Dropping Kenjie

(Elder Cummings)
We have had a great time this week!  As a Hmong speaking missionary called to the California Fresno Mission the call to serve is almost a two year call to serve on the Pioneer Park ward council.  You spend the vast majority of your service in that ward.  One Elder who went home shortly before I came in spent 21 of his 24 months serving in the ward boundaries.

It really is a great congregation.  There are so many committed saints, singing praises every week in Hmong, English, and on occasion a little Lao.  It is so much fun to serve a missionary here.

I had a great learning experience this week.  Kenjie, an investigator who I have loved teaching since I entered the field, has been dropped.  He has been a lot of fun to teach and has been investigating for over a year.  He has a solid Bible background, and is a lot of fun to talk to, plus his Hmong name, Kong Mang Vang (Koob Meej Vaj) is the same as mine.  We bond over that.

Flash back a little bit and I would like to talk about a different miracle.  On Wednesday I was fasting for inspiration on setting some goals for the next transfer, the next six week, and nineteen hours into what became a twenty-three hour fast I was feeling pretty weak and had just been handed a bottle of water by yet another kindhearted niam tais.  For those of you who don't know, fasting is a voluntary abstinence from food and water for an extended period of time.  It brings the "natural man," or our physical desires, under the control of the spirit.  It helps us to be more receptive to revelation, and since I was seeking inspiration as to what goals to set I was fasting.  With the water in my hand I was contemplating ending my fast.  I had already gotten the answers I was looking for, and I was really thirst and finding it increasingly difficult to simultaneously stay awake and decipher through this woman's thick accent.  It doesn't seem like it would be a bad thing to end early.  I said I was going to fast until our dinner appointment, but fasting until now seemed alright.

Lately I have been studying Christ's suffering and prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane and I have love what I am learning!  In this, my moment of weakness, a verse that Christ spoke to Peter, James, and John in the Garden that I had been pondering the day before in personal study came to mind: "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."  (Matthew 26:41).  It felt like an inspired thought, so I did as the verse directs and prayed.  Immediately the thirst began to subside and the Holy Ghost told me that I had chosen right and that in the next appointment for the day, one with Kenjie, Elder Ballard and I needed to invite him to be baptized.

Off we went to the lesson.  As my companion and I taught and testified together Kenjie began to understand for the first time in his year of investigating that the state of his eternity following death hangs on the question of whether or not the Book of Mormon is truly God's word.  If it is, then the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only church that has the authority of God necessary to save.  Kenjie is a strong Christian, and when this understanding finally dawned on him, the Spirit pierced his heart, we invited him to be baptized, and we knelt with him as he prayed to know what he should do.  He was now deep in thought and visibly moved by what he felt as he prayed.  My companion and I set up a return appointment for the following Friday.  We left the lesson ecstatic.

Kenjie has been taught that you cannot trust emotions as a medium for receiving revelation from God.  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that emotion is half of the way we are even capable of receiving revelation.  Kenjie had received a witness from the Holy Ghost, but by the time we returned on Friday he had talking himself out of it.  He cited concerns with the doctrine that didn't make logical sense with his interpretation of the Bible.  In a strange reversal of roles he called meeting with us a trial of his faith.  He was not willing to read the Book of Mormon to find for himself if it is true.  Every missionary who has ever taught Kenjie has felt that it is only a matter of time before he joins the church, but because of his decision in the appointment on Friday, it will still be some time before that happens.

One thing that impressed me about the interaction with Kenjie is that if you choose to try to prove to yourself the truth of the Book of Mormon by any means other than what the book teaches, through prayer and diligent study, receiving a witness of it by the power of the Holy Ghost, then you will never get the confirming answer necessary to obtain a testimony.  Unless you are doing as the book directs you are already denying the truth in its pages.  The invitation is made clear, and the promise is clear that he or she who asks with a sincere heart will know by the power of the Holy Ghost that the book is true (Moroni 10:5).  I know that is how it works.  I have tried it myself many times and every time I have received the same answer: the Book of Mormon is true, Jesus is the Christ, Joseph Smith is the prophet of the Restoration, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is "the Lord's kingdom once again established on the earth, preparatory to the Second Coming of the Messiah." (Introduction to the Book of Mormon).

I invite as many as are willing to ask or re-ask the question, to read the Book.  It will change your life, it will help to secure your salvation.  This is a promise, and I leave it with you in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

With love,

Elder Jared Cummings