Elder Guymon's Awesome Adriatic Adventures: Week 17

May 25, 2015

So to begin I'd like to describe something that I believe is pretty unique to my mission, we have a whole lot of Muslims here but we also have a pretty good amount of Christians so street contacting is actually pretty tricky. The best is when someone has a cross on or something because then you know and it's easy but usually you aren't totally sure, and the problem is that if you talk about Jesus Christ and it's a Muslim they are pretty much guaranteed to just walk straight away from you, but if you ask a Christian if they want to talk about Jesus Christ they will almost always stay! There is definitely a prayer for the gift of discernment that is said in your heart when you are talking to people! But you learn to ask questions like, do you believe in God and have you read the bible and usually based on their language from that you can get it because Muslims always use Zoti to talk about God. You can even tell what religion members of the church used to be based on the words they use to talk about Christ and God because for Christians Zoti (the Lord) is Christ usually but for Muslims it's God! I have been asking people if they have noticed more success with one group or the other but it seems like no one really notices one group as more accepting than the other.
Also, this week I talked to this Muslim who was a semi pro kickboxer in America and his brother was even better than him but his brother is a part of ISIS now (whoopsies). Apparently that's not too uncommon here.

Also, I don't know if I have talked about this but there are a ton of Gypsies here! Like a lot, I really don't understand how they stay sustained because it really just seems to me that they don't do anything idk. Also one of the big things people do for work here is dig through trash for recycling! Like all over the city you see people with bikes and carts loaded up with bottles and stuff and they just spend all day digging through the trash! Very different here honestly!

Something I'm learning as a missionary is how important a testimony of the Book of Mormon. The thing is all you need to do to know whether it's true is to read and pray which it's kinda too bad that so many people don't do it. I definitely know that Satan pushes people pretty hard not to read it because we all have time but some how every time we meet with people they still haven't read! Like people that don't have a job "don't have time" to read the Book of Mormon! It's the best truth of their life staring at them in the face!!!

A cool experience I had this week is we were teaching an investigator (Kurt, the poet) and we were teaching the word of wisdom and he had a pretty bad problem with cigarettes and when we said that it's a commandment not to smoke them he just got up and threw them in the trash - just like that!! it was way awesome and super spiritual!

Also Faton passed his baptismal interview and is getting baptized on Saturday!!! The day before we were having a lesson with him just talking about how everything would go and we found out that he didn't believe in Christ as the "literal" son of God. Like he believed his father was Joseph and that Jesus like elevated to become the son of God, idk he just understands things differently and he was struggling with it for a bit and we were just like listen do you believe the BoM and he said ya and we were like ok well the doctrine is that Christ is the literal son of God that he doesn't have an earthy father and he was like alright I believe you! Wow that was a spiritual thing for me! This guy totally believed me on what I said about doctrine! Holy cow!!

We also had companionship inventory and I talked about how I should be talking more and we had been getting trained on how the trainers should talk less too - so Verushi has been doing a lot better at giving me opportunities to talk and holy cow I have felt the spirit so much more!! Previously there were some lessons where honestly I kinda brooded because he would only let me talk at the very end if that but now that I actually am getting to bear my testimony more to these people the lessons have been so much more spiritual for me and I have been enjoying the work much more which is awesome! Hopefully we can keep it up!!

I'm not going to lie though I still feel pretty homesick a lot which sucks! Definitely hoping that the longer I'm here that goes away because I still get it pretty bad every now and then and I know that it's probably always going to sort of be there but man I don't want two years of dealing with that crap!!!

I did get my first package this week though which was awesome!! That thing was loaded holy cow!! Thank you so much family! Trust me it is not going to go to waste! I'm not going to lie though, the part that killed me was Grace's picture that she drew for me... holy cow, I can not hold it together thinking about her, it sucks!!

I love you all and I think about you all the time! Hope all is doing well and you stay awesome!

Enjoy that beautiful Idaho weather!!