LeRon's Missionary Experience

You hear all the time from me (Colleen).  And I've done several posts just today.  Now here is an experience that LeRon had this week at the Chemist's (the drugstore).

I had a wonderful missionary experience yesterday in a drugstore that I want to record.  We have heard and found it to be true that almost all Kenyans are very polite and will listen to a short missionary message without rolling their eyes or cutting you off.  We have found this not only to be true, but that some Kenyans are quite interested.  This happened to me yesterday.  I was in a pharmacy buying some more of the Singulaire antihistamine pills.  As the druggist finished telling me about the pills, I pulled out an Articles of Faith card, which I always carry, and proceeded to explain a bit about the church and what we believe and handed him the card. 

The store was empty of customers.  There was another druggist standing next to him.  He had been a few steps away but reached out for the card and asked if he could have one too.  I had 4 in my pocket total and 5 or 6 would have been better but they said they would share.  I turned to my left and there was another girl who worked there listening.  She took one and the cashier girl walked over and all 4 took the cards and began to read.  One of the girls read my name tag and asked what “Latter Day Saint” meant.  So I explained about the restoration and latter-day versus former-day.  I mentioned a few things that had been restored like Priesthood and Temples and the Book of Mormon.  It turned out that the first druggist had just been recently married and so I asked him if he loved his wife.  Of course he said yes and then I said that Colleen and I had been married 41 years and I talked about the world’s view of marriage “till death do you part” versus “families can be together forever”.  The other druggist then asked if that really meant what I said it meant and I said yes.

I felt I had taken quite a bit of time so I just invited them all to call the missionaries whose phone number I had written on the cards and to look online at mormon.org for more information.  One of the girls lives close to one of our chapels so she was familiar with the Church, at least where it was.  Anyway, it was a very choice experience to have the opportunity to tell people about our Church and its beliefs and have them all listen so attentively.  I need to work on my presentation some more.  I am not sure if I testified enough, in retrospect.  Anyway, it left me on a spiritual high that lasted throughout the day.  A mission is quite an adventure.