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Show CALIFORNIA MISSION LETTER .! . 626 E. 5 St. Long Beach, Cal. Mr. j David Williams, Dear friend:- It is with a heart full of thankfulness ' and gralkude to you that I read our ' Emery Cuunty Progress which is so full of the home news. ! I am laboring in this coast city of a-bout a-bout 45.000 inhabitants who are the ' constituents of the 42 churches which are all calling "Lo, here is Christ, and Lo, there is Christ." You see, with 42 ' , ministers and a bunch of infidels to bat- j I tie against two Mormon Elders, it keeps ! us quite busy. I am delighted with the j I prospect here though. We have a I I Mormcn branch of about 150 people, who are doing a very good work in Sunday Sun-day School and Sacramental meeting every Sunday. I wish to relate that nothing less than a miracle occured here since 1 came. A lady by the name of Sister Stone was j paralyzed so that she was in bed and ! could not walk and had little or no use ! of her limbs so Elder Rose.Stewart and I myself were called to come and administer admini-ster to her. Elder Rose administered the oil and anointed her and I was called call-ed upon to seal the anointing. I did so, rebuking the disease in ihe name of Jesus Christ and to our joyful surprise she sat up in bed and with tears in her eyes said "I am well, feel the grip in J my hands, etc." She shook hands with us and wanted to get up but we said we thought she had better remain in bed and rest. The next Sunday she was ;it Church and has been attending ever since. I have only had the door shut in my face once and been called a 1 ar twice and happy to say it was when I w.is getting the best of the argument and was shooting too many facts at th. in. We held what Elder Rose calls the most successful street meeting that he has ever attended since he came into the mission field. It was a hummer, we had about 300 or more people there. I I hope you will pardon the reference to myself, but 1 must say that I was blessed abundantly with the spirit of God and by request I was the only speaker. The subject was "Is there a God and the kind of a God to worship." I spoke first proving that thre is a God, from an educational and natural standpoint, then went to the Bible and showed that God is a living, sympathic, all-knowing, lovable, personal being. When they learned I was a Mormon one old infidel yelled out "What about the Mountain Meadow massacre." I shut him up by asking him to let uh consider one subject sub-ject at a time, and said I would answer those side questions when we came to the subject to which was related. I told the crowd we were Mormons from Utah and were here buying our own literature and giving it away free to all who would read it, but that we did not want them to receive it if they did not read it. The result was we handed out 500 tracts and pamphlete. This Mormuri church is the greatest organization or-ganization and philosophy under the sun. The greatest educators are saying say-ing so. We know that whenever the Gospel has been on ear.h as recognized by God our E ernal Father, his people has been and oi a temple building people where work is done for the living and the dead. Tne true Gospel of Christ must have the same organization that existed in his time with apostles, prophets, teachers, teach-ers, bishops, deacons, priests, e?. This people are fulltilling the prophecies prophec-ies of the Holy men of God who spoke as they were moved uoon by the power of the Holy Ghost. In Psalms it says, "Truth shall spring out of the earth,' and righteous shall look down from heaven." leiah the propnet said in the XXIX ch. 4-1U, "It is the voice of a fallen people whispering out of the dust." This is to come at a time when the earth is drunken, but not with wine staggering under the influence of false doctrine, and without Prophets and Seers. This is Hie marveious work and a wonder that would come fortn in the last days to confounj the leaders of religion re-ligion who have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinances and breken the everlasting covenants. We do not only say that we believe this message of Mormoni.sm to be true but we go the world one much stronger and say we know and our church school boys are full of the knowledge which the unauthorized ministers of the world do not posses;). I haye been so very busy that I did not finish the shore letter to you but now that I have a breathing spell 1 will continue. Last vVednesday my companion and myself went down on the pier, by the way, the pier is a large platform which is built out into the ocean and it is the place where all denominations hold public pub-lic meetings and debates. We advertised adver-tised our 2d muring on the black board and to our surprise the advertisement drew a crowd of about 500 people not-' not-' withstanding the fact that they knew we were Mormons from Utah. My companion spoke about 20 minutes on "The Unchangeable Gospel," I followed fol-lowed for an hour and fifteen minutes on "The Mormon view and appreciation of the ten commandments." The Lord blessed us beyond our expectations and the crowd gave us a hearty applause when I finished. We handed out 750 tracts and pamphlets which is an exUa record for a single street meeting. A minister followed me and challenged me for a debate on the subject of "Did Christ teach to baptise in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and the Godhead." j He began by saying be only wanted , 30 minutes, but he wandered all over every subject imaginable and spoke an hour when the crowd hissed him off the platform because of his mud slinging, etc. The crowd was calling out "Give the Mormon a chance before it gets to late." I followed, having my scripture to prove my statements and I give my Heavenly Father all the praise for just completely annihilating his argument against us. We received an applause the second time. So you see Zion is growing here. May God bless and prosper the saints in Utah and especially in our home county and now I close wishing you and all friends a very happy and prosperous New Year. Yours truly, T. W. DYCHES Jr. |