More Unified in Obedience

Hi Everyone!

We had an amazing zone conference this last Friday, and got to be taught by our new mission president for the first time! We were taught about repentance, which at first seemed like a strange topic to me but it turned out to be one of the most powerful, spiritually uplifting zone conferences I've been to!

One of the results of it is that me and my companion are more unified in obedience, it was good for both of us to re-examine what we're doing and how we can change, and I'm striving as hard as I can now to be exactly obedient, not just conveniently obedient.

The Lord has been blessing us with the spirit as a result, and I feel much better about everything. I love the fact that we can repent, change, and God will immediately bless us!

That's one of the key doctrines of the Gospel, and I love seeing people's lives touched and changed as they realize and accept that principal, whether investigators, less-actives, or even members!

The rest of the work right now is harder to find things to talk about, because we do a lot of tracting which hasn't proved to fruitful yet in this area, and also a lot of teaching less-active families, which is making progress but we don't have anyone who's come back into full activity yet.

We're working hard though and giving our best to the Lord in obedience, planning, and effort, so I'm confident that we'll see things happening soon. The stake is thinking about having the branch start a youth class, which could help a lot with the kids here who are bored in the combined adult classes. We're hoping that either the missionaries can teach it or we can get a really good teacher, so that we can get the youth active and give them more reason to come to church on Sunday.

I've had a few experiences in the past couple weeks where I've had people try to get under my skin and prove different things with the bible, which has served to strengthen my testimony because I've gone to my knees and asked again for a confirmation of the truth.

God answered my prayers, by sending the Holy Spirit to touch my heart and give me feelings of love, peace, and joy, which is the truest and purest kind of knowledge. I may not know every detail of the bible or be able to answer every question, but I do know that the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God.

I love the Gospel and I love being able to share it with those who are seeking the truth! Have a great week, keep me in your prayers!

Love,
Elder Damon Janis

Drink This Rum and I’ll get Baptized!

Hi Everyone!

A couple cool things happened this week, the first being that we had a random impression to go see the branch president's family while we were in the area by their house, so we followed it and went.

They opened the door and let us right in, and it just so happened that the branch president's mother-in-law was there, and she's not a member!

We chatted with them for a while, and then shared a spiritual thought, and then as we were leaving the mother-in-law stopped us and told us about a dream she'd had, where there had been a bunch of destruction and the land dividing, sort of an Armageddon scene, and she told us she felt like God was telling her to get focused on religion because tough times were coming. She also told us that us coming over was a sign to her, and she's going to focus on God.

I took the opportunity to invite her to be taught, which she accepted, and we came back yesterday and taught her the first lesson!

She understood really well and was paying attention, asking questions and participating in the lesson, and she'll be reading the Book of Mormon, praying, and watching The Testaments with her daughter and son-in-law!

The crazy part is that it was the first time I'd ever visited the branch president for anything other than dinner, but as we were passing by their place tracting my companion said "Hey, let's go visit the Torrez family!" and I thought about it and it felt right so we went, and it was perfect timing!

She probably won't be visiting long enough to get baptized with us, but to me it doesn't matter! We were in the right place at the right time with the spirit, and we got to help God accomplish His work in bringing the gospel to His children!

The other interesting thing this week was that I turned 20! AHH I'm old now, no longer a teenager!

It also means that I've been on my mission for a year, I've come to the top of the hill and I'm now ready to climb Mt. Sopris (huge mountain that's right by Carbondale) the rest of my mission! It's all up-hill from here, I'm excited to take all of the lessons and skills I've acquired in the last year and be able to be used by the Lord more and more!

Tracting in English areas is always fun, we ran into a guy who was trying to make us feel stupid and unprepared to be preaching because we hadn't read the Koran or taken anthropology, and he wouldn't listen to us supposedly because we weren't credible enough.

Then, he told us he'd get baptized and join our church if we drank some of this rum he offered us, and if we didn't, his salvation would be on our shoulders.

We didn't drink the rum of course, and left soon afterwards. It was a really interesting conversation, I feel bad for the guy. He thinks he's living the good life, thinks he's smart and well off, but you can tell that inside he's not that happy. Hopefully God will give him some experiences that help him understand where true happiness comes from. :)

I hope you all have a great week, I love being a missionary and I love the gospel! Keep me in your prayers, the Lord truly does bless me for them!

