Pitfalls of Pride

Hi Everyone!

Well, transfers are right around the corner, and there's a good chance that I'll get moved since I've been here for 2 transfers now. So for the meantime if you wouldn't mind, send letters to the Mission Office, they'll get to me faster that way if I do get transferred. The mission office is actually moving locations though, but I don't have the new address yet, but I'll get that out hopefully next week. It should be fine to send it to the old one for a while though. Also, the church is moving off the Myldsmail.net system for email, and will be using one powered by Gmail, so I'll let you know when that happens as well.

This week has been interesting for me, we started teaching an English class so that the members and their friends can gain more skills, and it's been interesting to figure out what are the more important parts of the language to teach. In some ways English is easier to learn, because even if you slaughter the grammar people usually get what you're trying to say. On the other hand though, the spelling and pronunciation are killer, and it's really difficult to explain. We're teaching with the Sisters, and we're hopeful that it'll be a good tool to find people to teach, but also to give true service, because language skills are desperately needed by so many of the people.

We had an experience this week while teaching with the senior couple here, we were teaching a Spanish man who was living with an American woman, and he needed the gospel to be explained in his own language because the gospel vocabulary in English was too hard for him to understand. The lesson started pretty well, they were receptive and had good questions, but as the time went on the Spanish man (Javier) started to really take over the discussion with a lot of really deep doctrinal questions from Genesis, which he'd recently started studying in depth. He'd come to the conclusion that Adam had 2 wives, and that Cain had married a demon lady who had been cast down to earth. We tried to answer his questions, using the scriptures and explaining them, but he just kept asking more. We eventually brought it back to how he needs to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it, or at the least pray for understanding as he read the Bible, but he utterly refused. His attitude was that he could figure it all out on his own, he didn't need prayer or God's help. Also, he wouldn't read the Book of Mormon till he'd finished completely understanding the bible. After wasting a couple hours trying to tactfully reason with him, we finally left and set another appointment. That experience though was interesting for me, because it made me realize how big of an obstacle pride is. I've been absolutely floored to find how many people won't pray, or at least not specifically, and almost always it's because of pride. Often they won't be as blunt about it as Javier, but they are too proud to get on their knees and plead for an answer from God, with real intent to act on that answer. I'd say that's probably the biggest factor in why people don't progress to baptism, it's because after we've taught the first lesson they don't act on it, either out of pride or laziness, and they lose interest. Admitting that God knows better than you, and that you can't figure things out for yourself really takes a lot of humility, but it's absolutely incredible the things that happen when people really do it. When people let Him, God comes in and completely changes people's lives, and they find so much more peace, happiness, and joy than they've ever experienced.

Thank you all so much for your prayers, I'm so grateful for you all and for God who answers those prayers. The church really is true, and Christ really did suffer so that through Him we can be healed from our pain, sins, and everything bad. I hope you all have a great week, and enjoy the Christmas season!

Elder Damon Janis

P.S. Auna, I sent you a letter to the address you gave me, but it got returned to me and said that the address wasn't valid. Could you send me it again please? :)