The Rugby Player

 This is a great story my brother sent to me.

I served my mission in Birmingham, England. We found that one of the hardest things for new missionaries to do is to walk up to someone on the street and start talking to them about their beliefs. This was hard for several reasons. For starters, most people aren’t comfortable striking up a conversation with a complete stranger, especially one so personal as religion. This is far out our natural comfort zones. Secondly, in England, religion and political beliefs are seen as personal (and touchy) subjects. People don’t like to talk about them period, let a lone with a stranger from a foreign land, standing between them and their destination. It takes quite a while for missionaries to get used to “street contacting” as we called it and can be very frustrating. We found the only way to get used to it is to do it, and to do it often.
One time I was training a new missionary from the small town of Sugar City, Idaho. He was a timid farm boy who had never been to a big city in his life. Suddenly he found himself in Cardiff, Wales, a city of close to 400,000 people. He was shell-shocked. Each day we’d go to the city center and contact people in the busy streets. I went about stopping people, getting appointments and passing along our information. As the hours passed I kept my eye on my companion (who was standing about 40 feet away) and noticed that for every 20 people I stopped he would MAYBE try and stop one. Most of the time he just looked right through people, too afraid to talk, almost like he was waiting for someone to come and mug him.
We had a talk one morning about his fear of contacting people in the streets. He told me he get’s anxious and nervous at the thought of trying to stop someone and just lets him or her walk by. “Let’s play a game,” I said. “The next time you or I see someone and think “Man, I WOULD NOT want to talk to them.” we have to stop whatever we’re doing and go talk to that person.” My companion thought for a minute and reluctantly agreed. As we walked to the city center that day to contact people I made a conscious effort to talk to every weird person I saw. I wasn’t afraid of talking to the weirdo’s, in fact; they were my favorite people to stop because they always said crazy things that lightened up my day. But I made it look like I was playing our little game so he would join in. As we arrived in the city center we started contacting. All of a sudden I saw this HUGE 6’3’’ professional rugby player walking towards us. He had a set of gold teeth and tattoos all over his bulging biceps, which were the size of my thighs. It was the first time in months I thought, “Man, I WOULD NOT want to talk to them.” I looked over at my companion and started laughing because I could tell that he saw him too AND he saw him first. He looked at me. I smiled. He looked at the man, then back at me. I gave him the thumbs up and pointed at the man and nodded. My companion looked like a solider about to storm the beaches of Normandy without a gun. I could see the lump in his throat as he slowly trudged towards the man. To my surprise, the man stopped and listened to him! I watched for a few minutes then continued contacting people. 10 minutes turned into 20, which turned into 40. Finally the two parted ways and my companion ran over to me with a smile like I have never seen. “That was a professional rugby player and he wants us to come teach him!” he squealed like a little girl. We went and visited the man later that week and every week for the next five months. He eventually joined our church and was baptized. I still stay in touch with that man to this day and he has become one of my closest friends that I met during my time in the United Kingdom.

Good Company

In every mission the missionaries are issued a Preparation Day or as many call it a "P-Day". It is one day of the week when the missionaries can take a break from missionary service and spend some personal time taking care of errands such as writing letters home, buying groceries, playing sports, site seeing or any other appropriate activity. I arrived in the mission field straight out of the training center and my Portuguese was still very weak, I could not communicate with anybody. I had been in the city of Salvador for only a couple of days and my first official P-Day had arrived. That morning my companion had said something to me but I had no idea what he was saying. I felt so down and alone because I was on a different continent away from all my friends and family. People were speaking in a language I couldn't understand and I stuck out like a sore thumb and was embarrassed I couldn't understand anyone. We left our home that day and made our way to wherever we were going. We walked through the ghetto until we made our way to a house. We went inside and the family inside started to smile while cheering and greeting the missionaries I was with and then greeting me. I saw pictures of LDS temples on their walls as well as pictures of Jesus Christ and realized we were in the home of some members. They then started to pull food and meat out of their fridge as they prepared the grill, I quickly realized we were there to eat lunch and have a BBQ. Normally I would have been excited to have been in a social situation like that but when I was unable to understand 99% of the words that were being said I quickly felt uncomfortable and worried what these people would think of me for not knowing their language. We all sat around as the food was cooked and this family quickly started to engage in conversation with me. It was difficult for me to speak with them and instead of seeing it as an obstacle the family quickly realized I was still new and made me feel very welcome. They spend the afternoon communicating with me with the simple words I did now, hand actions and even pictures. Verbally we didn't connect much but through other creative ideas we did. It turned out to be an evening I enjoyed most on my mission. I meant some very cool people and ate the best BBQ of my life. It was from that point on I realized the Brazilian people in general were very kind and outgoing and cared about making other people feel welcome. It was from that point on I enjoyed the opportunity to meet new people in Brazil because I knew how kind and fun they could be to be around. I'm very grateful for that one family that took me in the first week and quickly became my friends. They taught me a very good lesson in accepting people for who they are, taking them in and treating them how you would like to be treated.

