Hermana Emily Barfuss: "Love people and you will not fear them."

This has been a great week!

I went on my first full exchange of the transfer with Sister Brumbles from Boise, Idaho. She is on her 3rd week on the mission, so it was a super fun experience. She had a lot of questions, and it was great to realize that I could answer her questions using personal experience and reading from Preach My Gospel. It was cool to reflect back over the past 10 plus months and see all the awesome experiences that the Lord has blessed me with! I am starting to feel old in the mission though...

It is getting very hot here in sunny california. It is starting to get in the 90s. The city has signs everywhere urging people to save water. They have a "water wasting" hotline that you can call if you see anyone wasting water, so anytime I see anyone wasting water I (jokingly) tell them I am going to call the water police on them. Well this week I was helping a member wash her dishes after we ate and I kept the water running as I washed them. She ran over to the sink and said, "Sister. You need to turn off the water. We are in a drought you know!?" I apologized and told her I didn't know what I was thinking, and she responded, "You weren't thinking. Keep that water off." Then she walked away. Hahahaa I deserved it! That's what I get for trolling people all the time :)

Good news! Elder Anderson is coming to our mission this Satuday! We have a conference with him and possibly Elder Hallstrom! Sweet. It is a blessing to be taught by servants of God!

This week I had one of the most interesting Knock-Out conversations of my career ;) We sat and talked with 4 born-again Christians for an hour! Thankfully we were not called to damnation once during that hour.

I have had a lot of questions about all these different Christian faiths that call us a non-christian cult. I have been wondering what doctrinal differences we have that make them Christians and us not, and this week we found 4 people out having a BBQ that were willing to talk with us!

I will be honest, 90% of the convos we have with the born again Christians are us getting chewed out for worshiping a false Christ and then they tell us we will go to hell. Usually the convos are very harsh and tense. I am not one to fight, be sassy, or bash (Maybe my family would say differently... :) I have learned from all of these convos that the only effective thing to do is testify of how the gospel and my faith has blessed my life. Simple testimony can soften hearts. They cannot attack my testimony because it's mine. It is my experiences between me and my Father in Heaven.

Anyway...these four people were kind enough to answer our questions. Our questions went from the Trinity, to baptism, to even asking them why they see us as a cult. They asked us questions about how we believe we have the potential to become gods and goddesses, how Mormons believe they are saved, and what we believe about heaven and hell.

A lot of my misconceptions were cleared up, and I feel like I understand where they are coming from better. I won't be so frustrated the next time I'm called to damnation. We were blessed with many opportunities to testify of the truths of the restored gospel, and I walked away from the conversation with a stronger testimony.

There are many truths that have come from the restoration of the gospel that I have taken for granted like:

Our purpose on Earth

The knowledge of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ being separate beings

The knowledge that our families can be together forever.