and the truth shall make you free

Ok, so today is March 1st, 2012. (obviously, its just the logical next thing to say.)
The first two nights we were here in Salt Lake City we stayed with Eileen and Chris Jacobs and their two kids, Halle and Elias. Chris actually grew up in the LDS church so we all had a great conversation for about 3 hours. We studied and read and talked about different beliefs. They were super nice and fed us and were always interested in what we were talking about and how our day was.
So the second day we were in SLC we went out to Temple Square, which is the center of the city.

The whole city is centered around it. Going east you have the streets named "100 East, 200 East, 300 East," etc. Same with North, South, and West.
Backtrack-first we stopped at the Utah Lighthouse Ministry bookstore which is owned and operated by Sandra Tanner, an ex-Mormon and apologist who happens to be the great great granddaughter of Brigham Young! We picked up a copy of the 1830 Book of Mormon (to compare the changes in the current edition) and another book called "Where Does it Say That?" which has photo copies of hard to find Mormon documents with funky doctrine.
Ok, back to Temple Square. We went to the Capitol Building at the top of State Street and parked in thi visitor's center for tourists.

From there we walked down to the temple (while it was snowing) and went to the temple entrance. This is a big no-no. You can't go into the temple unless you've reached a certain something of "Mormon-hood" and received a "Temple Recommend", which, clearly, we don't have. We were stopped very quicklyby a man in an all white suit (which was what everyone was wearing) and redirected to the Visitor's Center. There we talked to these 4 different ladies (in groups of 2), all of which either knew very little or only were invested in what they believed emotionally because it made them "good people". Only one time in my life had I ever seen women LDS missionaries-the rest were men. I was slightly put off by their responses because they had no desire to be able to defend what they believed-feelings were enough for them. From then on I told Marc that I didn't want to talk to the girls anymore, find me a male missionary. He tried to reason with me but I was stubborn and irritated. As we walked through the temple grounds we came upon another visitor's center so in we went. Two missionaries came up to talk to us but in my stubborn refusal to talk to women the conversation didn't progress beyond small talk until I blatantly could no longer ignore it anymore. Sister Kyle asked if I had ever looked into Mormonism. Thus began the 20 minute conversation in which she looked interested, puzzled, intent, many things. She didn't seem to have a very firm foundation and at the end she told me that she wishes she knew the Bible better. Sweet! I told her that she could, she just has to read it with an open mind and let the Holy Spirit teach her. I also told her to read Chuck Smith's commentaries. :) I gave her my number so I hope she calls me and wants to meet up and talk.
It's so funny to see how God works. I was so over talking to women because they wouldn't reason with me and then in God's persistence He brought me this girl with who I had the most fruitful conversation of the day! All in all we talked to about 8-12 people. A very good day!
Wednesday morning we said bye to the Jacobs family and headed into the city. The first stop was the Rescue Mission where we spent two hours unloading boxes of canned food and stocking the pantry shelves.

Next we headed over to the church bookstore to help Lynn (the manager) with stuff. Marc cleaned out the fridges in the coffee shop while I rearranged the audiobooks section. Then we put stickers on about 800 tracts which took about 2-3 hours. We were blessed with dinner after that! The church every Wednesday serves dinner 2 hours before service starts. Very cool for fellowship! It was funny because people were always coming up to us saying, "are you the missionaries?" That sounds so strange to say that I'm a missionary.
We stayed the night with Pastor John and his family. Their house is huge and awesome! The basement has 3 or 4 bedrooms and they're adding on a kitchen! Tiiiiight! Getting in the driveway was a bit tough though. Marc had never driven in the snow before so we were sliding around like crazy! It took about 3 or 4 tries and about 7 minutes before we succeeded.

(this is the van after it had been snowing during church)

Side note: we are now the proud owners of an ice scraper! Something we never thought we, as Californians, would need.
On a somewhat more serious/spiritual note: before arriving here I set it in my mind that most likely I would be either planting or watering seeds because I had never heard of an active Mormon leaving the church before. It turns out that 60% of Calvary Chapel Salt Lake City are ex-Mormons! Praise the Lord! That was a huge encouragement. All of them say that the thing that made them see was just simply reading the Bible and realizing what it says. How amazing to see the power of God's word! We always think it takes these gimmicks or arguments or eloquence of speech but it really is the word!
"And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32
But be in prayer for this city-it's like nothing I've ever seen before. You drive down the freeway and there is just steeple after steeple after steeple. In two miles I counted 7 steeples! Something that Marc and I discussed was the need to pray for their head guy, "the prophet". If he were to see the light and denounce the LDS church it could potentially change millions of lives. Pray for a Paul like conversion in his life.