Andover week 5

So transfer calls came today. Last night at 11:10 i got a text telling me to be on the call for the trainers meeting. yep! Im training again! There are a few different scenarios I had in my head about how transfers would play out and this literally was not even on the table for considering. I am humbled for this opportunity. I will still be a district leader too. <3 <3 <3 <3 I love being district leader :)

So last sunday while planning our day for monday I let Elder garrett plan the day out. he made some plans and I asked what we could do for more backups. He said all would be well because we were going out with a joint teacher. I was like alright then... well the next day at dinner with the joint teacher, who was then going to go out with us for a few hours, he had a family emergency and he had to leave. Our entire night was basically ruined. Elder Garrett and I looked at each other and he was like, "yep. the Lord is chastening us for last night and not planning well." Well played. So we got our slice of humble pie. ha ha.

At district meeting the next day Elder Smith and his companion brought hot chocolate! So we were able to have hot chocolate and a wonderful lessson. muy bien.

Then I went on an exchange with Elder Scarlet into Anoka, the neighboring town. That was pretty fun. i met this man named Polo who has like 7 keyboards. he is a professional key boarder and does a lot of band work. So cool. He was going to play us some stuff but he had to leave for somewhere and needed to shower.

We went joint teaching with our stake president this week. holy. cow. absolutely remarkable. we went and taught the W. family. President just absolutely dominated. The W. family would constantly tell us why our beliefs did not line up and were wrong and President came in and was just like stop pulling bible verses out of context. then he "unopapologetically declared that effort is required" for salvation and went to town. Brother W., who is a cool cat and never loses his cool, was visibly shaking. President literally rattled him to the core. It was so insane and incredible to watch. It reminded me of Helaman 5:18 when Nephi and Lehi taught the people with such authority that the people's world was rocked. Oh man.

After that we went and visited brother G. who we have been meeting with for a while. His girlfriend thought we were basically evil trying to baptize her boyfriend to rank up in our church so she wouldnt talk to us. But president managed to get her to come out, talk about christ, realize we truly share a message based on how Christ is the only way, and we do it because we love it. Her countenance changed. she loves us now! man. such a great night.

I also interviewed Brother J. for baptism. Every time i interview someone for baptism I ask them what the biggest change in their life is and they always say they feel such a peace and lasting happiness that they had not felt before. eternal happiness. The gospel of Jesus Christ is remarkable! This truly is a plan of happiness.

Well, I would love to write more but transfers and some crazy things have caused email time to be nada. Also I dont know about next weeks email with christmas and all. So.. merry Christmas!

Have a wonderful week, Elder Damron !

Andover week 4

I love it when it gets so cold that for a few days straight the temperature does not rise above 0 degrees. That is my life right now. It is quite... fun! ha ha. On saturday we got a text from President Clements telling us not to go outside until noon because of the windchill advisory.    -30 windchill anyone? Unfortunately we had no appointments, so we had to find all day. I wore two hats, 2 pairs of glove, 2 sweaters under my coat, 2 pairs of thermals on my legs, 2 pairs of socks, boots, and a neck warmer. still flippin cold. We took frequent car breaks to warm up.

So we talked to brother L. this week. He is in his 30s and loves to have us in because he just likes talking about faith. He told us about how he was in the darkest of spiritual holes you can imagine when he was in college and he cried out to god begging Him for a sign that He was there. Brother L. told us he was terrified of being smitten for being a sign seeker or something, ha ha. anyway, he said the next morning he woke up and went downstairs. he was shocked by what he saw. He said he saw God himself standing right there looking right at him. I never quite know what to say in these sorts of situations...

I went to my first Mission Leadership Conference. This is a monthly meeting for all the leaders in the mission to talk about the needs of the mission. Uber spiritual and powerful experience. we talked a lot about how sacrifice for the Lord is how we push our faith to produce miracles. As we give something up for the Lord, he will help us out!

I talked to my old zone leader from Hudson at MLC and asked him about the different people I taught back in River Falls. He told me that Brother J., who absolutely hated (yes I know this is a strong word but it is true in his case) the catholic church, prayed about the Book of Mormon, then God told him the Catholic church is true so he went back to the Catholic church. Brother J. literally went around persecuting that church in every way he could. My jaw dropped about 3 feet. Almost went through the table. I'm still in shock a little bit.

