here. I have a couple of stories to tell you people.
First, we went to another revival. Turns out the revivals have been
happening at a Methodist church, not Baptist. It was very crazy. I
regret not taking any pictures or videos of it if I'm honest.
This time the preacher came from Houston. She wore this kind of
robe/dress-like outfit, it was bright red and at the neck it had that
collar with a white square right under her chin like those clothes
Catholic priests wear, which was interesting. She gave a pretty decent
sermon about Judas and how even though what he did was super evil,
betraying Jesus was the act that led to Jesus' destiny, that is, dying
for our sins. Similarly, in our lives there are people who betray us
and bad things that happen, etc. but all those things are pushing us
to our DESTINIES!
Things got a little weird after that, though. The preacher invited the
congregation (it was fairly small) to come up to the front and told
them she was going to unleash "the resurrection power" upon them.
There were two people who came up who (I'm not sure exactly how the
preacher found out about it) had been having some problems with
anxiety, depression, things like that. (They also happened to be the
only two not black people in the congregation besides us.) So the
preacher decided she needed to use the resurrection power to cast the
devils out of them.
The next part was VERY confusing because I am pretty sure there was
speaking in tongues involved and there were "Hallelujah!"s and "Praise
Jesus!"es interjected about every five words. But it seemed like the
preacher was referring to one devil as "Santa Maria" (similarly to the
word "resurrection", it appeared that no one in the congregation knew
what Santa Maria means) and one as "the medicine man". Anyway, the way
she cast out the devils was basically by yelling at them, in the name
of Jesus, to leave this chapel, leave this congregation, leave the
pews, leave the cars in the parking lot, Hallelujah, praise Jesus,
etc. it went on for quite a bit. Then she would chant at the woman in
some sort of non-language (I guess it was her way of speaking in
tongues) and place her hand - very forcefully - on the woman's head.
With this the afflicted woman collapsed to the ground unconscious. The
other woman was sitting on a pew, so when she had the devil exorcised,
she didn't collapse but merely convulsed and shook where she was
sitting.
So that was one very weird experience but everyone was fine afterwards
of course. The other one was at a lesson with an investigator who had
always seemed a little crazy but this time... she was different. We
had a member with us and it was her first ever member-present lesson..
I felt super bad for her!
Anyway, we started teaching the message and Elder Yanzon had our
investigator, My-isha, read a scripture in Romans 8 that talks about
our relationship with God. After she read it he asked "so what does
this verse tell us about who God is?" Instead of answering, My-isha
started to breathe in and out really hard and with every exhale she
would say - or rather vocalize - "lalalalalalala" very quickly under
her breath. She kept doing that for an awkward thirty seconds when
Elder Yanzon asked "are you ok? Is there anything we can do for you?"
to which she replied "no, I'm fine."
So after this sort of thing went on for a bit My-isha stood up and all
of a sudden just threw her head back and wailed
"LALALALALALALALALALA!!" at the top of her lungs. Pretty much all of
us were thinking the same thing, meaning, "what the heck is going
on??" at this point, because nothing we said would get My-isha to
react, but luckily she opened the door and told us we need to get out
now, never come back, we are of the devil, etc. Overall it was super
awkward.
Luckily these experiences aren't super typical of the people we
usually meet, but there are crazy things going on down here. I hope
y'all are enjoying life. This email is super long already so I better
get going.
I love you all, etc.
Elder Taylor
The district. minus sisters.
Habitat for Humanity.
Laser tag. in the church. super lucky.
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