Mormon Missionary & Cancer Survivor!: Greenie Fire! A SON IS BORN

-------- Forwarded Message --------

Subject:	Greenie Fire!
Date:	Mon, 28 Aug 2017 16:05:50 -0500
From:	Brett Hogg

Note: when a missionary trains a new missionary - they become a "dad".. so funny. A "Greenie" is a brand new missionary entering the mission area (think brand new tree that is green).

A SON IS BORN

What a week fam. First of all, my son's name is Elder Rodriguez. He's from North Carolina, hes 25, and the only member of his family! He joined the church almost 4 years ago, when a friend he had, who was inactive, invited him to church, and then showed up with the missionaries at his house. A couple months later hes being baptized with his best friend, who came with him to the missionary lessons. Then a couple years later he felt like he should serve a mission, so he sold his 2016 Honda Civic, and quit his job as an account and loans guy at the bank and went on a mission. Its not really fair, I don't really even get to train him, hes pretty much already there. I'm just basically showing him how to use the apps on the tablets, and teaching him the schedule lol.

Also we had stake conference and it was nuts. The stake presidency planned this whole big thing for the saturday session. It included a baptist preacher, a muslim imam, and an african gospel choir. The stake here is part of some "interfaith council". We had this big Juneteenth celebration in our gym with a baptist church in the area, and a muslim guy from a local mosque. And now the same churches were invited to our stake conference. They also work with the family history center there. So the meeting started with this African gospel choir singing (it was really good) and when they where introducing themselves at the pulpit, every time they said "Lord" the congregation had to say Amen. They also brought the archbishop of Africa (they where wearing robes and stuff, but I'm pretty sure they weren't Catholic?). Then a baptist guy gave a song, then they had couple talks about the temple and Joseph Smith, and the Book of Mormon, and a female baptist preacher gave a talk on family history, then our own Elder Grieve gave a talk. Then towards the end an Imam got up and said how he likes working with mormons. There was clapping too after certain parts. I wish I could adequately describe how wild this stake conference was.

We also had a cool experience where we were knocking some doors of people I had talked to in the past in this super hispanic apartment complex and there was a guy sitting in the park across the street, and Elder Rodriguez pointed him out and said lets go talk to that guy. So we went over there, and he was a 17 y/o kid, and we were talking to him a little bit, then his friend walked up, and it was kind of clear we interrupted their weed smoking sesch lol. Anyway they were talking to us and were really cool and they said we could come by again (after asking us questions about our churches stance on weed lol). So we texted them again another day and they said we could come by, so we came by the park and they had invited 2 other friends, and we shared the Restoration and they were asking really good questions and reading ahead in the pamphlet and were talking about the BOM, and asked where they could get one, and when we handed them one the one kid asked for a pen so he could write his name in it. It was a cool experience, teaching a micro multitude. Then we taught them how to pray and Elder Rodriguez shared his conversion story and they all felt the spirit, then to tie it all together we heard a gunshot (it had gotten dark during the lesson), so we decided it was probably good to head out.

Anyway, Greenie Fire is when greenies have an enthusiasm for the work, and so you see miracles happen. Usually people who have been out for a long time, and have been rejected thousands of times, get a little jaded. So we've met some really cool people and the work here is looking up.

Anyway love you guys!

Elder Hogg