On Wednesday we had a crazy snow storm. About 8 inches fell over the course of the day. President ended up grounding the cars for the day, so we couldnt drive anywhere. Before he grounded the cars I managed to get over to another missionary's apartment for exchanges. I went with elder smith. All our plans fell through so we shoveled a lot of driveways and went out with Calvin Gaudette. He recently returned from the Mesa Arizona Mission! We talked for awhile. He is pretty crazy. We were driving down the street and we passed our turn. He slams the steering wheel to one side, pops the E-brake, and we flipped around in a perfect 180. like straight out of a movie or something. I look out the window to see a woman with a shocked look on her face shoveling her driveway. ha ha. what a site. We drove around dropping by people and shoveling some more. Then he took us to a gas station to get some drinks. I got a bottle of nesquik out and he chuckled and told me to get the half gallon. i thought he was kidding so i closed the door. he was like no, really. get the half gallon. So I walked out with a half gallon of chocolate milk. i wasnt complaining :)

We met Bro. S. again. He is coming back to the church after a long period of inactivity and we are helping him get ready to attend the temple next summer. In every lesson we are supposed to incorporate a baptismal interview question to help build and monitor faith. Well I finally got into a good position to ask the question so i rephrased the first interview question, "Do you believe God is our Eternal Father?" I phrased it to make it fit into the conversation. He looked at me like I was an idiot with a "no duh" expression on his face. I need to figure out better ways to incorporate those questions.. ha ha.

We went over to Sister W.'s again. She came to church last week and we wanted to invite her to the christmas party we were having. She opened up the door, held up her new, golden kitten, and said it's Aslan! Well, last time we were over she had just gotten her kitten. she told us she had no clue what to name it so i jokingly said Aslan. well, aparently it stuck because she liked it enough to name her cat aslan. She also is excited to tell the story of how mormons named her cat. I named a cat Aslan. muy bien.

I FOUND TRAILER PARKS IN OUR AREA. I AM SO HAPPY. I love them a lot. Such fun places :) we were tracting there on saturday, the uber cold day, and this guy opens up and says, "come on in! it is cold!" Shocked, we stood there and stared. he beckoned us in again. We got in and i immediately noticed that his walls were covered with pictures of Glacier national park. We had a pretty good conversation about the wonders of montana but he was on his way out the door, so we had to leave.

Saturday night we had our ward christmas party. We were asked to help serve. The bishop's wife told us we were to serve the jello and the vegetables. she looked at us and asked which one of us was willing to be the mean one and tell people they could only have 2 pieces of jello. elder garrett volunteered me. so i was the jello warden! It wasnt too bad. I just joked around with everyone and I actually had a good time. This one little girl, about 5, came up and started to get some jello. I looked away for a second and when i looked back i realized she had quite the full plate of different types of jellos. I managed to pry the prongs out of her hand and she ran off. Little rascal swindled me of quite a few pieces of jello...

After the party we went caroling across the street. Another set of missionaries have an investigator there so we knocked on that door. The door was at the bottom of the stairs and the caroling group was at the top of the stairs and couldnt see down. the 5 year old son who lived there came up the stairs and froze once he saw how many people were there. the group burst out into Joy to the World. The poor kid looked terrified. after the song was over he ran down the stairs to escape to safety. ha ha. 

 

Elder Bednar gave a talk in general conference on convesion a few years ago. In it he set forth a way to deepen our conversion. R.O.D. Repentence, Obedience, Diligence. As we repent, are obedient, and are diligent in doing the first two and seeking out the Lord's will, our conversion and dedication to Him will increase. 

I hope you all have a good, warm week!

Love, Elder Damron  

Andover week 3

So it is getting a tad chilly. We have had some single digit days, which isnt too bad really. But the wind. Oh the wind! Basically it doesnt matter what you are wearing. The wind just dominates your soul. ha ha.

Well I had the opportunity to teach the B. family on exchanges with my zone leader this week. They are the family I interviewed for baptism. they are so flipping legit, I love them. We talked of the covenant of baptism. I kept trying to share a scripture but their son went insane and for 20 minutes the children were just bouncing off the walls and causing havoc, so the lesson was... interesting to say the least. Oh man. kids.