The Charitable Cobbler

In the mission I walked more on those streets in Brazil then I had anywhere else in my life. I knew I would be too so I left with 2 very strong pairs of shoes hoping that they would last. I wore my first pair and they lasted the entire first year. I figured at the rate I was going I would be able to finish out the last year of my mission on my last pair of shoes. Well the second pair wasn't quite as strong because about the last 2 months of my mission they started to fall apart and day by day they would get worse and worse. I kept telling myself I would be able to finish out in them and grind it out. Well I was down to just a few weeks before coming home and the rain season had hit. I would be out walking trying to strategically walk through the streets and sidewalks without walking in the water because of all the holes that had developed in my shoes. Eventually it got to the point I developed "Trench Foot" from all the water that had gotten into my shoes and contaminated my feet. I finally accepted losing and admitted it was time I buy some new shoes to wear for the last week so my feet condition didn't worsen. I then decided instead of buying more shoes (which would cost a lot) I would just try to cover them in super glue hoping that they would hold together the last little bit. We went to a corner market and we asked the owner if he thought the glue would hold the shoes together. He said that it would depend on how bad the condition of the shoes were. I slipped one of my foot exposing all the wear and tear and many holes in it and he couldn't believe it. He said the shoe was done for and no amount of glue would hold it together very long. He then paused and left to his humble home which was above his market and came down with a box. He handed it to me and told me to keep what was inside. I opened it up to see a nice clean pair of dress shoes much like the ones I was wearing only in much better condition. I was very speechless, the man wouldn't take no for an answer. I tried them on and they fit perfectly. I am very grateful to this day for the charity that the man showed me and made me want to pass it on. It is a very contagious feeling. I wore those shoes the rest of the week and every time I put them on it was a matter to treat other people well. I wore them home with pride the next week.

  

Come As You Are

In the mission field the number one thing that a missionary needs to rely on is the spirit and the missionaries spirituality. I knew that this was very important and to have this it was important that you followed the rules. One of those rules was listening only to church music or uplifting and wholesome music. Ever since my teenage years I had loved music and it was probably one of the hardest things for me to give up. In the field I would do my best to avoid that music, I knew that when I got home it would all still be there for me one day. I have always liked rock music and so one day when I was walking down a poor street in the Podunk town of Itabuna, Bahia I saw a kid I was friends with wearing a shirt that I just had to get a picture with. He would always stop and chat with us on the streets. I noticed he was wearing a t shirt from one of my favorite bands and the greatest grunge rock band from the 90's, Nirvana. I looked down at him and saw Kurt Cobains face covering his shirt. Even clear out on a different continent nearly 2 decades after the band had ended people still loved them just like I did.

English Class Gone Bad

 My cousin (who is a very good story teller by the way) served in Poland and sent this  story to me.

"Once upon a time, my companion and I were out inviting people to our English class. It was a cold January night in the city of Lublin, Poland. Elder Šorn, a German kid, and I had set up a whiteboard and written something about learning American English (or did we write a joke about getting a free green card?) so as to get people to come to our religion-related English class. Things were going well and we were meeting a lot of cool people.
Maybe 30-45 minutes into our white boarding session, we heard and saw a group of "hoolis" walking down the promenade. Hoolis were mainly soccer-obsessed riff raff who mainly spent their days drinking. We figured if we didn't pay any attention to them that they would leave us alone. They walked by, non-soberly inquiring as to what we were doing and went on their way. I turned to Elder Šorn and more than likely made a witty quip about soccer.
As I was turned towards Elder Šorn, my back was now to these hoolis. They decided to come back and one of them, Hooli 1, shoved me from behind into the white board and I knocked it over with my face. I turned around and asked them what the heck were they doing. Another one, Hooli 2, went over to Elder Šorn and asked him "if his gums were itchy." Šorn told him that he didn't understand and so then Hooli 2 came over to me and posed the same question. I'm not sure what I said back but it was probably along the lines of "no thank you sir, please go away now." Now, Hooli 2 went back over to Šorn and straight up decked him right in the jaw. As I was running over, Hooli 2 then head butted Šorn right in the face. I got there and Hooli 2 turned to me and then punched me in the head. This Hooli 2 then started chasing Šorn around yelling at him to give him his phone. I had our phone in my pocket and so I told Šorn to start running which we did. We ran maybe 50 yards until we realized they weren't chasing us but had instead taken our whiteboard and were now smashing it on the ground.
And then they left and we went home and probably ate some Nutella"
The End.

