Sunday, February 3, 2013

Interfaith Symposium

Dear Family and friends,
We were sitting down to dinner this afternoon and I thought to myself, "It is amazing how good food tastes when you have been fasting for 24 hours".  Seriously, we went to a wedding yesterday and we were sort of tempted to eat some of the refreshments, but we had already begun our fast and so we just went home and went hungry.  It has been a good fast Sunday and we have had some good service experiences this week.
Friday was an interesting day.  We were invited by President Pooran, who is the 2nd counselor in the district presidency to a symposium for the interfaith organization here in Georgetown.  They were organized 3 years ago try to promote harmony within the area among the various major religions of the country.  They invited the Prime Minister of Guyana to be the keynote speaker.  The program consisted of prayers from 5 people, each representing a different religion and 5 others gave thoughts about their beliefs.  Our President Pooran represented the Christian faith.  Then the UN representative spoke and finally the Prime Minister spoke.  

As I was listening to the speakers, I could not feel the spirit in any of their speeches or prayers.  It made me feel so grateful that we have such an abundance of knowledge and truth and especially that we have the Holy Ghost to guide us.  We just don't know what we have in the blessing of having prophets and apostles to guide us.  

The religions that were represented were the Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Universal Apostolic Mystical Council, Baha-i, and Rastafarian religions.

After the initial meeting, people were able to go the booths where they could read the materials that were available for them to learn more about the religion.  Dad and I actually brought home a copy of the Quran from the Muslim faith.

It was quite amazing to us that of the pamplets which we had on our booth, the Books of Mormon and the Restoration of the Gospel pamplets went really quickly.  It seems that the people who were there at the meeting felt a hunger for truth.  We sure hope that they read the materials, especially the Book of Mormon.  Even though we did not feel the spirit in what was spoken, we did feel that there were many honest sincere people there who were searching for the truth.

As I read over Uncle Blaine's letter a few minutes ago, I thought of the fruit trees and thought, with all of that cold weather in Cache Valley, there goes our peach trees.  I loved the picture he sent of the Valley covered in snow and the beautiful Logan Temple.  We sure miss the temple.

We pray for you Amy each day and hope that you are finding satifaction and success in your mission.  Love to all, Elder and Sister Beutler

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