While talking to a Sister training leader about some sisters in my district over the phone, Elder Garret snuck up on me and barraged me with rubber bands. he was flinging them across the room. I then returned fire and we had quite the war. All while on a phone call. It was quite impressive. She didnt even know. im pretty sure i won.

Wednesday night we went over to this family's house for dinner. We knocked on the door and the 5 year old son answered. We asked if the parents were there and he said they were busy and slammed the door on us. we stood there like did that just happen? after a few minutes we knocked again. The same boy answered. He said, "did you knock again????" He went for the door slam again but then an adult saw us and let us in. ha ha. I then met the sister-in-law of Sister H., the member who lived there. She looked at me for a minute or two and then said," Damron! You lived in Billings!" A little taken aback i told her I indeed did. She introduced herself as sister Gilstrap (sp) and told me that she served her mission in Billings and had eaten at our house quite a few times. She told me she remembered my mother well and asked how my family was doing. Small world. and oh how the tides have turned... we had a pretty good discussion on billings. It was a lot of fun.

Thanksgiving was definitey muy bueno. We went over to a member's house in our ward and they are FANTASTIC cooks. They are Hawaiin and so there was a unique twist in there as well. Bro. G. let us play his ukuleles for awhile and then we had dinner. we hung around for awhile and chatted and also had some trivia questions. I came up with a trivia question to ask and then immediately one of the daughters, who is in her 30s, was like that is a lie! And googled it. Well the question i asked was a question that my friends and I looked up at BYU or something and we got some answer that made partial sense. i was not actually the one who looked up the answer... well turns out i was dead wrong. So they called me out on that one and then the daughter googled everything else i said the rest of the day. blah. I hate being wrong. :)

That night from 6-9 pm we were supposed to visit less active and active members of the ward that might be alone. We had set up appointments but they all fell through. We were not allowed to tract so we were thinking it was going to be a LOOONG night. But then we felt as if we should go and visit Sister E. She lives quite far away but we committed to it and went. We got there about 20 minutes later and the family let us right in and we had a wonderful talk. her youngest son has been asking about God and Sister E. knows he needs to be in church. This was such a miracle! our plans fell through and then we felt we should go visit this woman! Not a coincidence.

We were teaching Sister W. and we had challenged her to pray to know if Christ was the Son of God. She prayed about it and was shocked to recieve the answer that He was indeed sent her to earth with a purpose. Before she wouldnt even acknowledge He existed. that was a cool experience. She really hates how a lot of churches and a lot of her friends always badmouth our church and this is one reason she is attracted to it. While talking about faith I said something silly like, "all churches require faith. except the golden plates, we need to see those to believe that." She found that quite hysterical. it is slightly true though.

We visited with a less active man who is returning to the gospel after a health scare kind of reality checked him. We were teaching the restoration and we got to Christ's earthly ministry. The atonement obviously came up and he just kept saying how bad a man he really was. it was such a sweet experience to testify that through Christ, all can be made right. he can change. He can feel the peace of forgiveness.

We went to our Bishop's for dinner and the topic of musical instruments came up. Their kids play band instruments and Elder garrett plays the trumpet. Elder Garrett declared the trumpet to be the Celestial instrument since angels play them in most pictures and the trumpet is mentioned in the bible. I responded that the bible uses a lot of symbolism and that angels are not of celestial glory yet and so obviously the cello will be played in the Celestial kingdom. he he

During gospel principles in church we were talking about the priesthood. At one point the teacher said, "if i ran off and tried to start my own sect using the priesthood while also having my children in cages in the basement, what would happen?" I immediately understood what he was trying to get across. That priesthood power is only obtained through personal righteousness and whatnot. Well the rest of the class did not realize this and hilarity ensued. oh man. Im glad we didnt have any volatile investigators who would flip out. ha ha.

 

D&C 59:7 Thou shalt ^athank the Lord thy God in all things.

2 nephi 9:52 Behold, my beloved brethren, remember the words of your God; pray unto him continually by day, and give ^athanks unto his holy name by night. Let your hearts ^brejoice.

The Lord has commanded us to be thankful. It is a commandment! And with every commandment there a blessing. He has promised that as we are more thankful, we WILL be happier. Not only that, but we will be more humble as we recognize how much the Lord actually does in our lives.

 

i love you all! Have a good week!

Elder Damron