The King

 A man I grew up with served in a place I had never even heard of but after hearing this story it sounds like a very very awesome place!

I was called to serve in Micronesia Guam mission in November of 2006. This was rather funny to me because I could hardly pronounce Micronesia. I was so scared to have to learn a second language because of my failed experience in seventh grade Spanish class. I received the letter from my mission president soon after receiving my call which said most of the missionaries do not have to learn a second language because most missionaries will serve on either Guam or Saipan which are U.S. territories and both are English speaking areas. After I landed in Guam my mission president took us to his house. On the way there he asked if we wanted to know where we would be going. He turned to me and said that I was going to be flying back out the very next day to Pohnpei Micronesia. It is the capitol of the Federated States of Micronesia and is an Island of about 33,000 people. I was so scared of learning the language that it took me several days just to learn how to say Hello. I remember crying in a testimony meeting two months into my mission because I felt I would never learn the language only to realize that I just spoke a perfect lesson in Pohnpeian. The experience that mostly stands out with me is towards the end of my mission, after much success in my several areas I was sent back to the area that I had first started in. Its a small kingdom, because they still have kings in Pohnpei, called U. Yes that is spelled with only one letter. That was my favorite place and as I would speak to people I would all ways say that I was from U because of my accent that I had picked up while I lived there. I was asked one day why we missionaries didn't love anyone? I was so confused as to why this woman wondered that. She said that we never went to funerals nor did we ever care about their traditions. At the time I was reading Ammon in the Book of Mormon and realized I was failing to follow his council of becoming one with the people and following their traditions, and to serve them. That next day I went to the local leader who's title is called Soulik which means chief. I asked him to let me earn a title from him. My first title given to me was Nahnso which stands for protector. He then took me a week later to meet the Nahn Mwahrki which is the king of the kingdom of U. He gave me a title that I had never heard of. It was Luhk Dolohn Katau. I thought it sounded cool at least but didn't think much of it until I got back to my area. I was asked about the title and I told the member. He just looked at me and asked "Really?" I said of course. He then proceeded to tell me that the Luhk Title is 12th in line to become king someday if I pass certain tests. This allowed me to not only attend funerals but to actually conduct them. It allowed me to go to feasts and teach and made it so if anyone treated us with disrespect, they were treating the king with disrespect. this opened the door and even allowed me to teach the King of U and give him a Book of Mormon. He to this day is a very good friend of mine.
Tony Kent

