Are you feeling It?
When I was a missionary, my companion (the missionary I was assigned to work with) and I visited the apartment of a man who hadn't been to church for a while. When we arrived at his place, he invited us in and we asked him how it was going. He proceeded to confess "sins" to us which made me feel uncomfortable because of the nature of the "sins" he was discussing and because we were not in a position to hear anyone's confessions. It was what he said next that is the purpose of this post. He told us that he was possessed with an evil spirit that made him commit these transgressions. After leaving his place, my companion started expounding on how he had such an evil feeling in his apartment and that he could tell that an evil spirit was indeed there. I had no such feeling and told him that as well, I just thought the guy was a bit odd. We discussed it with the bishop who also visited him and came to the same conclusion and feeling as my companion. I felt horrible, inadequate as a missionary and out of tune with the spirit. I prayed for help. The bishop convinced this man to come to church and in priesthood meeting, the bishop, along with every adult priesthood holder in the ward (still to this day the largest blessing circle I have ever seen) gave him a blessing and cast out the evil spirit. I still insisted to my companion that I didn't feel anything dark or evil about this man, and he told me I need to be more in tune with the spirit. I was transferred to a different area soon after this. A couple months later, at a Zone meeting, I ran into the two missionaries who were now working my former area. I asked about this man to see how he was doing. They started laughing about how crazy he was and even mentioned that he admitted to making up the story about being possessed so that he could explain to us why he had not been coming to church. There wasn't an evil spirit, there never had been. Why did my companion and the bishop insist that there was?
posted by Rob @ 3:33 PM
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