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