pics from Duluth week 19

"My most favorite district ever! These are like siblings I never had."

"10 elders - one apartment. It was a lot of fun."

Duluth week 19

So today is Zone P-Day and we all have like 25 min to email so i wont be able to respond to very many emails today and this will be short... ill make up for it next week! I promise!

So we had an awesome lesson with the K family this week (the part member family that walked into church a few weeks back). We brought a joint teacher and taught the word of wisdom. We knew it would be a tough one going in because the returning member loves coffee and she didnt get why her father could drink 2 or more liters of soda a day and be living the word of wisdom but she cant get coffee. The joint teacher bore powerful testimony of the blessings of the WoW and talked about some of his kids who had made a lot of mistakes with it. He testified of how their kids need this in their life and so they need to all commit to live it. The family committed. at the end the husband looked us in the eye and said, "i will be baptized on March 28th." so cool :D

Last week we had one of the most powerful lessons of my mission with a returning member, DP. A prospective Elder. We felt prompted to teach about the atonement of Christ and how to apply it. We talked about how it was an infinite atonement and there is always enough for us. It will never be "used up." We read from Alma 34 about it and then we started reading about repentance in the Gospel of Christ pamphlet. the very last section talks about relying upon the Savior and that we cant do it alone. DP was reading the section and he broke into tears as he read it. I looked at our joint teacher, Brother Faerber and he nodded at me, then opened his mouth and bore an incredibly powerful testimony. Then i went. then Elder Zerkle went. At the very end DP told us that for the first time in a long time he feels like there was hope. it was cool stuff :D 

well, sadly i must be off. sorry for the lame email this week. 

john 6:8-13 

 8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, saith unto him, 9 There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many? 10 And Jesus said, Make the men sit down. Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, in number about five thousand. 11 And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would. 12 When they were filled, he said unto his disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost. 13 Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten.

So I love this story. And here is an interesting twist on this perhaps some of you have never taken from it. The Lord created a miracle so that everyone could be fed, and then there was a ton left over too! So it is with the Atonement of Christ. It is infinite. There is always more. We cant use it all up. There is always more for us to apply and be healed with. 

I love you all! have a fantastic week! 

Elder Ethan P. Damron

Duluth week 18

So today was transfer calls... and what we thought was impossible actually happened. Elder Zerkle..... IS STAYING IN DULUTH WITH ME!!!! WOOT! So this is pretty unheard of. Trainee and trainer staying together after the training is complete. Staying together for 3 transfers in this mission is also super rare and we call them "eternal companions." So we are stoked. Unfortunately, Elder Schmidt, my best mission friend, is being transferred. I am pretty sad. But, Elder Foggin is taking his place so that makes me happy. Father and son reunited :) I called that happening last week.

Anyway, Our week was quite solid. We went into a nursing home to visit a member and we got on an elevator with a man who had a cowboy hat on. Well it was a cool hat so we started talking to him and he was like, "oh, how are you doing elders?" turns out this guy is a lost sheep. what. gotta love that crazy inspired timing, right? So yeah. we are going to visit him weekly now.

We also had a great lesson with Brother PB. He is a less active that relapsed into smoking and we contacted him and he really wants to make some changes in his life. He has been humbled quite a bit lately. So we taught the sabbath day and i said the quote from PMG about how sabbath day observance decays, all other aspects of life are negatively affected. he spoke up and said, "you know. that is true. ever since i stopped living these things my life has tanked and gone to garbage." so yeah. He is ready to come back. :)

We had a pretty sweet night with a returning YSA we are helping out named DP. He is a guru at family history so we had a family history night with him and he taught us a lot about how to do it. Then he showed us his family line back to Adam and Eve. Trippy stuff.

We had a SWEET lesson with a guy named BG yesterday. He called the church looking for missionaries to come teach him. Naturally we were more than happy to oblige. It turns out he is blind and has been that way the last 18 years. But he is completely functional and lives on his own. he has conference calls with blind friends on weekends and most of them are lds and he has talked to them a lot. So he wanted to learn more. We shared a powerful restoration lesson and he said,"you know i like the way you view God. I have always thought He was a loving father and not a vengeful God." it was pretty cool :)

We also taught the K family a few times. They are the PM family that walked into church a few weeks back and the family wants to get baptized. We set a date for March 28thand Bro K was a little nervous, but he told us he is ready and he knows he is ready. he just wants to learn a little bit more. So yeah #miraclecity

I love you all! Have a great week. 

