The Book of Mormon Experiment

This week was awesome!  We go to take part in the Book of Mormon Experiment.  Let me explain a little more- this is an experiment that a professor from BYU did, and they went around the world- London, Cape Town, Chicago, Las Vegas, and Sydney Australia to do this.  Afterwards, if was shown to the mission presidents at the new mission president seminar in late June, and then President Henrie showed it to us.  He loved it and contacted the professor to see if we could get some booths to try it for ourselves.  His response was to hold off and now that we've held off, the time has come.  The church then decided to expand the experiment and they took it to three missions in the US.   The first was Athens Georgia, next was Honolulu, Hawaii, and lastly was the Great California San Fernando Mission.

On Tuesday we got to be the first to try it out.  We had a level 1 kit, which consisted of clipboards and markers, with all the pages from the Book of Mormon.  We would simply approach people, (incognito mode) and tell them we were doing a social experiment- to read a random page from religious text, and we invite them to highlight any reference to God or Jesus Christ on the page they read.  We ask a couple questions afterwards, and talk about it.  If they wanted, we took their picture and had their picture, their faith, where they're from, and their highlighted page posted to thebookofmormonexperiment.org.  It's neat to see the reactions of people when we tell them it's the Book of Mormon they just read.  The purpose of the experiment was for the people to see 1. That we believe in God and Jesus Christ, and are similar in many ways, but 2. so that individuals could have their own witness of the Book of Mormon, not someone else's opinion.  We were able to conduct the experiment for 3 hours at CSUN, and then 2 hours at Pierce College.  We went to a devotional that night as well, for the YSA to introduce it to them so they could participate as well.

There are level two kits as well, that have everything that level one does, plus two pop up signs, and then level three, is everything from level two, plus a big bulky thing that has spinning pictures of people and pages done from the past.

Wednesday we were able to do a level three at CSUN for 6 (!) hours.  It was crazy, but it was awesome!  Unfortunately on Thursday there were some fires that made the air quality bad and all the colleges shut down, so we weren't able to do it.

Friday, we were at CSUN again for a couple more hours.  Saturday was really cool as well.  We went to one of the bigger parks here in the mission, Balboa Park, and we did it with the youth from the stake.  It was cool to get them involved, and we had a level three there as well.  That was supposed to be the end of it, but we didn't want it to be, so since the church is leaving the kits here for our mission, we still had one with us, so wetook a level one kit, and took the Metro (bus) around the valley talking with people on the bus.  It was so much fun!  There were so many miracles as we did this throughout the mission!  1,376 people completed the experiment, and we had over 440 referrals here in our mission!

A couple of quick experiences I'll share are of two people.  The first was a lady, who after reading the page, said "I'm sad it ended so soon- I want to read more!"  The Book of Mormon speaks for itself.  Another was a kid named Xavier.  He was told in his Christian school to never pick that book up, but after reading a page on his own, he loved it.  He wanted to know more and set a time to meet with the missionaries.  My favorite part was to see the joy people had and felt after reading a page.  You'd be surprised how many people had something speak to them and their specific needs.  There are no coincidences.  These experiences were divinely set up.

I know the Book of Mormon is true.  Don't take my word for it.  Try it out yourself.

I love you all!

Elder Martin

"...I want it absolutely clear when I stand before the judgement bar of God I declared to the world, in the most straightforward language I could summon that the Book of Mormon is true, that it came forth the way Joseph said it came forth and was given to bring happiness and hope to the faithful in the travail of the latter days."  

Jeffrey R. Holland