ootah.

last spring i got the awesome opportunity to go to utah on a mission trip with some awesome people from my school. we worked with the utah partnership for christ organization in ogden utah. they own a blue house right across the street from weber university. weber is a public state school but their campus hosts a institute of religion that is sponsered by the lds church. so a few of the days we walked across the street and tried to talk to people about their beliefs. we also rented a class room and showed the movie the lost book of abraham: investigating a remarkable momrmon claim. and then had a short time of questions and answers.
on sunday we went to a mormon ward service and it was so dead. first the men and women meet separately for a study and discussion. then everyone meets together, they sing some hymns(lyrics to "praise to the man" look at them!), a few people from the congregation talk, and they take communion (they use water and leavened bread). its sad.

we were invited to come back fro their family home evining that week. so we got to go on a beautiful hike up a mountain. at the top there was a waterfall and snow. it was awesome to see God's creation. but also saddening because we shared it with a group of people who are blinded by deception. its so hard to talk to mormons because they consider themselves Christians. but the very term Christian means Christ follower and they are following a false prophet who contradicts Jesus's teachings.
after the hike everyone went back to the school for root beer floats. this is a picture of some of the friends we made. i feel corny saying this, but why not stop and take a moment to pray for them right now?
a big part of what we did in utah was packaging dvds. someone had paid alot of money to get this jesus christ/joseph smith dvd (watch it online) produced and printed up. and we had to put stickers on them and put them in a door hanger bag. this is a picture of a guy form the Simpson team working on stickers. we worked with a teams from the masters college, oaklahoma baptist university, and simpson.

we went to temple square (a major tourist attraction) a few times. the downtown salt lake area is completely owned by the lds church. there is a temple, history museum, research center, meeting hall, conference center, theater, and much more. this is a picture of the childrens museum. look at the pentagram on the wall. crazyness. the architecture is so beautiful but also freaky. this building is just creepy looking. it reminds me of the castle in beauty and the beast when it is still under the spell.
utah was a crazy trip. i dont know how else to explain it. basically we left our somewhat christian nation and entered a mormon domain. and guess what... cbu sent another team back to utah for thanksgiving. Andrew is going back and co leading the team. he is a cool guy who likes strawberry milk.

he is also a real photographer. a real one. so pray for the utah team this week.