September 28, 2012, answer about "Saints"

Yesterday Young Sister Zibetti and I served in the Scovill Bakery together. A man asked me why we call ourselves saints and I was at a loss to tell him why. Another man in the tour said anyone who believes in Christ can be called a saint. Well, I woke up this morning with that question in my brain, so I looked it up in the Bible dictionary. The definition is long: The word saint is a translation of a Greek word also rendered "holy", the fundamental idea being that of consecration or separation for a sacred purpose; but since what was set apart for God must be without blemish, the word came to mean "free from blemish", whether physical or moral. In the New Testament the saints are all those who by baptism have entered into the Christian covenant. I get asked a lot of questions I don't know the answer to. Usually, I tell the people that if there's an answer out there, they can find it on the internet or somewhere, depending on what the question is. Some questions are simply data dates or places that I don't know off the top of my head. I hope I can remember the bible dictionary as a resource next time for a question like this one.
I was telling the group about the Nauvoo Temple plates that Lucious Scovill had made on his mission to England and how the Moroni on top is sideways and was a weather vain. That same man asked "Moroni?" (only he pronounced it differently). I turned to him and told him that Moroni was a prophet in the Book of Mormon. Then I asked him if he knew about the Book of Mormon and he said "a little". I probably should of asked him to tell us what he knew but instead I said "do you want to know more?" (actually meaning more about the Book of Mormon). In the back of my brain, I was wondering if there was one there I could offer to him if he said yes, but he said "I think I'll just stick to my Catholicism." Well, that was the end of that! I finished the tour and they were off. Hopefully, someone will be a little more tactful with him. I actually felt a little more confrontational than I should have.
It was a fun day. I love serving with the YSMs. They are young enough their memories work better than mine. They are going to be missed around here very much.
Elder Scott and I are going to serve in Carthage Jail today. That's always a treat. Although  don't want to be placed out there all the time because I don't want to have to move. It's about 20 minutes from here and so we would have to move out there if we were placed there. Plus we would only serve there everyday. I guess we would get to know the tour information a little better for that one site.
Better go walk on the treadmill for a while.
Oh, they split the casts for Rendezvous in Old Nauvoo and gave them different names. We will be performing every other night now instead of every third night. We are in the Joseph cast. Elder and Sister Poulsen are in our cast this time, yay. We were hoping we would be in the same cast. There are 50 & 51 in the two new casts as of October 1st and by January there will be 41 in each cast.