Dinkytown week 13

We had a pretty good week! WE taught our investigator PB who has a date set! SHe is still good! But... she has a 4 year old son... and custody on the weekends... so we will be referring her to the local family ward. We all play on the same team, but it was a tad sad.

We taught a Korean guy the restoration on campus and after we showed a picture of the first vision and shared the account he was like, "WOW!!!!! REALLY??? THAT REALLY HAPPENED?????" ha ha. so good. His mind got blown. The Spirit can do that.

So in the institute they have a library at the back with all sorts of sweet books and whatnot. They also have binders with every ensign back to 1971 in them and conference reports in book format along with all of the CES broadcasts and quite a few BYU speeches in binders. So on wednesday we arrive at the institute and we see them throwing stuff away. The staff threw away all of that stuff i just mentioned!! All of it! Now since we cant get on the internet too much this stuff is a missionary gold mine. So.. Elder Wall jumped in the dumpster and we filled our entire car with every issue of the ensign to be printed and tons of good talks and stuff. we converted our back room into a library. We probably have the best apartment in the mission now :) studies are pretty entertaining now. The ensigns back in the day were pretty amusing. they have definitely changed a lot.

We taught JL this week, our hispanic investigator that President Clements humbled the heck out of right before he left. normally after she feels the Spirit she asks some question to change the subject that usually revolves around some factual detail about the Book of Mormon. well we brought two joint teachers and at the end they bore like 10 minutes of testimony, switching back and forth. It was pretty powerful. They talked about having the faith to overcome fear and how we cant know everything but we can know enough to follow in faith. At the end sister JL sat there for about 30 seconds stunned. Then she thanked them for their testimonies and thanked us for coming!! she didnt bring up any concerns or change the subject! So awesome :)

WE also taught MW, the liberian male we have been teaching. we taught him the plan of salvation and the things we taught about the afterlife really sunk into his soul. He had a lot of issues about there being only a heaven or hell (such as someone who barely missed going to heaven burning in hellfire with the most evil people in the world, things like that) and we challenged him to pray about the Plan. He cut us off and said, "I dont need to pray, i know this is true. The Spirit just told me this is true." Whoa. it was pretty sweet :)

We got a call from another set of missionaries who were with a distressed mother. Her child is in the university children's hospital and she asked us to go give him a blessing. We expected the worse because of the state of the mother. So we headed over into the prison, i mean hospital. I did not realize how much security and whatnot they had at children's hospitals! It is probably a good thing, though. We finally found the child after getting buzzed in a few locked doors and getting talked by a few employees and then being watched by all the workers to find that the little boy was quite fine. he was running around and having quite a bit of fun. So that was a happy ending to that story.

We had another somewhat amusing event happen this week. We recorded ourselves singing a unique rendition of happy birthday we found on lds.org(https://www.lds.org/music/library/childrens-songbook/feliz-cumpleanos?lang=eng&cid=email-shared  here is the link. we memorized the words then switched the audio to "music only." so good) and sent it to one of the assistants whom elder wall and I both served around early in our missions. he is a good friend of ours. anyway, at the end we were like HAPPY BIRTHDAY WE LOVE YOU. Later that night he still hadnt texted us or anything and so we were confused and called him. he said he never go the voicemail. turns out i sent it to the wrong number and that number was to one of our progressing female investigators.... awkward... haha.

anyway, time is up. i love you all! have a fantastic week!

Elder Damron

Dinkytown week 12

TRANSFERS!!!! And I'm staying with Elder Wall :D for the first time in 4 transfers I finally am keeping a companion. Maybe I should stop being so hard to deal with... just kidding. Anyway, our zone got switched up quite a bit and I know all of the missionaries coming in pretty well and they are all awesome! The Sister Smith that I served with in Andover for 6 months is coming into the zone so it is an Andover Reunion! Woo hoo!

 

Last Monday I had my interview with President Forbes. That basically took my Pday away but that is alright, he is so cool! He is quite a different personality than President Clements but he is very thoughtful and you can tell that when he speaks that he is being prompted. It is really remarkable to see.

