July 8, 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

With evangelist Marshall Almarode wearing his "CTRG" shirt at the Manti Pageant
We have decided to move to Utah, and we are moving on the 21st of this month! This is the day we plan on closing on our place in Dallas. Please pray this will happen! We have gone through 2 other closing dates already with this buyer, but this last date looks quite promising. We also need your prayers that we will close on our home in West Jordan, UT on the 27th. Tara and I were able to look at homes in UT for 3 days last month while I was also ministering at the annual Manti, UT Mormon Miracle Pageant. The past month has been quite draining, and we are more than ready for this move to be over.

With Doris Hanson of A Shield and Refuge Ministries at the Manti Pageant
We figured that financial comfort isn’t a good enough reason to stay put when we know God’s opening all sorts of doors for us to get up to UT now. Tara will be unemployed, but will be a full-time mom and helping with this ministry as much as possible. We are trusting the Lord to provide for our needs. He knows what they are, and He promises to take care of us.

Having said that, we must tell those who care about us and the work we are doing about our needs. Would you please take some time to seek the Lord on how you can best invest in this ministry? The following chart is a possible scenario that will give you an idea of the specific financial role you can play. We are looking for about 43 new ministry partners to help us raise our goal of an additional $3,900/month.



For those of you led to financially partner with us, please send in a tax-deductible investment today. The standard way is by writing a check to Courageous Christians United. But we also have a secure electronic funds transfers program available if you are interested in the simplicity of monthly withdrawals without the stamp. Finally, if you are interested in taking advantage of tax-free stock donations (e.g., an IRA rollover to CCU), we can also help you with that. This will help lessen your capital gains taxes. Please see our "Invest" page for all the details of how you can partner with us financially.

Rob lecturing at the Manti City Building
Last month I spoke on 3 different occasions. First, I spoke on the 13th for our church’s Training Day. This was a 3 hour seminar on “What Do Mormons Believe?” Click HERE, HERE, and HERE to listen to the audio. Second, I spoke on the 26th to a youth group in Santaquin, UT on “What Do Mormons Believe About God?” Third, I spoke on the 27th at the Manti, UT City Building to the evangelists who came to witness at the Manti Pageant. My talk was entitled, “10 Big Statements LDS Make That Trip Christians Up.” You may watch the video by clicking HERE.

With evangelist Doug Goucher wearing his "Is the Mormon Jesus the same Jesus of the Bible?" shirt
I am happy to report to you that virtually all of Manti has received my Beware of False Prophets tract on their doors. Last year I finished the west side of town, and this year I finished the east side. This year I had many more confrontations with angry people. One guy later drove up to me and apologized for the way he responded to me. Another lady yelled at me as I was walking down the street, “Sir, this is very offensive to us! Please do not continue to do this!” Never mind street preaching; leaving tracts on doors is too troublesome for many LDS.

Evangelism outside the pageant gates was certainly calmer this year. The local ministry there wanted to try something different this year, and I acquiesced. There was no presentation of the 34 wives of Joseph Smith. I didn’t have my big sign with me and I wasn’t initiating preaching. I resolved to limit myself to passing out tracts and dialoguing with people, and only began preaching when a crowd would form around me so that everyone could hear. After the pageant, I would stand in front of the temple and hold my cardboard MormonInfo.org sign for all the traffic to see. I was still able to get into some good dialogues, and as the crowd grew, I was able to preach. Overall, it was very difficult to get LDS to take my tracts and dialogue with me. Initiating preaching makes it so much easier for me to get the gospel out to more people, and preaching also makes it easier for other Christians to start conversations with those in the crowd.

There are signs that the LDS Church may take over the street that is closed off during pageant for people to walk around. A similar thing happened several years ago with the Main Street Plaza in downtown Salt Lake City. If the LDS Church may be pacified in order to keep this from happening, I think it’s definitely worth a shot in toning things down a bit.