Elder Damron

Duluth week 17

So i only have about 45 minutes to email today so i will have to make this quick... Sorry!

Honestly, this last week has been one of the best of my mission. A couple weeks ago I gave a thought on the will of God and how i was pretty frustrated over some events that occurred. Well without going into too much detail 2 part member families that were preparing for baptism got reassigned by our ward council to the Sister missionaries. Anyway, the exact same Sunday a family showed up to church I had never seen before. So we talked to them. Turns out they had been inactive and finally decided to come back all on their own! They were not on records. So we set up an appointment. We met with them this week and it turns out that the husband and two children (age 11 and 9) arent members! The husband is the one who wanted to come back to church when he watched a video on the church and the Spirit told him he needed to come back! And they all want to be baptized!!! Sometimes the Lord makes us do hard things, but he always gives more than he takes away. 

On a side note, I ate black bear at a dinner this week. It was quite chewy. 

We were spending some time tracting and following up with some other people we had previously met. We got back into our car and and we realized we had missed a door. I was considering just going to our next location since we were running late. Elder Zerkle turned to me and said, "do you want to see another miracle?" you bet we pounded that door down. you bet we got a sweet return appointment. You bet we taught the super cool guy the next day and it turns out his best friend lives in AZ and he is a member.

So an elder in my district this last week was tracting when a rottweiler ran out from under a deck and latched onto his leg. Well this elder is kind of a man and he just punched it in the face and the dog ran away with its tail between its legs. He didnt think it was too big a deal. Alright then. 

I had the opportunity to do two baptismal interviews this last week. back to back on saturday. It was amazing! The first was with an 11 year old girl that hadnt wanted to be baptized until now (her family is active). I was very impressed because she kept telling me she had prayed about the various questions i was asking her and God told her these things were true. Her testimony was so pure and so strong. it blew me away. 

The second interview was with a 19 year old guy who is facing a lot of family opposition. He wants to be baptized and has made the decision, but he is still slightly nervous. I felt prompted to read D&C 20:37 with him and then I explained that the interview wasnt an interrogation or a test, but it was for him to feel ready and to feel confident that he was ready. It was cool to see his confidence grow throughout the interview as he bore his testimony over and over and the Spirit was reaffirming the truths he was telling me. 

So we went to an institute class this past week with one of our returning YSA members and afterwards we were all in the hall chatting. I accidentally leaned up against the handicap door opener button thingy. Anyway, the door nearby swung open and a girl standing next to it jumped a little and was like, "how in the world did that open??" (just a side note, she has been a member for 2 years) and Elder Zerkle told her it was the priesthood. Then he said, "watch ill do it again!" So i leaned against it again. and it opened. she was pretty confused. we did it 3 times and it was hilarious. We got her good. She was in denial for a few days, but she admitted sunday we got her good. ha ha 

The stake President challenged us missionaries to share atonement messages with the ward council members recently and yesterday we were at our WML house (his wife is also the Primary President). There were also 4 YSA people from the ward, one who is a returning member. So i shared alma 7:11-12 and i talked about all the things the atonement does and then i bore testimony on how the atonement can shape us into more Christ-like beings. I had the WML share his testimony on how the atonement has helped him get to this point in his life and it was powerful. Then his wife shared hers. Then we went around the room and we all bore testimony of the atonement. This was probably one of the most spiritual experiences of my life! The spirit was soooo strong. Then i told everyone to take 1 minute to think of 1 new way to apply the atonement into their lives starting today and after that i wrapped up with my own personal testimony. We all walked away from that lesson a little bit different in a very good way.

I want to leave that challenge for all of you as well! How has the atonement helped shape you into whom you are today? How can you apply it even more?

I love you all!

Elder Ethan P. Damron

Duluth week 16

It is starting to get a little colder again... it has been about zero degrees the last few days. Elder Zerkle and I are actually happy about that because now we can go tract some ice huts on lake Superior!! Woot woot. 

