Christ is the Center!

The sister missionaries asked me to accompany them in the 3rd lesson to Daniel Froelich, an old friend. His father was a colleague of Eldon's in the Forestry department. Daniel has volunteered at the FHC for more years than anyone on the staff. He's a practicing Jew with the beanie and fringe. He had seen the sisters at the stake center and asked for the lessons so he could "answer people's questions."

So they taught the principle of faith, then the principle of repentance and I didn't feel we should go on just yet. So I asked Daniel, "I know you were raised in a Christian home and then converted to Judaism. How do you feel about the Savior now?" He said he didn't believe in him, just God. So I bore my testimony that Christ is the very center of our gospel. This is his church. He is the creator (under the Father's direction), our redeemer, and when it comes time to be judged, he will be our judge and advocate. He can judge us because he died for us. He is our elder brother and loves us. So Sister Shumway picked up on it and read a beautiful messianic scripture out of Isaiah.

Later in the lesson they asked Daniel how he knew there was a God. He couldn't answer. I quoted Eldon saying that one of the tender mercies of God is the leaves turning color in the fall. So then Daniel said the complexity of the world shows there's a God.

At the end they asked Daniel to pray and he wouldn't. I asked, "Don't Jews pray?" He said yes, but only rote prayers. I asked, "If it was something really urgent could you pray from the heart?" So they asked me to pray. I gave thanks for Daniel's many years of service in the FHC and for his testimony of work for the dead. And prayed he would feel the spirit as he reads the Book of Mormon and have a desire to attend church and feel the fellowship of the Saints. He actually lives in our ward boundary. But he weaseled out of their invitation to attend.

The sisters did a good job and it was faith affirming to be in on it.