River Falls week 21

So it is currently snowing outside. I really do love this time of year. Except I have never had to proselyte in it, so we shall see how this goes.. ha ha. 

So last Monday Elder Cole called the Lumberjack challenge (when I ate that 5-6 pounds of ice cream a few months ago) "easy" and decided he wanted to take it on. Our new zone leaders decided the same thing. I shook my head and agreed to go with them to do the challenge. They were talking so much smack and I just kept shaking my head and saying, "just you wait." Well, they got their bowls of ice cream, realized just how much ice cream it really was, still tried to talk the challenge down, and then got utterly destroyed by that ice cream. I just sat there laughing as they dropped out one by one. Oh man was it hilarious. I took some pictures to mark their humiliation and reminded them how "easy" the challenge was. So I am the only champ in these parts of 'Wiscansin. I still remind Elder Cole how "easy" it was. He still says it will be easy the second time and wants to go back. lulz

So last week I mentioned our little debate over whether it was raining or sprinkling one day. We decided this would be a great way to contact and then we went to campus and started asking people (it was raining/sprinkling/drizzling and at one point misting at the time) to clarify what the precipitation was. Most people agreed with Elder Cole... all I am saying is look up the definition of rain in the dictionary. Not that I did that or anything.... 

We also finally got back into contact with Sister S. We had not talked to her in about a month and she had quite a few commitment issues. But we finally found her at home one night and we went in to talk. She broke down and told us she had made quite a few mistakes recently and she didn't know what to do. We immediately taught a message on the atonement and told her the only way she can be happy is if she gives up breaking the commandments. She immediately went to her fridge and pulled out six large bottles of alcohol and told us to get rid of them for her, which we did. But there is such a change in her countenance. Truly, just as spoken in Alma 32, the  Lord will compel us to be humble. We then committed her to come to church. There were two issues with this. 1. she had bailed quite often on church. 2. it was stake conference in a town 35 minutes away. But by a literal miracle of God we found someone to take her and us and we brought her there on Sunday. A young couple of our ward immediately came over and said she could come sit with them and that truly made all the difference. Member missionary work truly changes the whole dynamics of missionary work. The stake conference was on missionary work as well and a few recent converts spoke and they all mentioned how great the members were. Sarah said afterwards that she had never felt such a family feeling in a church in her whole life. After she even met President Clements, who spoke at the conference. She stood there wide eyed and without us even telling her I am positive she could see that a true man of God was standing before her. 

So Elder Cole and I like to pretend we are funny. There is this bike on this bike rack we go to frequently where the person puts their bike lock on, but never mixes up the combo. Anyone could take the bike at any time. Makes sense, right? So we finally decided to help this person out. We moved the bike to the other side of the rack, mixed the combo up, and left a note telling the person someone could easily steal their bike, but mixing up the combination would really solve all their problems. A similar thing happened to Elder Cole a few weeks ago, so we figured we would pay it forward. 

One of our investigators who has refused to pray for quite some time prayed this week! He prayed for his sister! Without any encouragement from us! Few times on my mission have I been so filled with joy. He later told us he thinks God selectively answers prayers so he doesn't want to pray too often, but baby steps. We will work that out later. ha ha. 

We have met a college student Brother JB a few times. He often belief bashes and so this time we called in the big guns and brought a man in our ward who is pretty legit. So we go in, the investigator starts trying to pick us apart, and at one point the topic of persecution came up. We talked about John 15:20 on how the true church will be heavily persecuted. Then I asked him, "for example, you left the catholic church. Do you heavily persecute them?" He said," YES. I DO. I go to all the pastors in town, make appointments with them, and slam them on why they are wrong." JB:1 Elder Damron:0 Then the conversation went on and I refused to keep answering his many, many questions and told him to go to the Book of Mormon as a source of truth. He has literally gone everywhere but there. I told him to pray about it and he said ok. Then we talked about the bible. Now up to this point he came off as someone who believed the bible to be true or he was searching for that truth. I told him that just as he finds the bible to be true through prayer, he must do the same with the BoM. He told me that would not work then because he has prayed and the answer he got was the bible wasnt true. JB:2 Elder Damron:0 Basically that lesson did not go well. I walked out fuming. Blah. But he committed to reading and praying about the Book of Mormon! That is cool.

So Elder Cole almost died this week. It was pretty terrifying. We were helping this man move some stuff out of his storage unit. The guy had put part of a computer desk at the very top of this unit on top of some boxes. He could barely reach it. So he told us he was going to slide the desk down and we were going to grab it and help it slide to where we could firmly hold it. So he tipped it and started sliding it down, Elder Cole was at the bottom holding the end of the desk and slowly letting it down. All of a sudden the desk lurched forward and we heard the sound of something quite heavy sliding down the desk (it was too far up to even see what it was). All of a sudden some very large boards all wrapped together hit the one peg at the end of the desk and stopped 2 inches from Elder Cole's face. We literally would have had to call the ambulance. Holy cow. The Lord watches over his missionaries... 

So this week I was reading in Mosiah 10. I noticed that multiple times in the chapter it says "they (the lamanites) were wroth." At one point it said they had an "eternal hatred." Then they were wiped out in war. The start of our downfall is anger. Anger cannot coexist with the Spirit, which will show us all things that we should do to be safe. Peace be unto thy souls! And follow the Lord's counsel to be of good cheer. 

I love you all! Have a good week! Thank you for the mail too, I will write you all back. 

Love, Elder Damron