I Love Being A Missionary

Hi Everyone!

I had a truly great week which was a blessing and tender mercy from the Lord, things have been going well but now they are really picking up! I'll share some of the highlights.

First, we had a conversation on Sunday with Steven and Mindy, our top family, where Mindy expressed her desire to be married in the Salt Lake Temple and wanted to know how to purify her life so she could get there!!! I was blown out of the water, she's been pretty offish and not wanting to learn very much, offering a lot of resistance in response to her husband's enthusiasm. She's also struggling with addictions to some of the worst and hardest substances in existence, and has a long way to go in her personal progress.

We're so excited for this breakthrough though, she was sincere in her desire and when we told her that baptism was part of the process she was just fine with it! Today is our appointment with them to teach them about spiritual purification, I won't be there since I'm on exchanges to interview a baptismal candidate but I feel and pray that they'll start to rapidly progress! Steven has a baptismal date for the 9th of July, and I'm hoping we can put Mindy on the same date!

Another amazing breakthrough we had taught me a lesson about persistence, because we came across a golden family that we've been trying to contact for nearly 6 weeks! A couple days ago, we were having a rough day and couldn't find anybody for a certain slot of time, and as we got in the car an impression came to my mind to go visit this family we'd found out about when one of the Assistants to the President was with us and we street contacted this girl who was putting a kid in a car.

We found out that her name was Chelsea, and that she was an inactive member of the church. She said that she was actually just visiting her mom there, she lived somewhere else, but that we could try to visit her family since they she has several brothers who aren't baptized yet.

Well, we didn't have time right then to go visit the family, but we duly recorded the apartment number and went on to our next appointment. For the past month or two we've been passing by there any time we're in the area, and I was honestly close to giving up because we could never find anybody at home no matter when we tried to go by.

But, on Sunday this week when I got the impression to go back again Chelsea's brother answered the door and was a little surprised to see us, and he was soon joined by his mom who had (coincidentally) just been reading a book about our church written by one of our advocates in the media world, because she's been wanting to get back into church and be able to answer some of the questions a friend of hers has about the church!

She told us that she would love to teach her kids about our faith and have them grow up with the church, and she was really excited to have us come over and teach the whole family! We invited her to bring as many of her children as possible to our lesson, (she has 6) and also her friend who's interested in the church, which she readily accepted!

I'm so grateful for the spirit's whisperings, that we were able to find this amazing family who's just ready for the Gospel, and how everything was arranged just perfectly to put us in contact! It humbles me to know how close I was in my weakness to just giving up on contacting the family, and just figuring that eventually it would work out in the future if it was right. The Lord taught me a powerful lesson that He can work miracles, and the tool he uses to accomplish it doesn't have to be 100% perfect or inspired or trusting to make it happen, just a willing heart and striving to do the Lord's will is sufficient.

Another cool thing for me this week was a companionship exchange I had with an Elder in Rangely, which is like the middle of nowhere in our middle-of-nowhere zone. :) The town has maybe 1500 people that live there, and it has 2 wards with a bunch of less-actives.

The Elders there have been struggling a lot, so we arranged an exchange with them to get an inside look at their area and see if we could help them. The working part of the exchange while I was there was a pretty bleak picture, we walked for hours to get to different potentials around the town, and we didn't find hardly any success, just a couple people actually let us teach them.

However, when we got back to the apartment that night, I'd been praying all day that I could know how to help these Elders work their area better, and in our planning session the spirit took over and I taught the Elder about getting referrals, planning to coordinate with members to get them at your lessons, and also planning skills that they could use. I taught for over an hour! The inspiration just flowed and I knew exactly what to tell him, even though I'd been pondering for a long time on exactly how to do those very things in my own area and still had no idea about!

The Lord is merciful and inspires His servants, He called me to serve in the capacity I'm in and he makes me fit for it. Without His help I'm not all that inspiring or great, not more than any other missionary, but by putting my trust in Him and just asking, He's poured out his spirit and helped me rise to the calling!

I love being a missionary and being able to serve the Lord and His children! It's the greatest opportunity of my life and I cherish it. I have a strong testimony of this restored gospel that I teach and I know that it's the greatest blessing a person can receive! I hope you all have a great week!

Love,
Elder Damon Janis