well crud. I wrote the letter and then I realized i don't have your address!!! So give it to me please! I don't want to rewrite everything, plus i want to send you my camera card.
I quickly replied with my address, then he copied me on an email to our parents. Here is some of what he said:
I brought all the rain from WA to here. last week and the week before, we had a rainstorm every day. CRAZY!! We have been setting records here. the average rainfall for Dayton is 2 inches. We've probably had a foot in the last 2.5 weeks.
We tracted into a guy that had been studying the Bible for 20 years! He has researched the Bible so much that he is trying to write a deep doctrine book but God won't let him publish or submit drafts until he stops smoking and drinking. "God wants me to be a clean vessel" he says. Anyway, we read some of his stuff. It is very deep but it is a combination of stuff that we learn in the temple and some of the deeper doctrine that we get into in church. It fits exactly with what we believe about the doctrine of baptism of water and spirit and about the atoning blood of Jesus Christ and about the true nature of God. It is amazing. We shared with him the articles of faith and he went through every single one and came to the conclusion, "this is purely biblical!" He had never investigated the church and i think he is kind of shocked that we teach some of the stuff that he has come to know after 20 years of research.
Just an example of how his mind works... I mentioned that I liked math a lot. He told me that in the OT in Deut., i think, that it describes the basin that they did baptisms in. It said it was 10 cubits across and 30 cubits in circumference and it said that it was a perfect circle. Well, he realized that that was mathematically impossible because the ratio of diameter to circumference of a perfect circle is 3.14159... pi. So he prayed about it because it was really troubling him. He kinda forgot about it but like 3 months later he was reading in Kings and it said, oh yeah and the brim is a hands breadth. He recalculated and the ratio was exactly 3.1415.... He has a testimony that God still gives revelation. He has had many many prayers answered. Hopefully we are another answer to his prayers. He told us that he had been searching different churches but he couldn't find one that he liked. He is coming to church this next sunday. I really hope that we have some good speakers so he can feel the spirit.
So anyway, This guy has some serious faith. He is awesome... except that he smokes and drinks. I think we overwhelmed him a little bit with everything because he had to leave to have some vodka and smoke (he rolls his own tobacco). Haha.
We are also teaching this other guy Brad that came to church yesterday. He said that everything that happened at church felt like it had been prepared especially for him. WOOHOO!!! Cool beans! He is coming along really quick. I think July is going to be a great month for us here.
Anyway, I need to go. Send me letters!! :) I'm almost to the end of my first transfer!! only 16 more to go :) haha.
-Elder Matt Blakemore
Feel free to leave comments on this blog, as I changed his default email address to be the one that he is allowed to check each week. So he will definitely get your comments! Also, he'd love to get real letters, since he can only check his email once a week. Even open up a Word document so you can type/write quickly, then print it out and slap a stamp on that sucker! (Look to previous post with his address).
I'm excited to see what other news his letter has for me to update his blog with. And get ready for some mission pictures! Hooray!
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