Muslim man yelling at us

This week has been crazy! I will just go over some of the highlights really quick..

Monday we played basketball, Mortdale Zone vs. Bankstown. And President Back let us play full-court. :D Bankstown was victorious!!!! We beat them 21-17. It was scary at the beginning of the game, they were up by like 5 or 6 early on. But we caught em, and gave them a hiding! Wooohoo! Bankstown pride!

Some success working with member families

We have had some success working with member families this week. One family in our ward is preparing their cousins for us to teach them. That's really exciting! It is cool that we have the trust in us as missionaries to allow us to help their family receive the gospel. Hopefully we will have an update in the future about how that goes! There is a less-active brother who also wants us to start teaching his nephews, son, and father, none of whom are members. We have an appointment for tomorrow with them. That should be awesome! We are looking forward to that, and will let you know how that goes.

Muslim man yelling at us

This week has been interesting for the number of people of the Islamic faith we have run into and "chatted" with. I can't remember if I have mentioned it before, but Bankstown has a large population of Muslim people. This week, we met some Muslim men sitting on their porch, who invited us over to sit next to them, and then they began ripping into us. That was fun.... They said that we could come back and share a bit more with them. We didn't exactly have a whole lot of opportunity to open our mouths and share our beliefs and bear testimony. We were kinda cut off every time by a Muslim man yelling at us telling us we were wrong. So we decided to fight fire with fire..... :)

That is a mosque here in Sydney. It is massive! So many Islamic people.
They are among some of the kindest people that I have met here.

There is a recent convert in our ward who is Lebanese, and he speaks all of the languages of the Middle-East, as well as French and English. He is quite an emotional man... (he is very enthusiastic about his new-found faith) We took him to the same place for an appointment, and exchanged a few pleasantries, and then one of them pulled out a piece of paper from his bag with scripture references from the Bible, and then basically tried to prove that the Bible is faulty. Unfortunately, our friend and this Muslim man got a bit heated, as he defended our beliefs and attacked theirs all in Arabic, so we had no idea what was going on. It must have been entertaining because a crowd of neighbors slowly trickled around us, and found chairs to sit and watch. Sigh...

We didn't even get to share the message of the Restoration with them, which pretty much validates the points he was trying to make about the Bible, although not all of them I must add. Hahaha one funny thing about it was that apparently they started talking about how they are from the same place in Lebanon, and we couldn't tell. The volume they were speaking with was the same, and our fellowship was using the same facial and hand gestures, so we only found out when we left.... Hahahahaha..... Good times...

This missionary had run away...

We had some fun this week with missionaries. One day, a couple of the missionaries in our zone got separated at a train station. One went to the next appointment to wait, and the other (with the phone) stayed at the train station and called us. So we picked him up, put him with another missionary and went on the prowl. We had noooo idea where to look, (our impression was that this missionary ran away) so we searched aimlessly around one suburb for 4 hours, checking train station, parks, members homes, and other likely areas. Eventually, we decided to check the missionary's flat. and there he was! Sitting outside, patiently waiting for someone to find him. What the heck??? we had checked their flat previously, but because he thought his comp would come look at the appointment's house, he was there for 3 hours! Then he made his way home. Sigh.... Lucky it was a misunderstanding, and the missionary actually didn't run away. Hahaha

We had a good appointment with Allen, the American protestant guy we found that one P-day a couple weeks back. That was fun! Next time we meet with him, we will hopefully have more of an opportunity to teach the Restoration. He kinda controlled the conversation this week. But he agreed to hear us out again.

Less-active investigators

P_ and O_ are less-active investigators. A funny phrase, but true. We haven't taught them or even seen them for ages! That's a bit frustrating. Our other investigators are also a bit less-active :). J_ and S_ were busy this week (they actually canceled on us as we were searching for missionaries, which I think was a tender mercy).

We found a Coptic Orthodox man who was reaaaallly interested, but lives out of area. That was a great miracle. The missionaries in the North Mission will do well with him.

That was pretty much the week. Hope to have lots of good stuff to report next week!

Ofa'atu!
Elder Larsen