Missionary Lesson #31: The Book of Mormon matters for EVERYONE

I learned this week that everyone needs to gain a testimony that the Book of Mormon is true in order to truly be converted to Jesus Christ.  Here's the story:

Chris Y is the one investigator we are working with who has a baptismal date set.  He is also the one investigator who attended sacrament meeting this past week.  He stayed for all three hours (even Priesthood, which we sisters do not attend!) and has been taught all of the first three lessons and nearly all of the fourth lesson.  (Only four lessons are required before baptism.)  We have not been able to teach him any lessons with a member present yet, but our Ward Mission Leader (Brother Ortiz) and our Deputy Ward Mission Leader (Brother Carapezza) have both committed to help us teach him with members in the coming week.  He's pretty close to being one of those "golden" investigators.  

One thing that I have learned from teaching Chris is that ALL investigators need to understand the role of the Book of Mormon in conversion, not just the ones that are struggling to believe or desire to believe.  Chris wants to be baptized, and he wants to meet with us.  Once we teach him the doctrine (or "why?") of the Word of Wisdom, we are confident that he will be able to live in compliance with that commandment.  He is scheduled to be baptized on Saturday May 12, and we're pretty sure that he will be able to "pass" the baptismal interview.   But we're not sure if he is going to the Book of Mormon as a way to receive personal revelation.  We're not sure if he understands how to receive revelation in general, or even if he knows what personal revelation will feel like.  We know that he needs to have a firm testimony of the divine origin of the Book of Mormon if he is going to stay converted to the Gospel.  So we plan to have a lesson that covers the role of the Book of Mormon and shows him how to use the index in his paperback Book of Mormon to find scriptures that relate to his own questions of the soul.

For all you people back home, feel free to leave your testimony in the comments section on what revelation feels like for you, or how you came to know that the Book of Mormon is the inspired word of God.  I won't be able to read your comments until August 2013 (when I return home), but I look forward to reading them in sixteen months!