“Hey, you’re cute!”

Hi Everyone!

Jose Jacob got confirmed this week, so we're a lot less stressed. He had to take off work and it made his boss mad, but it was the right thing to do and he'll be blessed for it. His faith is incredible, he told us that if his boss won't let him take off most Sundays, he'll quit and find a new one, even though he doesn't have many marketable skills and the economy is in the dumps, especially in Colorado's winter. The great thing is that the Lord has promised to bless us when we put him first, like it says in Matt. 6:33. I love that promise, because it gives us the ability to make tough decisions with full confidence that things will turn out alright if we follow God's direction.

We had our transfer calls last night, and it turns out I'm staying in the area and Elder Alcocer is moving out. He's on a special assignment to "follow-up-train", so he'll be put with a missionary in his 2nd or 3rd transfer who needs more help. We have no idea who'll come in and be my companion, but I'm hoping for someone with as much or less time than me in the mission so I can take the lead in the area. I'm getting to a point with my Spanish and experience that I can do it, and I feel like that's the way I'm going to progress more. Whoever comes though, I'm going to try and set a fast pace to start things off while my companion learns the area. I'm really excited, I think miracles could happen this transfer, we just need to seek out the Lord's will for us and then work as hard as we can to make it happen.

Our only investigator who's really progressing is Jesus, who has come to church twice in a row now and is still reading a lot. He told us that he's investigating the church seriously now because we were serious with him as missionaries, and so he's willing to start learning in earnest now. It's the coolest thing to see his family, all of them are SO much happier and are willing to learn and act! This is the first time on my mission where I've actually seen lives changed for the better because of my work, and it's the greatest feeling in the world! We're pretty sure that Jesus will be baptized this coming transfer, and even though it'll only count as 1 baptism on the records, we'll have the satisfaction that we really brought an entire family to the fold of God. We had the idea of showing Jesus a teaching record, which has all of the lessons/principles that a person needs to learn before getting baptized, and we're hoping to show him that he really knows most of it and that he's close knowledge-wise to baptism.

Funny story of the week: As we were going around tracting in a certain apartment complex at night, there was a small group of 8-9 year old girls that started following us and yelling "heeeey!!! You're cute!!!" and then laughed and ran off. They kept doing stuff like that for about an hour, following us into the buildings and distracting our doorstep conversations! They also all had jump-ropes, apparently they have a jump-rope club thing where they're all out there jumping rope at night. :)

I hope you all have a great week, thank you so much for your prayers in my behalf and for the missionaries in general! The Lord truly blesses us so much and I'm grateful every day for the help I get as a missionary!

Love,
Elder Damon Janis