Teaching the Gospel

It was Thursday and I said to Sis. van Hoff, "There is nothing to write about in the blog this week.  I might skip it until next weekend."  It had been a fairly routine week with nothing special happening.

Well, Thursday evening things changed.  Unbeknownst to me, Sis. van Hoff had prayed to have experiences using her German in conversation.  After work we were walking to the dry cleaners to pick up a pair of pants.  As we walked down the street, I saw a woman on the opposite side step off the curb to cross the street.  We had passed her, when suddenly I heard her call out.  I understood enough that she wanted to speak to us and turned around to ask her what she needed.

She began to tell us about the character and make up of God.  That she reads the scriptures and has studied them for 40 years.  I understood about 15% of what she said.  Sis. van Hoff, however, understood nearly all.  In fact, she was responding back to her questions and comments.  I heard the woman say that God and Jesus were spirits and began to respond by saying that "We believe that God..."   She cut me off, signaling that she didn't want to know what I believed.

We think she was a bit crazy.  After about 15 minutes of talking to us, two women came across the street, called out to her, and then came over.  As they smiled at us, one put her arm around the woman we were talking to and lovingly guided her away.  

We can't really say that this was a true missionary opportunity, but we can definitely said it was a excellent German speaking opportunity and Sis. van Hoff shined.

Friday we had another unique experience.  We mentioned in last week's blog about an investigator that our sister missionaries have been teaching.  Over the past several weeks I have grown close to him.  My involvement has been more to help him and support him through the trials and tribulations he is experiencing.  Anyway, Friday afternoon he called me and wanted to meet.  I asked if he would also see the sister missionaries.  He agreed, but sounded reluctant to meet at our place or at the church.  We agreed to meet at a park.

Answers are in green.

Right after work, we picked up the sister missionaries and scurried over to the park.  It was a beautiful day.  We met him and found a place where we could have a little privacy.  I thought it a little unusual place for a missionary discussion, so I took this picture.  The lesson went very well. 

As he was being taught, the sky began to darken.  By the time we got back and parked the car, heavy drops of rain came pouring down.  Sure glad the Lord saw fit to hold off the rain until then.

On a different note, we are taking every free moment to study for our written driver's license test.  We bought a program that has the test questions on it.  There are over 1,000 questions and each question is worth 2-5 points.  On the real test, there are 30 questions and you can only miss 9 points and still pass.  Most of the questions have a picture or just a question. For the multiple choice questions, either one, two, or all three answers are correct -- and you get no hint about how many. There are some questions that have a video.  You can watch the videos up to 5 times before answering the question.  The question is not visible until you have finished watching the video.  Here is an example video.  Watch driving test video.

We had one question this morning where it showed a winter street with snow falling and snow built up along the side of the road.  We watched the video a few times and then viewed the question, assuming it was going to be about driving carefully because you might skid.  It asked about the green car.  We never saw the green car until we looked more closely at the final picture of the video.  It was on a side street mostly hidden behind a bush covered in snow.  It's going to be a hard test to pass.

We love you all.  You are in our prayers.