Out Late....Too Late

In the mission we are promised that if we are obedient to the mission rules we will have success and protection from God. I believed this and knew for a fact that it was true. One night I had an experience that showed it was true, I just learned the hard way with my companion. I was working in one of the more smaller cities in my mission, a city called Brumado. It was a very nice place and more on the upper class side of the state I was serving in. At this time I was training a new missionary from Alabama. Throughout his whole life he was home-schooled deep in the swamp lands and pretty sheltered and never exposed to much of the real world. He was having a rough time adjusting to the loud, aggressive, free spirits and personalities of Brazil. I was doing my best to try and help him slide into the transition of the Brazilian culture and lifestyle. Well, as the story goes we were having a hard time finding people to teach. Our mission president talked to us constantly about finding men to teach because they can be good example to their family and we can find more people through them. One day we were walking and a man stopped us and asked us very excitedly if  we would stop by his house because he was interested in our message and church. Of course we said yes and planned to stop by. The time came for us to go to his house and he wasn't home, we tried the next day and the same thing. Day after day we would go and nobody was there. We were pretty disappointed to say the least. One night we were walking home after a long day and we were about half hour away from our home. It's a rule that the missionaries be in their home no later than 9:30 and we were cutting it close. All of a sudden my cell phone rang and it was the man who had stopped us in the street, he wanted us to come visit. I explained we had to go home but we could the next day. He said he was leaving on a work trip and wouldn't be back for quite some time, it was now or never. I told him we would be there. His house was very far and on the outskirts of town, but I wanted to teach him so badly. We finally arrived to his house and went in ready to teach. As I started to teach with my companion in his broken  Portuguese the mans interest in the church had changed completely, it was obvious he only wanted to "Bible Bash" or in other words, argue about religion and try to tell us why we were wrong. Normally when this started to happen I would put an end to it, wish the person a good day and go on my way looking for someone who had a true interest to learn more. This time though I was so mad and frustrated that he had tricked us into thinking he wanted to learn more that we would stayed out longer than we were supposed to just to argue. I was very upset and let my emotions get the best of me as I sat there and tried teaching and arguing with him. The point finally came when i realized it was nearly 10 at night and we were still very far from our home. I put an end to the lesson and me and my Alabamian companion left the house quickly. I was very upset as we started our long journey home. Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, they did. We were walking down a street and up ahead I could see a group of about 7 teenage boys hanging around. I knew that once we walked by them they would start yelling at us and making fun of us as they always did in any city. I turned to my companion and told him to just ignore them. Sure enough as we approached them they started yelling out disrespectful and pretty rude things to us. By this time I was so use to it I could have cared less. We walked right by them and I thought that it was over. Next thing I know the yelling had stopped and a rock the size of my fist came flying over my head and pegged my companion from Alabama right in the head! My companion was the quietest  and least confrontational person I know so he just kept walking with his head down. As a person I am very laid back and easy going and don't get upset very easy. This night though I had had it and I snapped. I instantly turned around and did something a little brave and very very stupid. I marched right towards the group of teenagers. Half of them ran away as about 4 of them lingered and starred at me in surprise that I had come back. The first one I approached was a heavy set kid who looked only to the ground as I approached him and got nose to nose with him right in his face. I asked him, well, yelled to him asking if he had thrown a rock at us as well as saying some other words in English they didn't understand that a representative of Jesus Christ shouldn't say. Nobody answered, they all just awkwardly starred at the ground. I had enough so I turned around and walked towards my wide eyed companion to continue our journey home. As I approached my companion ANOTHER rock came hurling towards us and nailed my companion right between the shoulder blades as he turned around. I instantly turned around and saw all the teenage boys no running up the hill as far from us as they could and there was no chance or reason in confronting them anymore, we just needed to get home. We walked and walked and my adrenaline was pumping. I was so angry at everything that had taken place in just the last hour or so of the night, it was a lot of action packed into such a little amount of time. We got home and my companion had no started to develop some pretty big bruises on his back and head. My anger turned into guilt as I though about how I had us stay out longer than usual and I was the only one confronting and yelling at the teenage kids stoning us in the streets while my companion who did nothing wrong was the only one getting hurt. As I laid down in bed that night I though about how true it was that while in a dangerous country the Lord will never ever let anything bad happen to you as long as you are obedient and doing what is right...but as soon as you choose not to, such as staying out on the streets later than you are supposed to you are on your own. It was a real eye opener. From then on out I made a goal and and promise with God I would do better to be more obedient for his safety.

