Invitations To Watch General Conference

Friday morning I woke up around 4:00 in the morning. The thought came to my mind that I needed to invite a member of the Community of Christ Church to watch General Conference. We had an All-Day Zone Conference that day and so I was hoping to get a little more sleep. However, after a little while, I realized I was not going to get back to sleep, so I got up and emailed this person and invited him to watch General Conference. Then I thought, "Is there someone else I am supposed to invite?" I decided to invite a Baptist acquaintance. Before the morning was over, I invited several others. While some could just watch it on the BYU Channel, others did not have access to that channel. One person whom I did not expect to hear back from was our Evangelical friend. This is because I had invited him to several other things lately and he had not responded. However, on Saturday morning, he called and said he would come over to the house and watch a session of conference with us. He came and we had a good visit with him. 

Looking Forward To General Conference New Apostles Being Called - Historic Time For The Church

I am looking forward to General Conference; apparently we would have to go back to 1906 to find another time when there were three vacancies in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. The following is from an article in the news.

"This is a historic period in the church. You would have to go back to the April 1906 General Conference for the last time there were three new apostles called to the Quorum of the Twelve. During that time, apostles John W. Taylor and Matthias F. Cowley had resigned from the Quorum of the Twelve due to their unwillingness to support the Church’s abolition of plural marriage, and Marriner W. Merrill had passed away. The three called to replace them were George F. Richards, Orson F. Whitney, and a 32 year-old future Church president, David O. McKay."

I thought this chart was interesting in the way it displays the apostles by tenure and age. It also includes a little background on each of the brethren.

http://threestory.com/apostles/

No Hot Water, Then I Will Watch General Conference

We have a couple of neighbor friends, a father and son. We have invited them over several times, they came on New Year's Day for super nachos and on another occasion for games. The father also came with us to the Church last December to watch the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. Then last winter, we sent the young Elders over to help them set up Skype on their computer. The father had an interest in using Skype to talk with his daughter who lives in Chicago. I had talked with the father and son several times about the Church and some of what we believe in. Well, the Elders came back and said the father had agreed to receive the missionary discussions. We were pleased about that, but then, it seems we went for months trying to schedule something with them and either the father or the son or both were having some type of health issue and didn’t feel well. I knew the health issues were real, but I began to suspect that the father really didn’t want to meet with the missionaries; he is a member of the Baptist Church here in town and attends there. So I didn’t push it and decided we would just continue to be friends and continue to do some social things with them.

We did stop by their house prior to Easter and gave them a “He is Risen card” and told them about General Conference.  Then we hadn’t seen much of them for several weeks, even though, I talked with them on the phone several times, the father was still experiencing problems with his eyes and congestion in his throat. Well last week we got in contact with them again and the father invited us over to see the upgrades he had made to the house, new carpet and a new shower.  The son is still experiencing a lot of pain in his hip and will likely need hip surgery, and that has been really difficult for him. We shared with the father a little more about our Church and Priesthood blessings.

During the conversation the father mentioned, that on General Conference weekend he had planned to attend his Baptist Church, but something was not right in the installation of his new shower and he had no hot water. He didn’t want to go to church without showering, so he said that he stayed home and then remembered we told him about General Conference. He said he watched 2 hours of General Conference that Sunday Morning. He said he thought it was really good and the reason he had no hot water may have been so he would watch General Conference. We were of course pleasantly surprised when he shared this with us. 

General Conference (Our Evangelical Friend Watches With Us)

Our Evangelical friend came over on Saturday and watched the morning and afternoon sessions of Conference with us. He had a number of questions and I felt like it cleared up for some false notions he has about our Church. He was impressed with the fact that the finances were audited and reported on. He was in agreement with most of the doctrine that was taught. The pre-earth life is a new concept for him that he has not yet bought into, even though we have shared the Plan of Salvation with him. As the speakers would come on he would look up the names on his phone and read about their background. And, of course, they all have very impressive lives and accomplishments. We are no longer meeting with him on a regular basis so we were pleased that he came. We invited him to attend with us at the Church on Sunday but he declined.

Other churches teach that we believe we are saved by our works and that has been his opinion of what we teach. In fact in one of our previous discussions he had mentioned the quote from Nephi that we are “saved by grace after all that we can do” as evidence that we believe we are saved by works.

So, of course, on Sunday when President Uchtdorf spoke on grace, I wished that our Evangelical friend had been there to here it. I sent him an email to tell him about it.

Evangelical Friend,

We wanted to thank you for taking time to watch several sessions of General Conference with us. As you know, we believe those who spoke are men like you and me, but these men have a special calling from God, to testify that Jesus is the Christ and to guide and direct his Church on the earth in our day. Similar to Peter, James, John, Paul and others Christ called during his earthly ministry. Over the past two days, they truly testified of the divinity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

We always enjoy your company and consider you a good friend. As you know our calling as missionaries is to invite others to come unto Christ and obtain the blessings only available through his restored gospel.  And so we hope you are not offended if we continue to invite you. However we want you to know that even if you decline those invitations, our friendship is not contingent on your acceptance of what we believe. We respect you and we respect your beliefs, we believe you to be a sincere and honorable person trying to live a Christ-like life. As I have said a number of times in the past, I have greatly enjoyed our conversations. I have learned from them and benefited from them. And so I thank you for that.

While the talks during the Priesthood session on Saturday evening and those on Sunday were all very good, and I think you would enjoy them. I found President Uchtdorf’s talk particularly relevant to discussions we have had in the past. He talked on grace. Here are several quotes from his talk:

• “We cannot earn our way into heaven”
• “Salvation cannot be bought with the Currency of Obedience, it is purchased by the blood of the Son of God”
• “Thinking that we can trade our good works for salvation is like buying a plane ticket and then supposing we own the airline or thinking after paying rent on a home we had title to the entire planet earth.”
• “So Why is obedience so important?” he quotes from Paul, then says “We obey the commandments of God out of love for him.”

• He quoted Nephi 23 For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.
• “I sometimes wonder if we misinterpret the phrase after all we can do.” “The word after does not equate to because.” “We are not saved because of all we can do.” “Has anyone done all we can do?”
• “We show our love for God by keeping his commandments.”

Here is the talk:

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/watch/2015/04?lang=eng&vid=4154894179001&cid=12

Our Evangelical Friend

I mentioned that our evangelical friend emailed me saying that he wanted to discontinue our weekly meetings. Sister Anderson and I were both very disappointed and so we called him and invited him to come to dinner which he accepted. We had a nice evening with him and it was like nothing had changed. I really believe that he has been touched by the Spirit and is running from that truth.

He did agree to come and watch General Conference with us, and so we pray and ask for your prayers that he may gain a stronger witness from the Holy Ghost of the truths of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.