All Your Base Are Belong To Us...

This week is moving along nicely. I had an interesting experience with a couple of pastors though.

So this week I got told that I am going to hell, and dragging everyone else around me down too. It was actually kind of funny. I thought for sure I would get all upset when it happened, but it ended up being a nice contrast.

There is an investigator named Francoise (not real name) who knows that our church is true. But there is a pastor Etienne and a pastor Steven who belong to her old church who keep showing up and telling her that she needs to come back to their church. She isn't though. She knows that our church is true.

Anyways, we show up one day to talk to Francoise about stuff, and pastor Steven laughed and said something along the lines of "If you give me a million cFa, I will join your church." Elder Tingey totally chatiè'd him (chastised in broken franglais) by quoting the scripture "seek ye first the kingdom of God." Pastor Steven got all emberassed and was about to walk away when pastor Etienne showed up and started getting in our faces. Then pastor Steven tag teamed with him and yelled loud and clear that we are of the devil, we are preaching the devil's doctrine and that we need to go back home and fix our gospel. 

I didn't say anything. To be honest, it was kind of pathetic. I mean, there are differences between our two churches, but we don't march up into people's faces and tell them they are of the devil. The only thing I could think about was the reference Romans 1:16 "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ." And so, we just stood there for 30 minutes and let them tell us that we are evil. I figured it wasn't worth arguing, despite the fact that they were saying plenty of things that are not true. So Elder Tingey and I just stood there.

The situation reminded Elder Tingey of something a Congolese Elder told him (his name was Elder Nsimba, and he was the man). Elder Nsimba said that "People only throw rocks at a mango tree if there is good fruit." So the only reason people were bashing us is because we have good fruit! Just like it says in the scriptures, "Ye shall know them by their fruits."

They packed up and left, and then we talked to Francoise for a minute, and then set up another rendezvous with her. We then went back later and Etienne was there. He kind of looked dumbfounded. We walked in and sat down, and right before we started, Etienne ran off. We spoke with Francoise and had a really awesome rendezvous. The Spirit was super strong, and she is getting closer to baptism. Once again, "Ye shall know them by their fruits."

Please note that I did not mention any denomination that these two belong to. This was on purpose. We as missionaries do not seek to bash another man's form of worship. We don't even enforce ours on other people. We invite others to come unto Christ by receiving His restored Gospel. We do not with to diminish any other man's form of worship, and believe that every man should worship as far as his own conscious will allow. 

So that's it for this week. Je vous aime!

- Elder LaFleur