Andover week 19

It is dumping snow again today. yaaaay....... People keep telling us it will warm up. then 2 days later the temperature drop 30 degrees and it snows. blah.

well Elder Foggin is gone and off down south. I have Elder Hawkes with me now! He lived in Colorado his senior year, but before that he lived here in Minnesota for 5 years! he lived in a city called Chanhassen. Elder Berg, my first companion, served there and actually reactivated Elder Hawkes' brother and baptized his brother's girlfriend! So it is pretty cool that we are serving together now. He is pretty upbeat and we have a good time. muy bien.

Well we met a new Liberian investigator this week, Brother H. He is in his 60s and super humble and nice. We went there looking for his son, who we met last week. brother H let us right in and asked us to talk to him about Jesus! We taught a wonderful restoration lesson and gave him a book of Mormon. Unfortunately his eye sight is not good and he told us he cannot read something that small... he said a closing prayer and thanked God for sending us to teach him about Christ since he hasn't been to church all winter due to the cold. (this is his first winter outside of Liberia and oh man did he get quite the shell shock. ha ha). So we went to the store and bought one of those magnifying glasses made for reading. At our return appointment he was waiting at the door and we gave him the magnifying glass. He was so excited! he sat down, opened up his BoM, and immediately started to read it with his magnifying glass. He loves the pictures in the resto and kept asking which of the apostles was James. I guess he really likes James. We will hopefully soon start teaching the whole family (there are 2 other brothers and one of the brother's families there).

We also had some legit lessons with The Z family this week. We taught Brother Z the last part of the plan of salvation and he just kept saying how "it made so much sense." He has also read the entire 1st book of Nephi in the last 2.5 weeks and has the goal to finish it before he is baptized. unfortunately he is on probation and cannot be baptized for at least 5 months. Sunday night we went over to tell him. I have never been so nervous before heading into a lesson my entire mission... but luckily he didn't have any problem with it! He understood and said this gives him time to fully commit to it. he said he would be going to church anyway so it doesn't make a huge difference. man I wish I could be here for his baptism... but hey, I could still be here in 5 months, right? 10 months in one area would be pretty cool!

We took a priest joint teaching and he drove us around. his door had this piece of metal stuff sticking out and totally sliced my hand open. So we were walking up to an appointment and I realized my hand was covered in blood. That created a few problems. Luckily a member lived close by so I got bandaged up. oh how I sacrifice my body for the sake of the ministry... ha ha.

We also taught brother L this week. we talked about needing to have the right desires for our actions. We have talked a lot about matching our works and desires so that they are consistent and so when God judges we will know if our righteous desires were proven by righteous actions. he started bawling as he realized he did not serve his wife out of the love Christ but instead out of duty before she died of health complications last summer. it was really sad to see. I think he served her a lot better than he thinks, but we told him to find solace in God through the atonement and prayer. It was remarkably spiritual.

Alma 22:18  

18 O God, Aaron hath told me that there is a God; and if there is a God, and if thou art God, wilt thou make thyself known unto me, and I will give away all my sins to know thee, and that I may be raised from the dead, and be saved at the last day. And now when the king had said these words, he was struck ^aas if he were dead.

king Lamoni's father told God that he would give up all his sons to know the reality of God's existence. Do we feel the same way? Are we willing to give up our sins to know God and serve him with our whole soul? we all have things we do, some big and others small, that we know are not pleasing to God. Sacrifice is an expression of love for our Savior. Do we love him enough to sacrifice these things in our life?

I love you all! Have a good week!

Elder Damron