Week 13: An Experiment Upon the Word

This week, we did the Book of Mormon experiment! Our mission has been doing it for a while but they took a little break, so this was my first time. Basically, we print out copies of the pages of the Book of Mormon and set up a cute display at the university, and then we ask people if they want to participate in a social experiment! We all wear normal street clothes and take off our tags and call each other by our first names, which feels a little weird but it kind of fun! We tell them we're giving them a page of a religious text to get unbiased opinions and ask them to highlight references to God and Jesus Christ and anything else that stands out to them, which is the easy part, because afterwards we tell them it's the Book of Mormon and basically try to gauge their interest in learning more by "asking inspired questions." A few people asked me what book the page was from before they read it and I said I couldn't tell them until after because we want the experiment to be unbiased and one guy was like, "oh, it's definitely the Old Testament" and then in his


comments wrote all about how it was about the pope's relationship with the church. Which it is clearly not. Another time, I gave a guy a page in Helaman that was mostly about Cezoram being murdered on his throne. It was pretty fun.

We were teaching a girl named Natasha a few months ago, but she was super busy and stopped responding to us until we asked her if she was still interested in learning more about our beliefs and she said yes! So we taught her the plan of salvation with this super cute recent convert who just moved into our ward named Katie, and they both sat with us at church on Sunday! She's so cute and loves Vocal Point and Provo's Most Eligible and BYU! Which is great because I also love all those things! YSA is so fun!

On Saturday morning, one of our STLs was sick so her companion and my companion went out to a primary activity and I chilled (studied) in her apartment while she slept! Good times!

One of the sisters in our zone left her driving login card in our car, so we went to the stake center to drop it off and there was a youth dance going on at the same time, and we were rushing out to get home by curfew at the same time the cool kids were rolling into the dance. That's life, I guess.

We were street contacting one day this week and ended up singing Amazing Grace with this lady who was playing guitar downtown! I think we had more fun than she did. We kind of threw off her mojo.

We played hungry hungry hippos at FHE this week and my comp ripped her pants so we had to staple them together in the church library. Church activities can be very intense.

I went running this week and on our way to the chapel we run past one of those little libraries in someone's front yard so I brought a Book of Mormon to donate to the collection. #thegrindneverstops

We met a man at the bus stop who told us he got baptized last week (not into our church, haha), and that he hasn't been drinking for a year but that he still smokes dope because it helps him feel close to Jesus. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

The first Book of Mormon video came out this week! It was GREAT I had a GREAT time watching it but here is my commentary:

- why are Lehi and Sariah so old? She's still childbearing age I don't know why they made them like 60

-where are Nephi's sisters?? we know he had them!

- Laman and Lemuel are Very Relatable to this point. If I were them I'd probably be murmuring too, haha

On that note, this week's scripture is 1 Nephi 1:20 "...But behold, I, Nephi, will show unto you that the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith, to make them mighty even unto the power of deliverance." My favorite tender mercy of the week was seeing the stars when we got home at night! I love the stars! Look for the tender mercies in your life this week!

If any of you have a really boring Friday night planned, you can watch the Come and See Fireside livestream on Facebook at 7pm mountain time! All of the missionaries in Calgary are putting on a musical family history fireside, so invite your friends for some top-notch entertainment and to see Sister Willis sing in Maori!

Have a great week! Love you lots!

Sister Willis

We did NOT take that many pictures this week so here are some of us and the other sisters at the combined ward luau taking some embarrassing pictures and one of a cute sunrise I saw while I was running one morning!! I will try to take more next week I promise :))