We experienced the lowest of lows
followed by the highest of highs this past week. And the events came on the
heels of one another. Wednesdays is when we visit with those individuals we are
teaching and encouraging who are living in Crystal Falls, MI. We needed to
slightly change our schedule to accommodate one individual who would be leaving
town. We were looking forward, however, to our regular 2:00 meeting with Rich
Matson. He had invited a member of his new band, at this fellow’s request, to
meet us. We hoped to have the opportunity to explain a little about the church
and the Faith to which Rich belongs. We felt this was great progress as Rich
was mostly inactive when we met him with some mistaken ideas about the church
of his own. Rich, with his dad, has been reading the Book of Mormon and along
with lessons from “Gospel Principles”, is re-discovering the Faith of his
youth. The fellow arrived on schedule and after introductions stated, very
boldly, that he believed there should be no “man” between him and God. We of
course agreed that all should seek to establish a personal relationship with
God through prayer, which gave us an opportunity to introduce the importance of
prophetic callings today. Well, it became obvious that something set him off in
that line of conversation. He became visibly angrier and more upset. It got to
the point where we couldn’t proceed and we apologized for anything we might of
said that upset him. He wouldn’t accept the apology. He, instead, kept on
escalating his points that by now had gotten completely away from where we had
started. The feeling was very dark. We tried to completely change the subject
by asking to see the guitars he brought, which he makes himself. He shared his
guitars, which were beautiful, but underneath he was still simmering. We left
for our next appointment and, as we later discovered, Rich tried to reason with
the fellow to no avail. It was a disaster, Rich was heartbroken. This man had
insulted his friends (us) right in Rich’s home and Rich's new band was dissolving
right before his eyes. Needless to say Rich went through some extreme highs and
lows during the next day or two. He eventually discovered that this fellow has
a history of being slightly unbalanced. Rich is grateful he found out
sooner instead of later. The whole process caused him to discover where he
actually stood in relation to the truths of the revealed gospel versus the pull
of the world. He chose truth and light. In a Facebook post about this brouhaha,
Rich revealed he had planned to share, for the first time in many years, his
testimony with this fellow. We are so proud of him.
The very next appointment was
with the Carlson family. We have been talking about the baptism of their
daughter for the past year. When we first brought it up her parents were dead
set against it. In their view she was too young, even though her brother had
been already been baptized at age eight. Over the past year Sister Johnson has
been teaching Primary lessons and we have been teaching the Missionary lessons.
Lately we could feel the mood and spirit during our lessons change. So after a
very challenging encounter just minutes before, we were elated when Sister
Carlson announced that her daughter wants to be baptized before we leave to go back
home. There are still some challenges to be worked out but the main wall has
been breeched.
Other adventures for the week included helping out the young missionaries who also serve here in Iron Mountain. It seems that last Thursday their water heater gave up the ghost. Needless to say we have neither the authority nor the ability to resurrect dead appliances. The result was us providing showers for Elder Christensen and Elder Dusterhoft. Elder Dusterhoft is from Green Bay on what they call a "trial" mission. He is now in his second transfer which will be his last before he gets his regular call. Individuals on trial missions usually have some kind of mild physical or mental disability which could preclude them from serving a regular full-time mission so they get to try one out, usually within a couple of hundred miles of their homes. He is doing great. Later that same day we had the opportunity to feed four Elders who were in the midst of exchanges. After we had gone to bed the mission president called and told us that the two Jr. Companions, who had been left here together, were having problems with their CO detector. They couldn't get it fixed that night so they ended up spending the night on our floor. Such is the occasional emergency. You get used to it.
Another bit of good news is the creation of the IronMountainBranch Facebook page. Rich Matson (yes the same "Rich" as in the first paragraph) was able to set it up last Wednesday. By Sunday we had over 80 friends. Fantastic. Not all of them are current members. Some are former members that moved out, some years ago. Some are former missionaries who served here. It is an eclectic group with a nice number of current active and less-active members. The Branch Presidency is excited to be able to use our Facebook presence to communicate with members. Rich was called to be my assistant secretary in the Elders Quorum so we work on it together.
We are grateful to the Lord for His tender mercies,
Elder and Sister Johnson
Here is the typical Yooper sense of humor of a on display. We saw this returning from District meeting a couple of weeks ago.
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