Jack of all trades; what do y'all believe?; o.O ; Christ's atonement is essential to the plan; and a UGA student's qualitative research paper on Mormon missionaries

Heeeelloooooo Flambly!

Great to hear from everyone!

So wow, that's some news about Grandpa McGregor. I'll definitely pray for him. And Grandma. And everyone connected.  (Trenton's grandfather has been diagnosed with cancer of the bile duct)

Congrats to Elise for straight As (again)! Woohoo!

So GB1 sounds like a pretty rockin' ward--lots of strong families. I bet the Elders are well fed =] What's weird will be coming home, seeing them and being able to say to myself, "Been there!" (not to imply that we ever have the luxury of not sharing the gospel, of course). I'm pretty appreciative of the chance I've had to serve a foreign and domestic mission. Interesting how it seems I'm working out to become a "jack-of-all-trades."

So new investigator this week: Xavier! He's pretty awesome. I was on an exchange and Elder Neri (a Spanish Elder) and Elder Barrett contacted him. He seemed to think they were trying to convince him he hadn't been "saved" yet (like our Christian friends from other denominations tend to believe). Of course, that wasn't what they were going for, and he wanted to meet with us and had many, many questions.

So the next day he came to the institute, sat down on a couch and asked me, "So what is it that y'all believe?"
"We believe that throughout time God has called prophets and revealed His gospel. Over time, those prophets were persecuted and killed, and the authority of God's word through his prophets has been corrupted. Man has taken the remainder of that gospel and done the best to preserve our relationship with God that he can. However, the Bible is very incomplete, and frequently unclear as to what we need to do to live with God again.  But, because God loves us, he has called a prophet once again on the earth in these last days to authoritatively teach what God's plan is, and Christ's church has been restored once again to the earth." (or something like that. Perhaps without so many big words I'm able to come up with as I type =])

And he looked at me like this: 
o.O

And we talked about the Restoration. And by the end of the lesson, he was completely non-combative. We had talked about baptism a bit with him, and he seemed reluctant to admit that authority is necessary to perform ordinances and that baptism being essential to salvation. We set up a return appointment for the next day.
Aaaaaaaand taught him the Plan of Salvation, and how Christ is central to the Plan because of his atonement (which is something he admitted to not having understood before). And he told us straightforwardly again that he didn't necessarily agree with us about baptism and salvation, but that he would definitely read the Book of Mormon and pray to know if it's true, and if Joseph Smith was a prophet. And that if he received an answer, he would be baptized.

I'll tell you one thing--I'll always put my money on the Book of Mormon.

So that was one of the more interesting experiences this week. Everyone else is moving along as well! Remind me to tell you about Mandy next week =]

Love you all bunches!
Elder Fenton McGregor


Here's something interesting --  We put pictures in E McGregor's Dropbox so he can just look at them there without downloading.  I noticed in his Dropbox a document he'd written in a conversational-ish tone about missionary work and asked him about it.  He said, "It's actually something I wrote for a student here at UGA doing a qualitative research report on Mormons. His final paper is attached. Pretty interesting =]"  And it was interesting to me.  Below is a link to the paper if you'd like to read it as well.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13449869/Final.docx

Oh, and p.s. - he FINALLY got his package of summer slacks!  What a relief with the weather there in the 90s every day.