Duluth week 20

So we had zone conference last Monday and that night we had 10 Elders in our apartment. Thankfully some members let us borrow some air mattresses so that they didnt have to sleep on our hardwood floor. It was a lot of fun. Perhaps too much fun... we got some sleep dont worry! The next day we had a zone P-Day and played lazer tag. It was pretty epic 

We are teaching a blind man named BG and he came to church yesterday! He brought his service dog and all of the little kids were absolutely flipping out about having a "puppy" in Church. it was pretty adorable. He also loved church, so that is a plus :D we taught him the plan of salvation last week and at the end of the lesson he said, "you know, it makes sense that we needed to leave God's presence to experience mortality. How could we truly appreciate immortality if we did not experience the opposite?" It was a pretty powerful statement. He is a beast!

Elder Zerkle and I have been working very hard at putting up everything on the alter of sacrifice and becoming consecrated missionaries. And you know, I think we are close to achieving our goal because this last week we went and walked on water. Thats right. We just walked out onto Lake Superior. okay, we cheated a little bit. The lake was completely frozen with about 11 inches of ice, but baby steps, right? We will work on a more marvelous miracle when the lake unfreezes. But yeah! we ran out onto the lake and ice hut tracted. SOOOO fun. All the ice fishermen just sit there in their little hut all day just waiting to be talked to! We had a decent amount of success, too. They are fishers of fish and we are fishers of men so it all worked out!

So I was standing in our bedroom tying my tie and i see out of the  corner of my eyes a spider hanging in the doorway. my hands were occupied so i asked Elder Zerkle to kill it. He is a big guy and thinks he is tough sometimes so I figured he would be able to hand it. Well i turn around and he has a paper towel and he carefully tries to pull it out of the air. THen he opens up the paper towel and the spider leaps at him a little bit. I thought there was a 7 year old girl in the apartment from his little shriek so then i had to go and kill the spider on the ground. For heavens sake he reminded me of Alyssa waking me up at like 5 in the morning to kill a spider in her bathroom. ha ha

We had a pretty sick lesson with a less active named JH this last week. I have been trying to contact him for some time and then the EQ president asked us to go over and see if he wants home teachers so we decided to go again. So we got in the door for the first time and he opened up about all his trials. We read about the atonement of Jesus Christ in Alma 7 and told him that Christ felt all of his trials already so he didnt need to go through this alone. He told us he realized and that after he started feeling healthy again he would make God more of a priority. Well obviously I didnt agree with the way he wants to go about the situation so I opened up to 3 Ne 13:33 and told him that the quality of his life was only going to improve once he put God first, not last and then we committed him to pray every night for the next week, read the Book of Mormon, and then look back to see how his week was different. He said, "you know, that is completely reasonable. Ill do that." #repentance

Abraham 3:25 

 25 And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them;

One of biggest lessons I have learned since coming to Duluth is learning to accept the will of the Father with humility.I have had opportunity after opportunity up here in the Duluth to either be humble or resist what God wanted me to do. This is exactly why we are here on earth! To learn to accept God's will. When we try to do God's will the grace of His Son, Jesus Christ, fills our souls and we can accomplish absolutely anything He wants us to do.

I love you all! Have a great week. 

Elder Ethan P. Damron