I was able to do a sweet baptismal interview this last week. A woman and her husband randomly showed up to church back in october and they have been coming weekly ever since. Her husband grew up in an lds home but refused to be baptized and went pretty off the deep end. His family is still quite active and they recently encouraged him and his wife to return to church because the timing in their life was right. So never give up on your wayward family members! Anyway, I interviewed the wife for baptism. She has come from an absolute crazy life. Drugs and immorality have basically been her entire life the last 20 years. She was married and divorced when her husband went nuts and then he took the kids. She has a lot of pain in her life. She told me that for the first time in her entire life she felt happy. Like actually happy and at peace. In just 3 short months her bitterness and anger has been peeled off and she is a whole new person. It is quite cool.

We taught a sweet lesson to a woman, DW, this week. She used to be a member and somehow isnt a member anymore and doesnt understand how or why and it is kinda a crazy story but she is discouraged about it. So we have been meeting with her and each time we have a lesson she is humble enough to be taught by the Spirit exactly what we want her to learn. When we first met with her she said she didnt want to come back right now because of health and discouragement. But after reading the Book of Mormon and meeting with us she is very anxious to come back! It has been pretty cool.

We also had a cool experience where some of our plans fell through and we planned to go visit someone but I felt strongly to visit someone on the other end of town. So we went there and met the less active I felt we should go visit. We had committed him a few weeks earlier to read the BoM from the beginning again and he said yes, but we havent seen him since. Well, he has been reading! He is through first Nephi. He told us that he has not had as much peace as he has now that he is reading again in a long time. It was pretty cool. He also told us he was moving a few days later so we were able to help him move and get his new address! The Spirit is pretty cool.

After a super sick district meeting on Thursday in which I trained about how we develop spiritual confidence through sincere repentance and learning to recognize and follow the spirit, all of our lessons canceled and our backups werent going anywhere too quick. I had the thought "lets go tract the most ghetto part of Duluth." So we did. It was a pretty sketchy place and we met a woman who told us she lives with 4 ghosts. And one of the apartments next to that one burned down because a lady did drugs and somehow her dog ended up on fire. So yeah, that is where we were at. Well it was 4:50 and we could have gone home for dinner but i had the thought "be an extra miler!" So i looked up and i saw a door and it just felt right. So we knocked on it and met a super cool girl and her fiance who actually are not ghetto whatsoever. They just moved to duluth without knowing where they were moving and they are moving to a much better area pretty quick. She said they are interested in finding a church to attend and they love studying about the afterlife so she was excited when we gave her Alma 40-42. SO yeah. cool miracle. Sometimes we get promptings that just dont make sense. follow them!

So this past Friday we had a "Meet the Mormons" movie night as a ward activity. No one up here has seen it because it only played in theaters in the cities. So I called President Forbes and did some sweet talking to persuade him that it would be a fantastic finding activity if he let us borrow the disc he had. And oh boy, it was a fantastic success. We had about 130 people show up. Roughly 30 of those were non-members or less actives. Everyone absolutely loved it! 

The Sister Missionaries in our ward are pretty funny. So the other two sets of missionaries in our ward are facebook approved. Well Elder Schmidt left his facebook open and one of the Sister missionaries changed his birthday to last saturday (it is actually in may). Well the ward went all out. He got 3 birthday cakes, quite a bit of singing done to him, 40 posts on facebook, and a few birthday ties. ha ha oh man. That awkward moment when he told everyone it wasnt actually his birthday... 

So for my spiritual thought i wanted to talk a little about following the Spirit. So last week I was driving to our apartment and on that particular street you have to turn right to get to our apartment. Well everyone and their dog who turns right on this street pulls onto the shoulder to turn right so i just assumed there was a turning lane. So we are going home and for the first time in 4 months i notice a white line where the turning lane is supposed to be and i had the thought "dont cross the white line." well i was just like whatever, people always cross that line to turn. Well i crossed it. and... got pulled over! SO LAME. i didnt get a ticket or anything the lady cop just wanted to take the time to inform me that there was NOT a turning lane there. but had i listened, nothing would have happened. Often we get promptings that contradict what we think makes sense and honeslty i probably would have never known i was in the wrong had i followed the thought, but i would have avoided a hairy situation. Follow the spirit!

love you all! Elder Damron