Awesome New Ward Mission Leader

Hi Everyone!

This week has been exciting, we got a new Ward Mission Leader on Sunday, and he's awesome! He called us after church and wanted to meet with us ASAP along with the assistant WML that got called, so we met for a couple hours and gave him a brief on what's been happening and where the Brethren would like us to go, and he was all for it and shared a lot of his personal goals and philosophies and is really excited about it! He's a really funny guy, still younger, got off his mission about 10 years ago and is really on fire about missionary work!

He has a bunch of plans to get the members more missionary minded over a couple years time, and is helping us get the 15 names process going in the ward. I'm not sure how familiar everyone is with the new way the church is doing missionary work, but basically the High Priests, Elders and Relief Society each come up with 5 names of less-actives or part member families that the missionaries can teach, and then a member goes and invites the person to hear the missionary lessons (the Preach My Gospel ones).

It's pretty simple but for some reason most of the wards in our mission really struggle to get these names, and here in Rifle in the past our ward mission leader would almost just take names from our teaching pool and create a 15 names list to give to the ward, so nothing really got done that way. But, by the end of sunday, after out meeting, our new Ward Mission Leader got each axillary to commit to come up with 5 brand new names that we can get invited and start teaching!

Working with less-active families has been a really big push from the Brethren recently, they like us working with them because when you can get members reactivated, you get a lot of referals because of all their non-member acquaintances, and a lot of times you're twice as effective and can help so many more people!

Honestly the best times on my mission have been when I'm working with less-actives and they progress and bring their friends into the gospel, and I really have a testimony of that kind of work! I'm excited for our Ward mission leader getting involved with us teaching more families like this, because for a while here I've been feeling like things are pretty stagnant and I need something to really sink my teeth into. I want to work hard but it's been hard to know how or where to focus my efforts, but I think with this change and following the brethren (usually they're pretty inspired), the ward will finally catch the spirit and we'll have as much work as we can handle!

Our investigator Steven is struggling a bit, he's on baptismal date for July 9th but he's having a rough go of it with his wife Mindy, they didn't come to church this week and we don't know exactly what could happen. He's talked about going back to Missouri and starting over again, but we're hoping he's able to work things out.

I'm learning a lot right now about being patient in trials and afflictions, I've been sick for almost a week and it's lingering, but I have a lot of responsabilities with the zone and leading my area as well, and I can't slow down or rest to fully recover yet. This whole week is packed and I've been feeling really inadequete and overwhelmed, and in that state of mind it's really easy to get discouraged or to snap at people. True patience though is getting through stuff like this without getting angry and frustrated, not merely enduring and not blowing up and causing negative feelings all around you.

The Lord is good, and I've been leaning on Him a lot and trusting that He'll make me equal to the task, and it's been a good reminder for me that it's the Lord and not me that really is doing the miricals in missionary work. No matter how much experience or time I have, I really need Him just as much as the day I stepped foot in the MTC, fresh and green and terrified of the incredible responsabilities of being the Lord's messenger. I'm so grateful for this opportunity, it's shaped my life and I love the Lord for it!

Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Damon Janis