Mormon Miracle Pageant

Hey! Wednesday night we had an awesome study on the love of God as shown through Hosea. If you don't know that book very well, I highly recommend reading it. God's love for us surpasses all human reasoning. That is because his love for us is not about us (that would be conditional love), it is part of God's character. We can depend on it fully. We had pancakes Thursday morning and I found out my friend Rulon from the ward was raised FLDS (the polygamist sect) and is now basically anti-religion. I got to share the gospel with him and I look forward to doing that more and more! The Arkansas team left on Thursday night and then we had ten new friends over to watch a movie. It was fun! The community that is developing at the Blue House is so exciting. Please pray for more miracles!

Friday morning Colleen, Bobby, Vickie, Casey, Allie and I (that's all the interns so far) drove down to Ephraim, UT and met a team from Bellflower, CA. It is in the middle of nowhere but a little further down the road you come to the Manti Temple. There the Mormon Miracle Pageant is held. For eight nights over two weeks, 20,000 people watch a play with a cast of over 900 act out the "historical" stories from the Book of Mormon, which includes the life and death of Joseph Smith, the Nephites and the Lamanites (those are spelling errors because Google Chrome happens to know that they are not real people groups-Mormons teach that the Mayas, Aztecs and Incas are actually Jews that came over from Israel centuries before Christ) obeying and rebelling against the word of God, Jesus Christ visiting them (they honestly believe Mayan temples are Mormon temples) and then a married couple going up to the Celestial Kingdom (basically heaven, but in this version of heaven a bunch of people are dressed all in white suits and are doing what looks like the Macarena; Jesus is nowhere to be found, he only had a forty second appearance in the course of the two-hour production...and they claim to be a church NOT a cult and completely centered on Jesus Christ...it's hard to reconcile). It was ridiculous and absurd and full of Joseph Smith-worship (the climax is his martyrdom), but is what I would have expected. Cheesy, but still the Mormons were sobbing and really felt the Spirit. They eat this stuff up. I don't get it. However, I am getting ahead of myself. Let's get to the good news!

The production starts at dusk (9:30) but people start coming in at about 6. That's when we arrived. About 150 Christians come to this each night to share the love of God. We started with worship which was really cool. The Temple blasts music from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir because they know that evangelists will be there. They believe that we have the "spirit of dissension" and that scares away the Holy Spirit. Because they do not believe they are indwelt with the Holy Spirit (one of the things we agree on), they need to create a pretty place to invite the Spirit in. I found out that is why they sing. They sound good but it is dead and that is because they do not actually consider it worship. It's more to create a pretty environment with the hopes that the Spirit will join them. Sort of like idol worship. Do what you can to invite the gods to come bless you. I'm glad that's not how our God works (especially because my singing voice is not all that inviting). So we actually gathered and worshiped there which is such a cool experience. And then the witnessing began!


First we gathered as a team together to pray but we were interrupted by the security who told us we were not allowed to do that on Church property. The sign actually says no evangelizing (which just means sharing the gospel...I guess deep down the LDS Church knows that isn't what it is doing), but I guess praying to God isn't allowed either. We kept on praying once we were on the street which is public property. Then we went out and talked to people. Most people (of all ages, the little kids witnessing were awesome) were handing out tracts. That's not my favorite approach but in this case it is powerful because they are waiting for hours and will read them out of boredom. I was impressed by the various ways of talking to people and how effective all of it is. A lot of Mormons would stand around just to argue, but that meant they heard the gospel. It was so cool. I talked with a Mennonite woman handing out tracts and found out she is an ex-mo. She had a very unique testimony. Her reasons for exploring outside the LDS Church were very LDS and she finally left because she found a tract in her attic that she had taken from the Nauvoo pageant. She had actually taken it just to throw it away with disdain in front of the evangelists, but somehow that one ended up in her purse. God is great!

In the two nights we did that, I was not very forward. I should have been less timid because so many people were more than willing to talk! Allie and I went around together and she would pray while I spoke most of the time. We went first to this guy named Wade who was with his wife, sister and niece and nephew. We had a good conversation and his niece was in seminary mode but his younger nephew was intrigued by what was going on. I'm praying that he (Chase) will hide those things in his heart and that God will recall them at the right time. Next we talked with this cowboy named Kevin. He was going off on Bill McKeever who had a display out of a replica of the Golden Plates. They were 80 lbs and he invited people to lift them. Joseph Smith claimed to hold them under his arm and run three miles hopping over logs and fighting off attackers. At one point he was hit in the back of a head with a gun. And the replica plates were not made of gold. They were 60% LIGHTER than the ones Joseph claimed to be carrying. And if he at any point had dropped them, they would have been crushed and all the characters would have been erased because of the pressure on the soft gold.
Kevin came unglued, claiming that the best people in the world, US Marines do that every morning before breakfast. He went off on Bill for being a fat city slicker. We found him later and had a conversation with him. He's not LDS and he has a lot of crazy views but we shared the gospel with him and had some fun with him. Finally we talked with a young woman who lives near Ogden named Jill. She is very Mormon. We shared the gospel with her again and again and again. She couldn't understand that when we said we have been set free that we didn't mean set free to sin all the time. She also couldn't believe that we believe in a God that is so harsh he would call us sinners. It's unreal. I wanted to talk more on that here but this is too lengthy. Another post I'll discuss the differences between the God of the Universe and the god of Mormonism. We asked to pray for her and she was offended and I explained that I pray for everyone. She still said no but all-in-all, we had a long gospel-centered conversation and she heard the gospel for the first time in her life.

The second day I was having trouble starting conversations with people. So we decided to go onto Church property to take pictures with all the actors. It's so funny. I kept asking them what the costumes are based on "because you can't Google a picture of a Lamanite" because, of course, those groups don't exist. They said they didn't know and that if you tried to Google "Lamanite" you would just find stuff about how crazy Mormon people are. "But we're not!" she insisted. Oh, gotta love them :) So we did that which was a lot of fun! But then we ended up talking with these two girls:

The one girl is one of the stars of the show. She plays a fictional follower of Joseph Smith who falls in love and gets married and then dies and goes to the celestial with her husband. They asked where we were from and since the answers were so diverse, they asked what we were doing. Well, we're planting a church! So I explained what that means and shared the gospel and how much we love talking to people about it and they were super happy about this! We talked for a long while and I found out Becca (the star) is going to BYU and Katherine (the one playing an Indian) is about to go on her mission. I prayed for both of them and shared the gospel there. They were super stoked about it! It was awesome!!! And all of this was done ON LDS property! Woohoo! breakin' the law for Jesus :) Then we went and talked to this old couple who are serving their senior mission. They listened a little bit but they kept cutting us off to bear their testimonies. I really see what God says when he claims people are without excuse. Here he is sending Christians to offer freedom to these people and they actually refuse to listen. I think that God offers us freedom from things that bind us all the time but we refuse to give him the time of day.

Anyways, it was an amazing time of fellowship with believers from all over the country (mostly Iowa for whatever reason) and an awesome time of witnessing. I had only a few really great conversations, but I was only part of that army. I saw my friend Aaron talking with some atheists who were so intrigued they are going to hang out with him soon. So cool. We are going back this week (Thursday-Saturday I think) and are excited to see what God has there. It's amazing. Please pray for miracles to happen at the Mormon Miracle Pageant.

(Dead End...Get it?)