Cleaning up after others, it’s what we need to do.

One night it was late and I thought about going home. It was a holiday week and I knew I was going to miss one day of work that week. I knew that I had to make extra money because of the day I was going to miss. It was 2:30 in the morning and I was going to come home but there were bonuses around and I thought that they were given to me as blessings so I couldn’t leave them.

I got a five dollar bonus and waited for a guy for 10 minutes and he didn’t show up. That five dollar bonus held me there long enough that it had become an $8.50 bonus in that area which is very cool. I thought, I’ll get this one ride and then I’ll go home. I drove around for about 20 minutes with no rides, dejected I thought, it’s time to go home. It was 3:20 and about time to be done because I was feeling it.

I started driving home after stopping to use the restroom at Mavrick. For those of you don’t know, Mavrick has the very best restrooms of all of the convenience stores. They block them off sometimes at night so that drug users don’t go in and do drugs in them but they let police officers and rideshare drivers use them even though they say closed.

I decided to leave my phone on so that I didn’t lose the bonus even though I was going to the restroom and getting a drink. I was coming out of the Maverik on fifth S. and fifth E. when I’d finally got impatient and had decided to turn off my phone. I didn’t think anyone needed a ride and I wasn’t about to wait another half hour.

I started onto the on-ramp and I felt the intense prompting not to turn it off so I didn’t and within a minute I had a ride. I had to go clear over to Redwood Road to pick up a guy to take him 20 minutes south.

I thought, this is great! It’s going the right direction! I picked up the guy right by the movie theaters on Redwood Road and we drove straight down Redwood Road for 20 minutes. That’s a lot of time! He seemed a bit dirty but I got over that really quick. I was having a prompting that he was the reason why I stayed out late, he was the reason why I have been given the bonus that made me hang on 40 minutes after the rides stopped.

We started talking and I asked him about his family. He said he had a wife and two twin boys that were five. She was the one who had ordered the ride. As we started to drive, I felt that I needed to talk to him but I needed to bring it up in a way that wouldn’t offend him so he wouldn’t get me in trouble.

He was a native Spanish speaker but spoke very good English and normally I speak English with those people because I remember how frustrating it was on my mission for people to speak English to me when I was trying to speak Spanish. To me it said that they didn’t think I spoke well and it was a bit offensive. I didn’t want to offend him.

I asked him if he spoke Spanish and he said yes that it was his native language. I asked him if he would critique my Spanish. He said yes and we started talking in Spanish. He said, wow, you speak really well. He told me I didn’t even have a gringo accent. He asked me how I learned it so well.

I told him I learned it one night when I left the TV on the Spanish channel while I slept. We laughed and then I told him that I learned it on my mission in Argentina. He said that he heard the Argentine accent and figured it must be something like that. He said he had lots of friends that he knew that were missionaries.

He went on to tell me the story about how he was Christian but had investigated the church some years back. He told me that he went to church every week for a couple of years but then he found out that he wasn’t welcome anymore. Welcome anymore?! I said who the heck told you that you’re not welcome?

He told me that two women who had been missionaries at one time came up to him and told him that he needed to be baptized or that he should quit coming to church. They told him the church was only for people who were baptized. He told me that he had already been baptized and that he didn’t need feel the need to be baptized and that if he wasn’t welcome at church he didn’t want to be there so he quit going.

I told him that was hogwash. I showed him a picture of a man that I baptized named Ruben Bienchetti. Ruben attended church every week for 12 years, he held service positions in his ward and even spoke in church one time yet had not been baptized. I told him that most of the members of the ward weren’t nearly as faithful as Ruben and he did it when he was ready. He did it when he finally felt the spirit had testified to his heart.

I told him that the church is a hospital for sinners and not a museum for perfect saints and that everyone should be there coming closer to Jesus Christ regardless of if they’ve been baptized yet or not. He had been going to church with his friends and I asked him what they thought about what these women said. He said they didn’t hear it and he didn’t want to bring it up because he didn’t want to cause trouble. I told him that I specialize in causing trouble!

