April 28th

Hello everyone!

It's been another great week here in the Cambridge 1st Ward. The city is still as crazy as ever, you kinda get used to having "unusual" people approach you as a missionary. It's part of the job.

- We taught Josh again last week. He had some problems with us calling our church the "true church", because he said that if there are other churches that allow us to grow closer to God, and we also agree that the members and leadership aren't perfect, then what makes us the "true church"? Do we just have less imperfections than others? The lessons are much more confusing, so it's hard to break them down into a short summary. He's doing well, though.

- Working with Erica still to get her off coffee. We are bringing a member that had to overcome coffee with us, so that should help out.

- We are teaching Sandra and her family, but there was a bunch of drama that kept them from coming to church. Hopefully she can get it all sorted out- it was really annoying that this happened because we had worked all week on getting them a ride to church because they don't have a car, but that's the story of a mission! There's always next week, though.

- Garth had some interesting questions. He first asked why the Book of Mormon chapters about Christ teaching were so similar to the Bible, which was good because that meant he had done some reading! He also asked why the doctrines of Jesus Christ are important, what new ethics are presented in the Book of Mormon, and why people were predisposed to believe a certain way depending on how they were raised. Very intellectual guy, but those questions aren't very difficult to answer: Jesus Christ allows us to become clean again, something that nothing else can take the place of. Should be a great lesson coming up; he gave us some pages of Aristotle to read, that was pretty funny. We are going to make that part of our lesson. Garth also said that even though his father was a pastor and his mother was a missionary for another church, we have a "fervent dedication" that impresses him. That was awesome to hear.

- David is back in town, so we are going to revisit the Restoration and see how much of it he remembers. He is awesome, but we will probably have to pass him off to the singles ward, same with Garth. :(

- We beat Jude in basketball, so we taught him a lesson about God's plan for us afterwards. That was pretty cool, he says that he wants to "do the right things in life". He also agreed to have us teach him at a members house once a week! Shazam!

- Taught Anna again, and after getting to know her a little better, she opened up and said that she did have some desire to have her questions about life answered. She is going to be busy for the next couple of weeks, but she was pretty amazed that we could be so sure that our church was true when there are so many other religions. She was impressed by our testimonies.

-Things have been going really well with the members, too! We keep committing them to do stuff, and follow up with them until they do it. It feels like home already, it's great.

There's more, but I don't have much time. Hope all is going well for you all! Something that everyone asks here is, "How can you be so sure that your church is the right one?"

I suggest reading Alma 31 and following Alma's example to better understand what to do in a situation like that, where something seems "astonishing beyond all measure" (Alma 31:19).

Love you all!

Elder Crandell