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