Cherokees up the wazoo!

This week was pretty awesome. Monday for p-day, our district decided to do something amazingly original and innovative... we played basketball. Well, lemme rephrase that: the other guys played while I attempted. Anyhoo... we met some awesome people this week, along with some crazies, so I'll tell you about the crazies first. So we met a guy named William. He was riding his bike and stopped to talk to us. We asked him what he believed, and he told us that he was Pagan. So... not knowing a whole lot about that, I asked him what it was and how he came to believe that. So he told us that he decided to be pagan because his mom was baptist and his dad was Cherokee. (i'm still working on the connection there). The discussion went downhill from there. He was bs-ing so much! So he told us about how he usually steers clear of mormons (remember, HE's the one that approached us!) because apparently there's still a war going on between the mormons and the cherokees. WHO KNEW?! That's why, he said, there are no mormons in Oklahoma. (?!) I told him that there was a temple there, and he said that its small, on the border, and the mormons never leave it out of fear of the cherokees. Hmmm. Then he told us that he used to be a sniper in the military, his nickname was "God", and that he still works for the government but he can't tell us what (with very dramatic facial movements while he's telling us this). THAT's why he rides a bike... to stay in such good shape. (he had the hugest beer belly ever). So yeah... that was fun. Merely minutes later, we met a man named Timothy, who wouldn't even TOUCH the Book of Mormon out of fear of being cursed. Where do these people come from?! Anyhoo... I told you that we met some cool people as well. Last week we met a girl named Samantha, and this week we went back to teach her. The Spirit was SO strong. Not only had she actually read & highlighted 3 chapters in the BoM, but she had tons of questions, and she set a goal for herself of reading 2 chapters in the BoM every day. GOLDEN! We also met 2 sweet ladies who were cherokee. Despite what crazy William said, they loved us! They opened the door and said that our church was very close to what they already believed and invited us in. THEY told US that Christ had visited the America's. We were like "Uh... yeah!" They also told us that their chief person preaches from the Book of Mormon, so we're going to track him down, teach him, baptize him, and convert the whole tribe! Then Friday was an interesting day. Everyone we talked to just wanted to bash. We were talking to this Baptist kid and his mom, and they were being stoopid, and so I got prideful. What I should have done was tell them to have a nice day and walk away. What I did do was tell them to go and get their Bible and proceeded to show them why they were wrong. The thing with Bible-bashing is that it never gets anywhere. Even when I plainly showed him where he was mistaken, he just moved on. At one point they told us that President Monson was the anti-Christ and we were all going to hell, but when we eluded that they wouldn't be as happy because they rejected the fullness of the gospel they yelled at us for judging them. Ugh. So we went home and cooled off (both physically and mentally) and headed back out. The next guy we talked to started being belligerent right away. Poor guy, he never had a chance. We were already all warmed up from the people before. Luckily we were smarter that time and we left quickly. So that was fun... and frustrating. Saturday was one of the most awesome days of my mission. There's a lady named Judy that I taught for the 3 months while I was in LC 3rd ward. She'd been taking the discussions for about 2 1/2 years. Saturday she was baptized. There were 12 missionaries there, and that wasn't even everyone. It was SO awesome! Then that night the stake had a roadshow, which was pretty sweet. Our ward (2nd) won, because they frickin ROCKED! Anyhoo... yeah, that was my sweet week. Love ya! -Elder Borgia