Muslims Can't Be Mormons

This is a paraphrase of the conversation that President Dew had with his wife in the car on the way home from church:

"So it turned out that nice family that came today is Muslim. The husband met with me after church, and Fayez helped translate the story to me. Apparently, the husband had cancer, but the Virgin Mary appeared to him and told him that he would be healed from cancer, and then touched his forehead. She appeared to him several times after that. So then, he decided to become Christian. He went to the Baptist church for about six months, and I'm not exactly sure why he stopped going there, but then I went to the Catholic church. What I understood was he kept going to different Christian churches, and all of them told him that if he wanted to get baptized, he should come to the Mormon church."

Sister Dew: "Oh, so he just wants the ordinance."

"Well, either that or he was a plant*."

"It just broke my heart, but I told him that it's against the law for Muslims to become Christian in Jordan, and we respect the law. So then he asked if he could just come to church without being baptized, and I said that no, it's against the law. Then his wife asked if we could send them to another country, and I said that we don't do things like that. Fayez talked for a long time, without skirting around what I said but he was able to, I think, make things a little bit smoother."

"It just breaks your heart, doesn't it?"

"It really does. Either this was a really good actor, or he was being sincere."

I read Jacob 5 recently. It is a chapter in the Book of Mormon that is a parable for the gathering of the house of Israel. In this parable, the gardener and his servant work hard to try to make the most fruit grow. They end up taking branches of the tame tree and grafting it with the wild tree, and vice versa, and they are successful for a long time, but then all of the fruit starts to go bad. So they are trying to restore the tame branches to the tame tree, and the wild branches to the wild tree. Verses 65 and 66 really stood out to me:

65 And as they begin to grow ye shall ^aclear away the branches which bring forth bitter fruit, according to the strength of the good and the size thereof; and ye shall not clear away the bad thereof all at once, lest the roots thereof should be too strong for the graft, and the graft thereof shall perish, and I lose the trees of my vineyard.

66 For it grieveth me that I should lose the trees of my vineyard; wherefore ye shall clear away the bad according as the good shall grow, that the root and the top may be equal in strength, until the good shall overcome the bad, and the bad be hewn down and cast into the fire, that they cumber not the ground of my vineyard; and thus will I sweep away the bad out of my vineyard.

Just like the gardener didn't want to graft the branches too fast, or "all at once", the gospel cannot be preached to all of the world all at once.

I believe that the Lord has a plan for the gospel to be preached in the Arab world, to the Muslims. It is not now, but the time will come. During the Youth Conference, President Doug prophesied of a day when there will not be a building big enough to fit all of the members in Jordan.

Sigh. Really tough.

Later, the Bradshaws (the other missionary couple here) called, and President Dew said:

"These Muslim people want to be baptized this afternoon, so I told them I'd meet them over at the church around 5:00. We should be there at least a half an hour earlier to be able to fill the font."

It's funny, but not very funny at the same time.

*The Jordanian Government is very suspicious of the LDS church because of its link to the United States. The Jordanian Secret Police, or moghabarat, is more than likely to send a spy to the church to see if we uphold the laws of the land about not letting Muslims convert.





On a TOTALLY different note, I had two dreams about Danny last night!