 

Later monday night a missionary called us and said he needed an emergency exchange so we went over and elder wall interviewed him for 2 hours while I went to teach Brother SS with another missionary. The missionary had let a lot of anti get to his head and he was struggling quite a bit. But all is well now. With Brother SS we talked about faith and the different things he is doing to build his faith. He told us some of his concerns and he said he feels closer to God right now but it could be a coincidence. I asked him how he felt 6 months ago when he went to church with missionaries and took the lessons. He said he felt really close to God. Then I asked him how he felt when he stopped. He told us his connection with God decreased quite a bit. And then we pointed out that it is better and we testified that it was not a coincidence. He looked for a response and then said, "I cannot deny what you are saying is true.." then i felt super prompted to ask him a question so i opened my mouth to speak. But then the missionary I was with asked him literally word for word the question I was going to ask him!! It was a pretty cool experience. SS committed to church and finally came! And he really liked it!

 

Another cool miracle I saw was when I was doing something administrative Elder Wall texted some random people on our phone without asking me about any of them. He ended up texting brother SSC, who moved to Chicago. Elder Wall did not know he had moved so he texted him. Anyway, turns out SSC was back in town for a few days and he asked to meet up! So we met up later that night and he told us that the only reason he didnt get baptized was because he couldnt stop drinking and now that he graduated college he hasnt drank in 2 months! So we filled out a mormon.org referral with him in the institute and he will get baptized back in Chicago. So legit.

 

Funny story: a member showed up super late to a lesson and so he missed it. But then he handed us some roses. He said to make it up to us he wanted to give those to us. Then he told us he found them on the side of the road on the way here... ha ha. so good.

 

We have been teaching Brother MW the last couple weeks. He is 27 and from Liberia. He moved from Cottage Grove where the sister missionaries had taught him a few times. He is pretty solid. He came to church again and told a member of the stake presidency that he was going to get baptized. He told us about all of the mistakes he has made in his life and how a lot of guilt really burdens him. We taught him about the steps of repentance and committed him to go home that night and start the process. The next time we saw him he seemed a lot happier and thanked us that we had showed him how to start the process of healing. We again testified that baptism finishes the process. He is set for baptism on August 16th.

 

On Friday night we taught two seventh day adventist students. They explained that they strictly follow the health code from Leviticus 10-12 and we shared the restoration with them. they had some good questions and were pretty open. near the end they asked us what our belief on the afterlife was. I already knew that their belief is that the "dead sleep" (there is some scripture in the OT they quote this from) and that basically there is nothing between death and the resurrection, or something like that. I dont know all the details. Anyway, I opened up to 1st peter and read to them how Christ preached to the dead. then we testified of the Spirit world. They were utterly shocked that scriptures like that even existed in the bible they read. The Spirit testified of it. muy bien!

 

I was contacting with a missionary from another area on campus and we met a messianic jew. For reasons completely unknown to me the other missionary decided a good conversation starter with this guy would be polygamy. I face palmed a little bit but the guy was like, " i dont believe you would do polygamy, and i definitely wont either. the bible says you cannot serve two masters". then he smiled at us. ha ha. so classic.

 

Well yesterday I gave my first talk in church on my mission. my topic was gratitude! at the beginning of my talk I told the congregation I hoped to be here for a long while, then I turned and smiled at President Forbes (who randomly showed up for church). ha ha. well, im still here so i guess my plea was heard. anyway, i really loved studying about gratitude this week and I would encourage everyone to read some talks on the subject and then also study the quoted scriptures. Specifically I spoke up President Uchtdorf's talk, "grateful in any circumstance." my favorite quote from that talk is: "But those who set aside thebottle of bitterness and lift instead the goblet of gratitude can find a purifyingdrink of healing, peace, and understanding."

Gratitude is the key to happiness. And not just gratitude for temporal posessions, but spiritual things. This is how we are grateful in our circumstances but not of our circumstances. The difference is subtle, yet life changing. As we find gratitude for how the atonement has strengthened and helped us day by day our focus will change to that of the big picture of the eternities and nothing will ever be permanently wrong in life. We can find peace even amidst the storms of life.

 

I love you all! have a fantastic week!

Elder Damron

Dinkytown week 11

This week has been absolutely insane. But it was a good insane.

We spent time with a differnt companionship every single day going over their progress this transfer so we could report to our mission president by saturday. We also had to prepare a training for the zone conference we had on thursday. and we had to work through a less active list. And that doesnt even include teaching our investigators!

