are serious. If we do not plead with the Lord, then how sincere are we when we pray? Are we praying for good things? Every time I have prayed begging the Lord for things to happen it has always been the very next day or within the week to where he answers my prayer. Read Enos and see what he does. I know some of you are praying for specific blessings. You gotta be on your knees pleading with Him. Try it out."
"Well the rest of the week we had a lot of people tell us we do not need the Book of Mormon. I feel like Nephi and Lehi in the Book of Helaman, where no one would listen to them, even though the people they were trying to teach were confounded. Oh well what can you do? Just keep moving forward there is no turning back. As long as we are going up, that's all that God cares about. I'm so grateful to have a powerful testimony of this Gospel, to which no man can take away. I Love you all and hope everyone is doing well."
-Elder Tyler Brox
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