Yours for the lost,

Rob Sivulka
President, Courageous Christians United
[email protected]
MormonInfo.org
JWInfo.org

****ADDITIONAL PRAYER REQUESTS****

1. For my book I’m writing
2. For our stuff to be safe as we move
3. For God to use our ministry story in an upcoming edition of our church news

****MAILBAG****

…I had really been inspired by reading about what you and Tara do in that one Watermark News a few months ago. I was raised in a Mormom household and had attended until I was about 18. Since about 2 years ago, I have come to know that I can have a close relationship with Christ and he is my Savior, and it is not dependant on good works or doing all the "mormon list" of things that I felt before that I had to do. I have been attending Watermark for almost a year now. Anyway, as i'm sure you know, a lot of Mormon beleifs run deep, especially if you were raised in that religion from a young child. I have had a hard time with a few of the following things..

-that I can pray directly to Christ, not just to my Heavenly Father. My question with this is, as a Christian, in what direction and to whom do we pray??

-what do we know about if Mormons go to heaven?? seeing as they are so adament about being the "only true church". And do Mormons beleive that they are the only one's who go to heaven??

-how do i talk to my mormon friends and family about accepting Christ as their Savior when they beleive they have already done that??

-where does the Book of Mormon/D&C come into play??

-I have been baptised in the mormon church, do I need to be baptised again as a beleiver in Christ??

I know that you each of these topics probably could have extensive answers, but if you are able to address any or part of them, I would very much appreciate it!!

[I responded:] Praise the Lord that you came out of Mormonism and into Christ! …As for praying directly to Christ, see Mt. 4:10; 28:16-20; Jn. 5:18-23; 14:14, NAS and in the best Greek manuscripts; Acts 7:59; 1 Cor. 1:2; and 1 Jn. 5:13-15. Since Jesus is just as much God as the Father, we should honor the Son even as we honor the Father. The same may be said of the Holy Spirit, since He also is equally God.

As for LDS and heaven, we'll talk more about this in class, but let me say that I believe we'll see some Mormons in heaven... basically those who joined as Christians and didn't know any better, or those who have a very surface level knowledge of Mormonism which agrees with Christian doctrine. The problem though is that most LDS know full-well that God's an exalted man, who had to get a wife before He could even become God, and *could have* sinned before He became God. If this is what someone believes, then it's a flat denial of the God revealed to us in nature and the Bible, and is indicative of someone who doesn't have the Spirit of God.

As for family and friends, LDS have accepted the wrong Jesus... one made up by the LDS Church. As such, I'd advocate a Christian baptism, not a cultic one that pretends to be Christian.


[After the lecture, she wrote:] Hi Rob, I wanted to thank you and Tara for an awesome message and lesson yesterday!! It was very well prepared and there was so much helpful information, it was an answer to many questions that I had and an answer to some of my prayers. Thank you for all the handouts, the Mormon cheat sheet is great, I have only started looking up the scriptures listed there but I'm really excited to continue learning more!!

…Also, i am sure i will have a ton of questions, but one of the first i have is, why don't Mormons us the JST of the Bible?? If he was able to translate the B of Mormon and that is, as they say, translated correctly, why wouldn't they think that the JST of the Bible was even more correct than the KJ version??

I will pray for ya'll in your move to Utah over the next few months if that is where God is calling you to go, I will also pray for your trip to Pageant, that is a great ministry, one that I would definately be interested in working with in the future. Thanks again for a great lesson!!

[I responded:] Thanks for writing back with your words of encouragement. It was great to have you in class. I found out that the rationale for the JST is that *basically* every major change is already in the LDS KJV end notes, so they figure why bother using it as a whole? They say that Smith never finished it, even though he did. They say he didn't finish it, since he continued to work on it after he finished it. It's really silly, since Smith also continue to revamp the BM after it was 1st published. Does that mean we shouldn't use the BM?
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Thanks! It was a very interesting class and I learned a lot!
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Thanks Rob! Really appreciate you taking the time to give such a well prepared presentation. Thanks also to Tara!
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Thanks so much for the class Saturday! I learned so much and also went to your websites and checked those out. I will be working on my buddy Sterling here who is Mormon. I know the Lord will present opportunities and now I feel much better prepared to answer him and to understand the “lingo” of LDS. Thanks again!
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Rob was incredibly knowledgeable and engaging. It was great having Tara too! So many great resources and it was broken down to an easy way to understand it. Plus it’s helpful to have his websites to refer back to later.
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Rob and Tara are extemily knowledgable and helpful. They had so much literature and were very well prepared. As a former Mormon, I was so encouraged by this class!

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