 

We had a super sweet miracle happen last week where we called up a less active man and asked if we could meet up with him sometime. He told us that he gave his roommate a book of mormon and that he would feed us on wednesday and then we could teach the roommate a lesson! So we went over and had a great meal and then got to know them and taught a lesson. he is in the marines. He dropped out of high school September 12, 2001 to join and has been in the marines ever since. He told us he hasnt been able to be at church a lot because of his travels, but no matter where he went he always carried a book of mormon and placed it on his nightstand. His roommate is actually Navajo and she grew up on aNavajo reservation in Arizona! She is also in the military. We taught the restoration and talked about the book of mormon some more. She told us that she has read some of it and she wants it to be true, but she wants to ask God first. :) we dont mind that answer too much. We will see her again this next week.

 

We also taught Sister PB this week. She gave us a little bit of a scare when she told us that she wants to be baptized but something came up in her life and she might not be able to do it anymore. We pulled out all the steps and made a beast of a lesson plan to help her understand the importance of baptism in allowing Christ to heal our pains. At the lesson we found out she just has to move in a few months a few blocks away... so yeah. not an issue. ha ha. oh man was i worried.

 

Another super cool thing that happened is that on Thursdaynight two sisters called us and told us that a man just moved into minneaplis who is a YSA that they had been teaching. His name is MW. So we went over and talked with him. He is from Liberia and is 27. He has had all sorts of humbling experiences in the last 6 months and then the sisters popped up in his life and he didnt feel that that was a coincidence. We talked with him and he told us he really struggled with guilt of some things he has done and he really wishes he could change some aspects about himself. we read both Ether 12:27 and 3 Ne 9:13-14 and testified that Christ could help him overcome those weaknesses. We told him that baptism was the only way those guilts would be truly lifted and we explained how it heals us and then allows Christ to make us strong. Then we committed him to baptismAugust 16th. before we left he told us that had we not talked about those things he would have said no to baptism. But now he is really excited!

On Sunday we went to pick him up for church but there was no answer from his apartment buzzer. Someone else let us in and we went and knocked on his door. He had slept through his alarm and we waited 30 minutes while he got ready and then we drove with a member to church. We got there 25 minutes late... but he LOVED it! The ward really embraced him and he was invited to some social activities. He told multiple people he would be back. SO COOl!

 

At zone conference we gave a training on the Trinity! Sort of. So when we go and contact people we have broken our conversation down to 3 parts. The initial conversation to get to know the person, a transition question that transitions the conversation to a gospel convo, and then the actual restoration lesson itself. We compared this to the trinity. They are 3 ideas in 1. they are interelated. You cannot have one without the other. And a few other things. So now our zone is out doing Trinitarian Contacts. boo ya!

 

Sunday night we had the opportunity to teach a girl from Togo in the institute building. My nationality list is now at 56!

 

This week we found out what happened with brother TO. He is the one that lives with members and he came from Kentucky. Well he fell off the map and we couldnt get ahold of him so we talked to the members he lived with. He recently had started staying up all night and sleeping during the day and ever since he did that he wast super interested when we went over to teach. Turns out he was sneaking off in the middle of the night to do drugs and now he is back in Kentucky to do rehab... but he wants to try and come back in 2 months!

 

Another cool thing that happened is i had the opportunity of teaching and baptizing a girl in my first area who was from Brazil. Well, she moved to minneaplis and now she comes to the YSA ward!!! so cool. Anyway, the other night she brought her boyfriend, from River Falls, to the institute and we taught him and we will be going over the lessons with him! It was fun to reminisc about River Falls. And we have another investigator.

 

So a lot happened this week and I am full of gratitude.

 

Thought:

So this sunday I will be giving a talk in church (the first time on my mission!) on gratitude. In President Uchtdorf's conference talk "Grateful in Any Circumstance" he says we need to be full of gratitude in our circumstances, not of our circumstances. If we are only grateful for what we have, we will run out of things to be grateful for and when times get tough our faith will weaken. Of course, we should still be grateful for what we have. But, more importantly, we need to be grateful in our circumstances. he says this:

    "In any circumstance, our sense of gratitude is nourished bythe many and sacred truths we do‍ know: that our Father hasgiven His children the great plan of happiness; that through theAtonement of His Son, Jesus Christ, we can live forever with ourloved ones; that in the end, we will have glorious, perfect, andimmortal bodies, unburdened by sickness or disability; and thatour tears of sadness and loss will be replaced with anabundance of happiness and joy, “good measure, presseddown, and shaken together, and running over.”

