(The following are excerts from his first email answering our questions followed by his second email)

Responses to questions:

--Thats really interesting, my companion, Elder Geslison, reminds me of Elder Tyson Daun in so many different ways. I really hope that I can continue to serve with Elder Geslison for more than one transfer.--

--According to the missionary handbook there is supposed to be one designated driver. I checked with the vehicle coordinator when we got the car and he said that there was no designated driver. So... Elder Geslison and I take turns driving. We are both reasonably safe drivers, so I don't really care whether he or I get to drive. We pay for gas via a gas card given to us by the mission office. We swipe the card, enter the vehicle number and the odometer reading, and then pump gas.--

--My companion and I cover about 1,000 square miles of area, the nearest missionaries are 30 miles away. 4 missionaries including my companion and my self make up the district. I am planning on holding a district development meeting Friday.--

--The library was closed on Martin Luther King's day, so we email today, Tuesday. I just dropped my suit off at the dry cleaners.--

--I have always wanted to go kayaking back there, it was always just too long of a trip from where we ussually start off.--

Better close.

Love you lots!
Dad


The Story:
Over the course of the last week a lot of interesting things have happened. We have seen a lot of success and a lot of people. This week we had the opportunity to have some very "deep" discussions with some baptists. One was with a lead we had. We had taken down the information of a man who had a nice family in a "nicer" neighborhood. We didn't think much of it until a week later when we knocked on the man's door. He introduced him self by his first name and warmly welcomed us into his home and sat us down at his dinner table with his wife. (no food involved) He had a book of mormon out with a note pad. We asked him if he had spoken to missionaries before and he said that he had not. We asked him if he had read from the Book of Mormon and he told us no. He asked us to give him our presentation, so we got into it and he cut us off at Joseph Smith. He then told us that the Bible was a closed cannon and that Smith was a mislead young man with good intentions who was seeking a vision and got an appearance by one of the devil's angels. Not letting us discuss that, he continued to try to pick appart some of our doctrine, claiming that we thing that we can work our way into heaven... Because my companion was new, I did most of the talking.

got to go out of time

Sorry I didn't get to all three baptists...

Love,
Elder Calvin Smith


(I was able to log in again and continue the story)

So I was doing all the talking and pulling out scriptures. This baptist was trying to tell me that it doesn't matter what we do in this life, as long as we accept Jesus as our lord and savior we are saved, end of story. He kept appologizing for being so bold and told us he wasn't trying to tear down our religion but trying to get us to take a serious look at our beliefs. We just sat there, listened and smiled, waiting for his mini sermon to be over. Over the course of my mission I have really learned to keep my cool under pressure and have learned that nothing frustrates people more than to not let them see you get frustrated. I have been through the whole baptist line of thought before in other situations and I was getting tired of this guying trying to tell me a bunch of balony about our church so I calmly openned up my bible.... So, I pulled out a few scriptures, (matt 7:21 (not everyone who says lord lord will enter the kingdom of heaven) (James 2 (faith with out works is dead)) etc, and he said, "well, I just can't accept that." So I asked him, "What do you imagine judgement to be like?" "What will we be judge on?" He told me something about our heart and how works can't get us into heaven and accepting Jesus as our Savior. I told him that I didn't think that John the revelator agreed with him and turned to Rev 20:12-13 - which says twice that we will be judged on our works. Straight up, it says "works". That caused him to get quiet really fast. He sat there, wrote down the scripture and said, "uhhh, I just can't accept that". He proceeded to try to tell us that we believe we can become Gods, and that was balony because "the bible says that there is only one God... end of story." I said, sorry, the bible doesn't say that, it says quite the opposite, and I turned to Cor 8 (I think, I don't have my quad grandma gave me right in front of me now) which says that there are gods many and lords many. That made him real quiet too. He wrote down the scripture and revealed to us that he was a paster at kellytown baptist church. There was quite a bit more discussed, concerning the book of mormon and joseph smith. But the biggest point I couldn't believe was that he didn't believe baptism was necessary. He considered him self to be a BAPTIST BUT HE DIDN'T BELIEVE BAPTISM WAS NECESSARY! His wife didn't say anything the entire time we were there. He told us that he would like our number and maybe talk with us another time after he looked into the Book of Mormon a bit more, and that he enjoyed our conversation.

I was a bit shocked that a pastor of such a large congregation did not have a better bible knowledge. My companion walked out of the house and got into the car with me in shock, he said my use of the scriptures bafled him. I told him that I hope that experience inspired him to take his personal study time a bit more seriously, because he was struggling to keep up with the conversation and the scriptures being used.

Now, that was not a "normal" lesson, but strangly enough this last week we had three similar conversations. The third one was with a baptist as well. We knocked on his door and he boldly and confidently openned the door and told us that the bible said there was to be no more revealed scripture. I told him that was not so. He was obviously disturbed as we saw his eyes twitching and his lips quiver in frustration. He invited us into his home and sat us down and tried to tell us out of the bible (Rev 22:18 I think) that it said no more scripture was to be writen. I then told him how the bible was compiled, that that scripture talks about the Book of Revelation, and that that scripture was written before the bible was compiled, hence it couldn't possibly refere to the whole bible. I told him that if we followed his same line of logic the bible should have ended after Deut 4:2 which says something along the lines that no word should be added to the word of this commandment. He started to get a little upset that his attempted attack on the book of mormon had failed miserably and that he had not ruffled us at all. (we could hear is family members in a separate room peeping around the corner whispering, I ALMOST felt bad for methodically and mechanically picking apart his attack on the Book of mormon infront of his family) We
left with a smile.

got to go
Love,
Elder Smith