28 April 2014

Sister S. and I went to Guimaras today to visit with Elder and Sister Taylor, the other geezer missionaries in the Iloilo Mission. They are from Salem, Oregon. We met them at the Ortiz Warf, after being lost for a while in Iloilo. We rode a pump boat across the straight and went around the island a bit, sight seeing. We stopped at he Mango Festival and bought a few and had a fresh mango drink. It was great.

Parked at the mango festival.

 

Pump boat. They load about 50 people and take them to the far island in this picture, around the point. It costs about 40 pesos each. The men who work on the boat run around the outriggers and help people on and off the boat. The engine vibrated so hard that my nose itched all the way across. On the way back, we sat a little further forward.    

I have been reading the Book of Mormon. I started again three days ago after reading about Elder Clayton Christensen of he Seventy. Michael and Emily and the fam gave me a book for Christmas by him and I really liked the book. It is called, The Power of Everyday Missionaries. I started following him a bit. He is something of a scholar and  has written about his experience with the Book of Mormon. I am sharing it here: 

"I had been given a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University in England. After I had lived there for a few weeks, far away from the supportive environment in which I had been raised, it became clear that adhering to Mormonism in that environment was going to be very inconvenient. In fact, doing the sorts of things I described in the first part of this essay within the Mormon congregation in Oxford would preclude my participation in many of the things that had made Oxford such a rich experience for prior recipients of my scholarship. I decided, as a result, that the time had come for me to learn for certain and for myself whether Mormonism was true. 

I had read the Book of Mormon before – seven times, to be exact. But in each of those instances I had read it by assignment – from my parents or a teacher – and my objective in reading it was to finish the book. This time, however, my objective was to find out if it was a true book or a fabrication. Accordingly, I reserved the time from 11:00 until midnight, every night, to read the Book of Mormon next to the fireplace in my chilly room at the Queen’s College. I began each of those sessions by kneeling in verbal prayer. I told God, every night, that I was reading this to know if it was His truth. I told Him that I needed an answer to this question – because if it was not true I did not want to waste my time with this church and would search for something else. But if it was true, then I promised that I would devote my life to following its teachings, and to helping others do the same. 

I then would sit in the chair and read a page in the Book of Mormon. I would stop at the bottom of the page and think about it. I would ask myself what the material on that page meant for the way I needed to conduct my life. I would then get on my knees and pray aloud again, asking the Lord to tell me if the book was true. I would then get back in the chair, turn the page, and repeat the process, for the remainder of the hour. I did this every evening.
 
After I had done this for several weeks, one evening in October, 1975, as I sat in the chair and opened the book following my prayer, I felt a marvelous spirit come into the room and envelop my body. I had never before felt such an intense feeling of peace and love. I started to cry, and did not want to stop. I knew then, from a source of understanding more powerful than anything I had ever felt in my life, that the book I was holding in my hands was true. It was hard to see through the tears. But as I opened it and began again to read, I saw in the words of the book a clarity and magnitude of God’s plan for us that I had never conceived before. The spirit stayed with me for that entire hour. And each night thereafter, as I prayed and then sat in that chair with the Book of Mormon, that same spirit returned. It changed my heart and my life forever.

It was as if I had been looking out as far as I could see toward the horizon, and had been quite satisfied that I could see everything that there was to see. When I undertook to read the Book of Mormon in that manner, however, I discovered that so much more beauty and truth about who we are and what God has in store for us, lies beyond that old horizon. I did not know what I did not know.

I love to go back to Oxford. As the beautiful, historic home of the world’s oldest university, the town is filled with students and tourists. To me, however, it is a sacred place. It is there that I learned that the fundamental message of the Book of Mormon is in fact true – that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. It is there that I learned that God is indeed my Father in Heaven. I am His son. He loves me, and even knows my name. And I learned that Joseph Smith, the man who translated the Book of Mormon and organized the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was a prophet of God in the same sense that Peter and Moses were prophets. I love to return to Oxford to remember the beautiful, powerful spirit that came to my heart and conveyed these messages to me." (Christensen, Clayton M., Mormon Scholars Testify.org, December 2009)

I have copied, sort of, Elder Christensen's methods. I kneel and pray and read, making notes at the end of pages regarding the things I learn and feel are pertinent to my life. I read for an hour and pray again, asking for an undeniable, unforgettable, revelation from the Spirit that the book is true. It is a little redundant, because I have come to know it is true. I hope that I am not offending the Lord, but I want this and hope that He will manifest it to me. If not, well, I have had some revelations from reading the pages that mean a lot to me. Maybe that is my answer and it is not going to be a breast pounding experience. Reading through his description, I probably need to pray more. Maybe if I bug the Lord at the end of every page, He will just say,"Okay, Okay, It is true . . .go to bed."

Pics from the day: Pump boat captain, salty dude. . .

 Iloilo skyline with a few lines in the way of my lens.

 Pump boat rounding the point out front of us.

I got some good ideas from Elder Taylor. It was a fun, tiring day. Tomorrow we have district meetings and I think we are going with the Elders to teach. Looking forward to a busy day.