Dinkytown week 6

So today is absolutely nuts this email might be short. First, Elder Harrison is getting transferred to the boonies of Wisconsin to be a district leader for the last few months before he goes home. I am quite sad... I have enjoyed my time with my arizona brother. I have a learned a lot from him! My new companion is Elder Wall. He is super tall and I actually replaced him in Andover back in November, so this will be a lot of fun! A lot of changes happened in our zone and it is going to take a lot of work getting back up to the speed we were at.

 

Our mission is being tremendously blessed at the moment! We had 28 baptisms in the mission last weekend. This is the most in one week since President Clements has been here. WE have 43 for the month. President Clements has wanted to hit the holy grail of baptisms (60) in this mission for 3 years and we are going to smash it as a present for him right before he goes home!

 

One of my favorite things about this area is teaching Chinese people who have basically no idea about who God is or anything like that. We have had a lot of opportunities to teach Chinese people on the street how to pray and they get so excited and giddy about it. They are quite spiritual experiences.

 

This week I went to Mission Leadership Council and we met President Rulon Stacey. He is the new counselor in our mission presidency. He is the CEO of the Fairview Medical Organization. He just moved here in January to take the job. Anyway, in the meeting he told us that when he went on his mission he didnt know that the Church was true and he struggled for awhile. He told us he doesnt want us to have the same problem. He told us that you can only know for sure that these things are true by the Spirit. Alma saw an angel but he still had to find out by the Spirit. He told us he was going to give us such compelling evidence of the truthfulness of the church that we would be forced to our knees to truly ask God if it was true and find out by the spirit that it was true. He then spent the next hour giving the most compelling physical evidence for the church's truthfulness that I have ever seen. I was about to get on my knees and ask God again the evidence was so compelling. He is pretty brialliant.

 

We had a baptism Saturday! Sister ER. She has an amazing story. She is from Liberia and when she told her family she wanted to get baptized they shunned her. She got super antid and lost all her friends yet she persevered and decided she still wanted to be baptized. It was a fantastic service.

 

We also had the opportunity to help a Chinese man who recently became an Elder learn how to confirm people. He was able to confirm a chinese convert in Chinese sunday. We called another Mandarin speaking elder in the zone and he taught the member how to say the ordinance correctly. Which is really good because he was saying "priesthood" instead of "Holy Ghost." ha ha. definitely dont want to give the female convert the priesthood.... think about how remarkable this whole situation is, though! two people from China, a godless country, here at this time and one of them confirmed the other in their native tongue! This is ground breaking.

 

So saturday I went to Mexico. Im almost not kidding. There is this little building in South Minneaplis we call Mexican Village and when  you walk in it is like you are in a strip mall in Mexico. We were the only two white people and we stuck out like sore thumgs. It was fantastic. That place put Arizona to shame.

 

We also taught Brother TO this week. We have been teaching him about repentance and he has really tried to repent of a lot of the things in his life and each time we go over we see more and more joy in his face. It is remarkable to be able to see. I feel blessed to be able to show him how he can remove the chains of the adversary and find joy and peace in this life (2 Ne 9:45)

 

well i wish i could write more but i must be off. i love you all!

Have a great week!

Elder Damron