 

As we seek to be grateful for how the gospel has blessed our lives each individual day we will find an incredible amount of joy and happiness! Our faith will remain strong and we will continually receive a remission for our sins.

 

I love you all! have a fantastic week!

Elder Damron

Dinkytown week 10

So this email will probably be a tad shorter. Our Preparation Day was the 4th of July and so today is a normal work day with a very brief amount of time to shop and email. So I will respond to most emails next week. Sorry!

 

I met President Forbes this week! He is so legit. He is a tax attorney and he also taught at a law school for 7 years. I met him at the mission leadership council and he told us that he loves President and Sister Clements and all that they did and that everyone has their different talents and abilities. President Forbes wants us to remember and apply all that we learned from them and now he wants us to broaden our horizons on how we do missionary work. President Forbes is going to really focus on less active and part member work. They are the greatest source of finding that we have so we will be instituting plans in the mission to utilize the resources we have.

 

Going along with that theme, Elder Wall and I decided to take advantage of the texting age by texting all of the people on the ward roster that we did not know (most of them being less active). We had an astonishing amount of success. It took us the whole week to get through the list but we got 2 dinners for this week and about 12 appointments. One of the LAs responded and said that he had given his roommate a Book of Mormon and wanted us to come over dinner wednesday and teach his roommate. so sick! So we are having a lot of success here right now.

 

I was on exchanges in a bike area this week when we dropped by a media referral. This person was in a lock out apartment and she buzzed us in, but didnt answer her door... so we decided to tract in the building. (Note: despite many people's beliefs it is completely legal for us to knock on doors in locked apartment buildings. we are not solicitors.) So we knock on a door and a woman opens up. I knew immediately this was not going to end well. She immediately started screaming at us to get out, pulled her phone out, and called 911. I tried to explain that we were not breaking any laws in a polite manner but she got even more mad and started giving our description to the police. She followed us out of the building pretty ticked. We waited around for awhile to meet the cops and then contacted down the street but no cops came. the woman told them we were missionaries so i bet they didnt even bother coming. But i have now had the cops called twice on my mission.

 

The fourth of July was a good deal of fun! We weekly planned in the morning then we played kick ball with our district. it was nice to kick a soccer ball around. That evening we went and played ultimate frisbee with the other district. I literally got 10 mosquito bites on my right leg playing frisbee. We played right next to a mini lake/pond and a swarm of bugs would attack you if you stayed still for more than 4 seconds. but it was still a lot of fun! That is the most physical activity I have had in the last 14 months... i am still a tad sore.. ha ha.

 

So we taught his girl named B down in minneapolis on the street this week. She is actually homeless right now and she had been praying that God would send her a sign on what direction she should take. Then she met us! She recognized God's hand in her life and she committed to church. We tried to get her a ride but she insisted on taking the bus. Sure enough she showed up! And she got up and bore her testimony! She told us she would definitely be here every week. So that was sweet :)

 

This week we taught PB, a liberian girl who is 27. While teaching the plan of salvation we taught the pre earth life and she brought up Jeremiah 1:5 and said that no church really teaches that but it makes complete sense! our jaws dropped a little bit. I have met few people that have not read the pre earth life section in Preach My Gospel that has linked that scripture to pre earth life. It was insane. She committed again to her baptismal date in August! Molto bene!

 

Well, time is short. I am sorry!

Moses 6:52

 52 And he also said unto him: If thou wilt turn unto me, andhearken unto my voice, and believe, and repent of all thytransgressions, and be baptized, even in water, in the name ofmine Only Begotten Son, who is full of grace‍ and truth, which isJesus Christ, the only name‍ which shall be given under heaven,whereby salvation‍ shall come unto the children of men, ye shallreceive the gift of the Holy Ghost, asking all things in his name,and whatsoever ye shall ask, it shall be given you.

 

I have spent some time in the PoGP recently and have LOVED it! I think a lot of people just link deep doctrine to the PoGP and dont give it as much time as it deserves. It holds an incredible amount of truth about the Doctrine of Christ and simple truths we need to live our lives upon. I particularly love this scripture and what it teaches us. The testimony of Christ along with the things we need to do to get onto the strait and narrow path. Last of all is the Gift of the Holy Ghost, one of the greatest gifts that we can recieve here in mortality. Through righteous living and the gift of the holy ghost whatsoever we shall ask will be given us! Have you really thought about how much significance that statement holds?

 

Anyway, i love you all! Have a great week!

Elder Damron