April 20, 2015

There I was, sprawled on the member's couch in their basement as Brother Fisher practiced his clinical acupuncture on my neck. Five gargantuan needles stuck out on the left side of my neck while under both of my ears a smaller needle was placed.

 

It wasn't until he had put all of the needles in that he told me, "Now I'm going to connect them to an electric pulse." Like a pebble dropped in a still pond, the electricity rippled through my muscles where each needle had entered. I can honestly say that was the weirdest feeling I've ever experienced. It didn't hurt, well kind of, but it was as if the electricity was coming from within my neck, reaching throughout my body. I will say that afterwards I was so relaxed that I can't even remember what we taught the Fishers following the treatment...my neck feels 100 times better too!

 

Who would have thought I'd be in a basement in Urbana, Maryland, having my neck electrocuted with deep acupuncture, ON MY MISSION? God leaves opportunities in our path that wait until we act upon them to become reality. Pretty sure I'm the only missionary in the Maryland Baltimore mission who's had electroshock acupuncture. Oh yes.

 

The struggle here is finding people to teach. It seems like most, if not all, contacts immediately tell us to go away. Two days ago we pulled into a cul-de-sac in the middle of a huge housing development and immediately when we stepped out of the car I heard a redneck accented, "y'all best be leavin round here." I looked around, didn't see anything, began getting my bag out of the car when I heard the press (I can't type the real word for loading a gun's chamber to fire on the missionary email lol) of a shot gun. Out on the porch of the house in front of us a 50/60 year old lady stood holding her loaded gun, staring at us. Ok, so she couldn't legally soot at us in any circumstance due to Maryland gun laws, but still, who does she think we are? For crying out loud, we're the goofiest most harmless looking teenagers imaginable. Here was the guardian of the cul-de-sac warding us off for "trespassing".

 

Moments like those have opened my eyes to how others may perceive my accidental judgments. I'm grateful for experiences like those so I can treat others as I would want to be treated. I've been studying my hero Enoch in the book of Moses chapters 6-8 constantly and how he offended every man in the land and how the word spread that a crazy man was walking around. Meanwhile those that took a second to sincerely listen to what Enoch had to say concerning their eternal happiness were part of the translated city of Zion later on. What we have to do is convert ourselves to be worthy vessels of God's hand to become His instruments in caring for our literal brothers and sisters around us. When the opportunities present themselves, it is up to us to seek after them.

 

Don't run off Jehovah's Witnesses with a shotgun.

 

:)

 

xoxo

Elder Burgess