Mystery Bottle

When I was about halfway through my mission I was in an area with a new companion. Me and my new companion got along great the only problem that I had was he could take forever in the shower every morning. Well one morning I was getting my day started and waiting for him to finish so I could go and use the shower. He had just gotten in and all of a sudden I had to pee really bad, and it only got worse! I thought I could hold it but it kept building and building and I thought I was going to explode. I knew that he would be in there for awhile and there was no way I was going to be able to hold it. I panicked as I thought of what I could do. I then remembered that in our fridge I had a big plastic bottle of juice that was almost gone....I debated on what to do and finally swallowed my pride and did something I'm not exactly proud of but in that situation had to be done. I grabbed the bottle and carefully held it over the garbage can as I relived myself. I held the bottle which was fairly large and was surprised at how fast it was filling up and warming my hand as I held it tightly and carefully. I finally finished just as it topped of near the cap. I screwed the cap on as hard as I could and was satisfied that I no longer had to pee so bad and took care of the situation. I then realized though I had this giant bottle of my "stuff" and didn't  know what exactly to do with it. I didn't want it to sit in our garbage can because I was afraid it might break open somehow or stink up the house. Our apartment was at the very top of the 3 story building with no neighbors. There was a mini dumpster down below our window which was about 4 by 3 feet wide. With our room being so high we had gotten pretty good of throwing bags of trash out the window and landing them in this dumpster instead of walking all the way downstairs. We especially did this at night when the streets were dangerous and didn't know if it was worth getting mugged just to throw out some of our old trash. I figured I could do the same thing with the bottle. I ran to the window and starred down at the small dumpster determining how hard and what angle I should throw the bottle. I wound my arm back and let it fly like a quarterback! It flew threw the air as it fell for the longest time. It finally made its way to the dumpster hit the side of it and landed in the gutter next to the road. I had missed! I realized it was out of the house though and I no longer had the urgency of finding a place to pee. Just as I was about to walk away from the window I noticed a Bum walking down the street that passed by our house everyday and his path was taking him right to my bottle of ''Juice"!.....I bent down with only my eyes peeking over the window ledge to see what would happen. This man carried around a giant bag and picked up anything edible or recycle for money. I watched as he got closer and closer to the bottle. Finally he approached it and stopped.....bent down, and picked it up. He held it up to the sun and inspected it. He then unscrewed the cap and put his nose over if and took a big breath. He instantly jerked his head back and looked at the contents again. After thinking for a moment he then slowly put his nose back over it and took a deep long breath......and then a tiny sip! I seemed fine with its contents and put the cap back on and carried on. I knew the homeless man from passing him in the streets before and wanted to yell out to him not to drink it. I couldn't though because this man did not like the missionaries and every chance he got in  streets he would hassle us an let it be known it didn't want to be our friend. I didn't want him knowing where we lived so he could come for us. That's why I watched without warning him. Anyways, all this happened while my companion was in the shower. He eventually got out and had no clue what had just happened. It was 15 minutes of panic, quick and gross thinking, tense moments, disgust and finally relief. Definitely not a spiritual experience from my mission but none the less an experience that stands out and is worth a story.

Needle in a Haystack

I had an experience when I first arrived in Brazil that I still treasure to this day.

All throughout my childhood I was taught the value and importance of prayer. We always did it together as a family and I was taught to do it privately on my own as well. It was part of my lifestyle but it wasn't until I got to the mission field I really had an eye opener on how big of a role it plays in everyday life. I realized that talking to God was more than just repeating words but it was really just opening your mind and heart and saying and asking what you needed to say.
One experience came when I had been in the city of Salvador for only 3 months. I still felt lost and was pretty fresh into the missionary work. I got a new companion who didn't know the area so it was up to me to show him around and lead the way. Salvador is the 3rd biggest city in Brazil. And like all the major cities in Brazil is was covered with 'Favelas' or in other words, The Slums or Ghetto. Favelas are these giant neighborhoods built in valleys with tens of thousands of people living in poor conditions in a very small area of space. They literally build their houses on top of each other as the houses made of poor brick cover the entire valley all the way up to the top. It is actually quite a site to see. At this time me and my old companion were teaching a very cool woman. We had only been to her house once and I was scheduled to go back with my new companion. He had no idea where to go so it up my turn to walk us there. I realized she lived deep inside the favela and I had no clue where to even begin. As we set off walking I prayed to God that he would help me lead us to this woman's house because I knew we had to teach her about the church. I opened up my heart and felt and used all my feeling and emotions as I asked God to help me do this. As we started to make our way down into the favela I instantly got thoughts and feelings in my head such as, "turn right here", "keep walking up these stairs", "go to the end of this neighborhood and go left", "go to that grocery store and walk down the stairs behind it". We continued for a good 25 minutes or so as we made our way trough the favela. The favelas have no organization at all! There is a mix of crooked streets, stairs and hill that twist all around and houses and stores so close together and connected it is pretty much a giant maze. I know for a fact as we walked I had no clue where we were but just walked by faith and trusted and knew that the Lord had but those thoughts into my head on where to go. We continued to walk and then I instantly stopped as I realized we were on the woman's porch who we needed to teach. We knocked on the door and she let us in. We sat there in our home as we taught and while all this was going on I was in  bit of shock and gratitude as I thought about what had just happened. I realized that because of that heartfelt prayer God had just helped me complete nothing short of a miracle. It was from that moment on I really saw the importance of prayer and how it can be used in any scenario no matter how big or small the task may seem.

                                                In one of the favelas of Salvador.