KC Outreach Issue HARVESTREPORT Nauvoo Christian Visitors Center Mission to Mormons 2012 Nauvoo Christian Visitors Center P.O. Box 93 1340 Mulholland Nauvoo, IL 62354 217.453-2372 NauvooChristian VisitorsCenter.org contact@nauvoochristian VisitorsCenter.org dealybread@blogspot.com twitter.com/mission2mormons Summer 2012 LABORING IN PARADISE Latter-day Saints believe that Jackson County, Missouri was the ancient site of the Garden of Eden: The spot chosen for the Garden of Eden was Jackson County, in the state of Missouri, where Independence now stands; it was occupied in the morn of creation by Adam and his associates, who came with him for the express purpose of peopling this earth. (Journal of Discourses, 10:235) Jackson County is also believed to be the future location of the New Jerusalem. Perhaps as a practice run for the construction of that great city, the Mormon Church has begun developing a new neighborhood in North Kansas City. At the center sits a large temple and stake center. Surrounding these religious buildings will be a neighborhood consisting of about 200 upscale homes. For three weeks starting on April 6, the Mormon Church opened the doors of its new temple for public tours. Because of the response of God s people, what would otherwise have been a tremendous public relations boon for the LDS religion in the Kansas City area will instead go down as an advancement for the cause of Truth. We must celebrate what the Lord has done! (More details on the outreach inside) What was especially surprising to me was to meet numerous LDS members who have recently relocated to Western Missouri for the purpose of redeeming Zion in preparation of the end of days. Some of these Mormons are coming from other nations too. We met LDS members from Australia, the Pacific Islands, Latin America, Portugal and East Africa! The importance of the Midwest in the Mormon mind will only be elevated by the recent purchase of 6,000 acres of Missouri farmland north of KC. This property includes the historic Haun s Mill massacre site and Far West settlement. (Deseret News, May 5) Thank you for standing with me in this ministry as Mormonism grows in influence in America s heartland, our nation s capital and beyond. Steve Dealy Executive Director
kansas city,mo TEMPLE OUTREACH...earnestly contending for the faith (Jude 3) O Keith Walker and Marsha Norton serve with our Kansas City outreach. ver the course of three weeks in April approximately 20 evangelical Christians and five apologetics ministries participated in an outreach to those attending the open house for the new Kansas City LDS temple. Together we distributed 17,000 eight-page newspapers that compare Mormonism with Christianity. Many conversations took place each day with LDS members as well as the thousands coming to see the temple out of curiosity. It was not uncommon for some of these discussions to last for hours. This was especially true in regards to the LDS traffic guards who had to work by us throughout their shifts. The three story, 32,000 -square-foot temple drew as many as 100,000 people during the open house. The LDS church claims 25,000 members in the metro Kansas City area, and many of these members brought friends & family to see the temple. I want to thank all of you who supported this outreach. It was evident that God s people were faithfully praying for us! First of all we needed extra funds for printing the outreach materials. Our initial run of 2
10,000 papers was paid for by a very generous gift from the First Baptist Church of Ft. Madison, Iowa. Another way in which God blessed our outreach could be seen in the layout of the temple property and the flow of open house traffic. All cars had to come out of the area on one of two streets, making it rather easy for us to offer literature to those in every car as they exited the event. Even though Spring is a typically wet season, the weather in Kansas City was near perfect for us the entire three weeks of the outreach. Not only did we have dry weather, we also had cloud coverage most afternoons that protected us from the intensity of the sun. What a blessing that was! Special thanks goes to former LDS member Colleen Kauzlarich for graciously providing housing & meals. A base of daily operation was provided by Melody of Praise Assembly of God Church whose building is located across from the new temple. Their warm hospitality enabled us to have the perfect place to go for breaks and meals as well as to have a place to store our literature. Another church that shares facilities with Melody of Praise also joined in support of our outreach. Thank you dear friends! So many of you supported us with your prayers and regular financial contributions. Truly this outreach was a great team effort. We received nearly 900 hits on our mission2mormons.org web site during the temple open house! While we distributed 17,000 papers at the temple, another 8,000 papers are being made available to churches & individuals in the Kansas City area and elsewhere when requested. Steve Dealy, Shane Griffin, Jamie Lundy & Sam Delagardelle share the Gospel outside the LDS temple. Sharon Lindbloom offers literature to temple visitors. 3
Outreach Notes... Sat 4/21 Today the LDS security is giving ongoing, strict instructions to the traffic guards to not give us eye contact, not to stand near us, not to engage in any conversation with us, and to try to get the cars to exit as fast as possible into the parkway and away from our reach. It is sort of a game we play to see who will win each car! At the Celestial level (we have named the various locations where we work after the levels of Mormon heaven), one lady who spoke to me from her car acted hesitantly, then apologetically said that she is from the Salt Lake area and has grown to be very cautious when taking materials from people because of the anti-mormons who frequent the LDS General Conference and other church events. Not wanting her to mistake me for a member of her church, I told her this is not printed by the LDS church, but contains our perspective. She looked puzzled but accepted my paper after realizing I m motivated by a great love for the LDS people. Mon 4/23 Many car loads came through today with 3 or 4 women in them, carpooling senior ladies coming to the open house. Often these were non-lds folk who eagerly took the papers. One Catholic lady came by herself, and since there were no cars behind her I was able to have a good little talk with her about LDS temple weddings and the racist doctrines of Mormonism. She seemed to really enjoy getting a non-mormon insight into these things! Eventually a car came and I had to ask her to drive on. I m sure she enjoyed reading the paper! Of course I see many people reading the papers immediately after they take them. This morning one of our workers (Shane) was slugged in the face by an LDS man from Guatemala. Later in the day a Mormon from Portugal rushed up to shake my hand and By Steve Dealy said that he wanted to thank me for being here because there must be opposition in all things and I was strengthening their testimonies in the LDS church. I told him thank you for the welcome (even though I knew it wasn t sincere) but then he started to rant do you do this outside the Catholic church, and against Buddhists? As I continued to offer our papers to the passing cars, he became more agitated and tried to stop a woman from accepting the paper from me through her car window. That s anti! It s anti-christian! The lady just smiled and drove away with the paper. Not long after that he was escorted away by an LDS worker. Thurs 4/26 A lady named Debbie approached us and said that she had been raised RLDS (known now as Community of Christ) and that because of outreaches like this (only in her case Christians were outside the RLDS Auditorium during their church conferences) she eventually read some Gospel literature and came to know Christ personally! She now attends a Baptist church in Liberty, MO. She was so happy to see us and wanted us to know how this kind of outreach changed her life. The highlight of my day was a long talk I had with a traffic guard at the Celestial level. He became a Mormon about five years ago at the age of 55. Before that he said he had been an anti-mormon. We talked about Joseph Smith s public denials of polygamy, the Bible s teaching on the subject and the occult background of Smith etc. etc. His Bishop drove up two different times while we were talking and I overheard him say that we were good people and that I was asking some very good questions. I don t think he will forget our time together anytime soon! [These journal entries are excerpts taken from just three days of the three week long outreach] 4
Jed and his sister Rose Delagardelle joyfully serving the Lord. Kim Delagardelle and Brian Hoober offer open house guests a paper. 5
Nauvoo Christian Visitors Center P.O. Box 93, Nauvoo, Il 62354 PAID Address Service Requested Kansas City Outreach S NE 3 al ho I-435 Roundabout 1 Temple 1 Celestial 2 Terrestial 3 Telestial Melody of Praise Church Nauvoo, IL Permit NO. 15 ive Dr k e Cre 2 KEY Nonprofit Org. U.S. POSTAGE Stake Center N