Tag Archives: Manti

Preparations For Our Annual Mission Trip To Utah

April 17, 2008 6:03 pm / Leave a Comment /

It is that time of year again. For those readers who may be new to our blog, every year we take a team of Christians to Manti, Utah (pronounced man-tie) to street witness to the Mormons who attend the Mormon Miracle Pageant. Since 1967 the Mormon Church has presented a pageant every year at the Manti temple grounds. This pageant is an outdoor play that depicts the beginnings of Mormonism through the trek out West and up to its present day.

This highly professional drama is approximately one and a half hours long and includes scenes from the Book of Mormon. Average nightly attendance is 10-15,000 people. The temple grounds open at 6:00 PM, but since the pageant does not start until after dark (9:30), Mormons will typically walk around town and visit vendor’s booths and local stores. The streets surrounding the temple grounds are closed to traffic so this gives Christians a wonderful opportunity to stand in the streets, give out tracts to passing Mormons, and engage in fruitful witnessing conversations.

This short-term mission trip is unique in that before you can share your faith, you must be able to defend it. Evidence Ministries will equip team members to be able to give a reason for the hope we have as Christians with gentleness and respect. (1st Peter 3:15) The camaraderie and fellowship one experiences on this mission trip is worth the cost of the trip itself. The spiritual growth that team members undergo on this trip is amazing to see. The dates for the trip are June 10-15 and/or 15-22, 2008.

Even if you cannot come on the mission trip, you can still attend the training and learn more about Mormonism and how to witness to Latter-day Saints. Although the training is designed to equip Manti team members for the mission trip to Manti, it will be beneficial for those who would like to learn more. The seven weeks of training will consist of;

April 21st- Week one: Introductions and Mormon Puzzle Video.
April 28th- Week two: Understanding Mormon salvation and exaltation.
May 5th- Week three: The Impossible Gospel of Mormonism Part 1.
May 12th- Week four: Impossible Gospel of Mormonism Part 2.
May 19th- Week five: God Is Not a Man.
May 26th- Week six: Sharing the Gospel with a Latter-day Saint.
June 2nd- Week seven: Role playing.

Call Evidence Ministries for time and directions. 210-340-TRUE (8783). Childcare is available with seven days notice.

Here is a short video that describes what it is like to be a witness for Jesus Christ to the Mormon people.

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Sharing The Gospel With Mormons in Manti, Utah

July 2, 2007 5:07 pm / Leave a Comment /

Here is another Manti video created by Eric Hoffman of One Living Truth Ministries. We were able to minister with Eric and his wife this year in Manti. The picture to the right is of the Hoffmans engaged in tag-team witnessing. The video is below.

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Manti 2007 Video

June 30, 2007 6:58 pm / 1 Comment /

Check out a video about this year’s Manti trip. Aaron Shafovaloff of Mormonism Research Ministry put some pictures together with a song that ended up becoming the unofficial theme song for this year’s mission trip. Every night of the pageant the Christians would get together under a light pole, sing and pray before we hit the streets. Nearly every praise and prayer session ended with us singing this song. It is a very moving experience.

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Manti Journal-6 2007

June 22, 2007 8:36 pm / 2 Comments /

Tuesday, June 19th 2007

We had an interesting thing happen tonight. Becky was handing out tracts and saw a group of people walking towards her. She offered them a tract and it turns out that the group was from a Lutheran church in Denton Texas. The youth pastor, Ron Dupree, had heard me speak at a Lutheran workers conference at Concordia Lutheran Church some time last year. He was interested in Manti and e-mailed back and forth with Becky a couple of times about the possibility of them bringing a team up to Manti and having us do some training. Becky was freaked out when Ron greeted her by name, “Hello Becky.”

Totally unbeknownst to us, they had decided to come. There were a total of 10 people in their team. I thought it was funny that the first person they encountered on the street was Becky.

The beginning of my night was spent speaking with one of the local cops, Mark. I noticed that he had skateboard tape on the handle of his gun. Some times shooters will do that to help with their grip on the gun. Mark and I spoke about a lot of things, but not little of anything of a religious nature.

The only other conversation of note was with a guy named CJ. He was on the fringe of a small group of Mormons who were talking to a Christian from Salt Lake named Robert. The dude is a walking library. CJ was trying to jump into the conversation to break it up. I stood next to him and asked if he had a question for the guy speaking (Robert). He said that he really didn’t, he just wanted to make comments. I told him that I would like to hear his comments.

CJ was angry with Robert’s sign, Josephlied.com. He was telling me that we didn’t have an invitation to be there and that what we were doing was rude because we always started out with bad news. Mormons are always saying that we should just talk about what is positive in our religion without saying anything negative about theirs.

I pointed out that since this was a public event, we didn’t need an invitation to be there and then asked what if he served a mission. When he said he did, I asked him what the first lesson was about. He wasn’t sure what I was getting at so I reminded him about the apostasy. He then admitted that Mormonism would make no sense without the apostasy, i.e., the idea that all of Christendom was fallen. I asked him what the difference was in us starting out talking about the problems of Mormonism when they start out talking about the problems of Christianity. I think that was a new thought for him.

Later on in the conversation he said that he knows lots of Christians and that they always accuse Mormons of focusing on works and not grace. He tried to tall me that they believe in grace also. He then said, “We believe in grace too. Yes, we believe that you have to be baptized… and yes, we need to do temple works… and then there is performing the ordinances and keeping the commandments.” I interjected, “And all those other works.” He repeated, “And all those other works, but we really believe in grace!”

I thought it was very telling that he didn’t even see the problem with his last statement.

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Manti Journal-5 2007

June 21, 2007 8:13 pm / Leave a Comment /

Saturday, June 16th 2007

Part 2
The days are already running together. I passed out a lot of tracts again and got into some short conversations, but nothing very memorable. Since I don’t remember much from Saturday, I thought I would just post some pictures of Becky, James and Rosanne from some of their conversations. I think their evenings went better than mine conversation-wise.
Pictures from left to right. Rosanne talking with a group of Mormons. Becky praising God. Rosanne’s conversation from another angle.

James helping Pastor Rodney with his internet connection at home. Rosanne cutting hair. James going through the Impossible Gospel with a group of LDS kids.
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