Love,
Elder Damon Janis

Sprinter with the Yellow Shirt

Hi Everyone!

Things are still progressing slowly, we had a good meeting with the ward mission leader in Aspen and got him a little more trained on the missionary process, so hopefully we can use him to work effectively with the branch leadership, they don't respond as well to us.

We also had a successful activity which we got a lot of less-actives to and had good fellowshipping, and we're planning another one for next month!

Hopefully we can get the Spanish people to do what they do best, socialize! I think that's the key for fellowshipping and bringing people to the church, to give people friends and have a good experience there!

We got the news for transfers, and Elder Arangua and I will be together for another 6 weeks! I'm glad to stay in the area, I don't think my work's done here and I'm hoping we can get more things mobilized these next couple months!

Yesterday we went on splits with the English missionaries, and me and Elder Englund went tracting in some rich English areas. We met with almost zero success, and then as we were getting discouraged we found a tiny hidden trailer park filled with Spanish people, and immediately started having interesting experiences!

The first trailer the people saw us before we knocked on the door, and I actually saw a guy in a yellow shirt sprint across the main room to hide in the back! :D I think they thought we were immigration, and so no matter what we did they wouldn't talk to us.

Then, we ran into a super-catholic lady who wasn't interested, but we helped her move some tires to the car, and we left her with a pass-along card.

Then we talked to a kid about our age who had been in jail and was wondering about what was going to happen after this life, so we explained a little bit about it and also how we know (living prophets), and set a return appointment.

Then another guy invited us in and fed us watermelon, and we taught a great lesson about the restoration. It was almost unreal the difference in cultures and humility between the two places we tracted, after going all day being looked down at and treated like pests, we suddenly were the messengers of God and were treated with respect and attention.

I'm so glad I'm a Spanish missionary! The Lord really is merciful!

Well, I hope you all have a great week, I will here because I'm doing the Lord's work and He's blessing me so much for it! I love the gospel and I love the church! Until next week!

Love,
Elder Damon Janis

Omar the Tracter

Hi Everyone!

We had a neat experience this week with tracting, which feels funny to say but this time it was a little different because we were tracting with one of our investigators! His name is Omar, and he lives with one of our member families. It was pretty cool, he actually brought his laptop with him because he'd found a YouTube video of Christ that he wanted to share with people if we got into any doors, which ended up happening! The first door we knocked, a girl about our age opened the door, and told us she only had like 5 minutes because she had to go somewhere with a friend. We went in anyway though, and showed the video which was a little longer than 5 minutes (Omar told us it was only 5 so when it kept going on I got really stressed :) but it turned out to be ok because the spirit came and she decided she could call her friend and postpone whatever it was, because what we were sharing was important. Her mom came in half-way through, and actually joined in the lesson and understood things really well. It was a great lesson, we left them with the invitation to read the Book of Mormon and pray, and they understood the importance of doing it! We'll be seeing them next Monday when we're in the area again. We also taught another guy who wasn't super interested, but it was a good opportunity to teach and testify about the restoration to fortify Omar's growing testimony! We're hoping to resolve his concerns and get him set with a baptismal date soon.

We now have our new mission president, President Maynes! He went around the mission this week and interviewed all of the missionaries, and gave us a small lesson also. He was talking about how we need to purify our motives for being missionaries, and that it's key in becoming better teachers. It was really good for me, I'd like to develop a little more in having charity for the people and do missionary work out of love instead of the duty that sometimes drives me. I'm excited to see the changes in the mission and what'll be rolling forward from Salt Lake, President Maynes is getting instructions from there about where the church is going with missionary work.

I don't have too much time today, but I'd just like to share that I know this work is true, that the gospel is the most important thing in the world. It's like the medicine for cancer, except we have it and can share it with people, and save them from the spiritual sicknesses that are ravaging the world right now. Even though they don't know it yet and won't until they try it, our friends of other faiths can receive so much more joy in this life and so many more blessings of God than the patches and suppressants that world religions offer. The gospel goes straight to the root and cures a person completely, which is the true power of the Atonement of Christ. It's the greatest message in the world, that's why we share it!

Love,
Elder Damon Janis