Fallen Appointment Leads To New Investigator. Upcoming Transfer.

Hi Everyone!

This week has been really interesting, I had a lot of cool experiences, I'll try to share a couple.

So a few days ago we decided to go tracting because an appointment fell through, so we looked around in the area for a good place to find spanish people. We stumbled across a street full of apartments, with most of the cars having expensive rims and in all ways appearing very promising. What was odd was that we hadn't found it before, because we've been trying to find places like that for the past 6 weeks. So we started at the end, and the first door we knocked on a white lady answered and ushered us in. (Just a note, this is like the 5th time this has happened, we always get into the first door that opens, and teach a good lesson in English, I have no idea why :) So it turns out that the lady is an inactive member, and her mom happened to be there taking care of her new baby with down syndrome. The mom was a member and seemed active and everything, which was cool. There were also 2 little kids, a 9 year old boy named Elijah, and an 8 year old girl named Sierra. The kids had been interested in going to church, so their mom though it would be a good opportunity for them to be taught about God and everything. The little boy had had limited contact with a Christian church, and the little girl had never been to church and had never been taught to pray either, so neither of them had almost any exposure to religious ideas. We said a prayer to start, and then we started to teach the first lesson. We asked the little girl if she believed in God, and she told us yes, that we're His children, and He loves us. She told us that she feels Him help her get up when she falls down, and makes her feel better. We asked her why else she knew God loved her, and she told us because He'd given her such a good family and good parents, which is the second principle in the lesson. The rest of the lesson went like that, we'd just ask simple questions to guide the discussion and these two kids just filled in the rest with things they'd never been taught but somehow knew instinctively. We asked them after explaining the apostasy, "So now we have all this confusion and all these churches without God's permission, so what do you think God and Christ will do about it?" They answered "They'll come down and call someone to be a prophet and bring back the church!" We almost had to fight to relate the story of Joseph Smith because they guessed what happened so exactly that it felt redundant to tell it! The entire lesson was so easy, it made so much sense to them and they grasped it better than anyone I've taught so far. It was incredible to see how much they knew about God's true nature, His plan, our relationship with Him and everything, and to realize that it's because they've never had anyone teach them anything about it what they knew before this life never got confused with the doctrines of men. It was awesome to be there, the veil was thin and the Holy Ghost was teaching and reminding them. It's experiences like that that really  build your testimony, especially of God's hand in missionary work and the Holy Ghost. Our appointment happened to fall through, and we happened to stumble across a couple of kids who were so ready and so prepared to be taught. What are the odds? Not good without God's help. It happens too often to be just chance though, it's awesome to watch the Lord work through us.

Well we got our calls last night, and it looks like I'm being transferred, so don't send anything to the Grand Junction address! I'll let you know when I can my new address, for now send it to the office address (there's a new one, it's the return address of the last letter I sent to Mom and Dad), I don't know if it's been posted yet but that's the one to send stuff to.

I'm excited for this next transfer. It's been awesome learning from Elder Murray, but I think the Lord has plans for me to have more responsibility this next transfer as far as teaching and planning and everything. I've learned a lot, and now I'm ready to be pushed a little further. :)

I hope you're all well, thank you so much for everything, for your thoughts and prayers, the Lord really is there and He loves us and answers those prayers. Have a great week, enjoy the Christmas season!

Elder Damon Janis