I asked him what it was that he thought was the main difference between the Christian church that he attended and the Mormon church. He said that it was the Book of Mormon. He said the Book of Mormon was unverified because no one had the writings and that’s why he decided he would stay with the Christian church.

I knew right away this wasn’t the truth. I knew he hadn’t prayed about it. I also knew that he felt that it was true but that the circumstance had pushed him in this direction. I asked him if I could talk to him a little bit about the Book of Mormon and its validity. He said yes.

I started with Ezekiel and the sticks. How there was a stick of Judah and the stick of Joseph and how later they would be brought together in his hand to be one testimony of Jesus. I asked him what the stick of Judah referred to and he said the Bible. I asked him what the stick of Joseph referred to and he thought for a long while and said I don’t know. I told him that it was the Book of Mormon. He said, that makes sense. I told him about Jesus coming to America and about the findings in archaeology in Central America that point to Christ coming. He had heard a little bit about those but hadn’t put it in this context. He said, that’s interesting. I said, that’s true.

I told him that the Book of Mormon was proof that God loved everyone in the world not just the people in Jerusalem. I told him that this is why he came to America, to this man’s ancestors to teach the gospel. He told me that the religion of his ancestors was a bloodthirsty sacrificial religion. I told him that the religion of his ancestors was Jesus Christ. I pointed to some archaeology in central America that makes that point and he said, wow.

I prayed for guidance to know what I should say next and the spirit told me to bear my testimony. I bore my testimony of Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon and the reality that Christ visited America and that he showed us the way to return to him. I told him that these things could be known by him through the Book of Mormon.

The spirit was in the car at this point and I could feel it and I could tell he was feeling it. His heart was being softened and his mind was being opened. I asked him, what was your real objection? What was the thing that made you investigate for so long without being baptized? He told me that he had been baptized as an adult in the water by someone who he believed had authority to do so and that the only thing the missionaries and the members wanted to do was tell him that his baptism didn’t count, that it was wrong and evil.

I thought for a second about this man. He was going to church and being fed by the spirit. He wanted to be in church and throughout his life he had done the things he felt were right to bring him closer to Christ including being baptized. Now he went to church and was told that what he had done was evil and wrong. I said that exact thing to him and he said that’s exactly how I feel.

I told him that when Christ came to America the first thing he did was gave the people authority to baptize and instructed them all to be baptized. I told him that the cool thing is that every single one of them had previously been baptized. I asked him that if they had all been previously baptized why did Christ make them be baptized again. He said he didn’t know. I told him it’s because when Christ came he brought a new level of discipleship, a new level of blessings and to receive that new level you had to have this new baptism and it had to be done the way he instructed by the authority he gave.

I told him we have that authority and we have that baptism and that we don’t explain that very well. I told him that Christ loved him for his decision to be baptized. It made him happy that he had done that to demonstrate his fidelity and love but that now he was being offered new blessings and a new level and he wanted him to step up to that level. I told him it’s like there’s this big box of blessings that you can have once you get to that level.

He said, that makes more sense. Regardless of what people had actually said what he heard was a condemnation and repudiation of what he had done in the past to come to Christ. It offended him and he had felt like at the time he had done the best he could and that it wasn’t evil.

I asked him if he wanted that box of blessings for he and his family. He said yes! I want that! I asked him if he was still friends with the people that went to church. He said yes and even some of the missionaries have come back from their missions and he was still friends with them. I told him to reach out to them and they will help him find that box and those blessings if he’s willing to take that step up to that new level. He said he would talk to them when he got up that very day.

We were sitting outside his apartment by this time. He had to go in and I had to go home. The spirit was burning and we were both feeling it. He told me, you know, there’s a reason why it was you that gave me a ride tonight! This is what I needed to hear.

I told him I hear that all the time. He said well, it’s true. He walked into his house but one thing I know is that it was totally worth waiting 40 minutes at 3 o’clock in the morning to have that experience.