Hey Fam!
It has been a fantastic week.
It seems like every week is just going by faster and faster. That kinda
worries me because in a few months the weeks are going to be flying by
faster than i want them to! I am started to adjust to all the hustle and
bustle of the mission life. Not gonna lie, its pretty crazy. My
favorite time of the whole day is between 8 and 9 in the morning because
that is my personal study time. That is time where i can just read the
scriptures and listen to what Heavenly Father is trying to tell me. I
wish i would have dedicated an hour to studying before i left for my
mission. Everyday i get more and more excited to learn new things in
this time. It has really opened my eyes to how much i don't know. If you
all have the chance, maybe try dedicating a half hour or an hour to
studying the scriptures or General conference talks or something every
morning. (if you arent already doing it)
Me and elder Hansen have had a challenging week. We
realized at the beginning of the week that many of our investigators
arent too interested or are losing interest quickly, so we decided we
would dedicate this week to finding new people to teach. That involved a
lot of tracting. And a lot of rejection. It was a really depressing
week at times, but we learned something. (by the way, we didnt come up
with a single potential investigator with all our tracting efforts)
Anyway, what we learned is that the Lord knows what he is talking about
when he asks the members and the missionaries to work together. The only
successful "finds" we had this week were referrals from the members. We
likened this to the story in the bible when the Apostles are fishing
out the left side of the boat all night and they dont catch anything.
Then the savior appears and tells them to fish out the right side of the
boat, and they catch a whole multitude of fish. The Lord has asked the
members and the missionaries to work together, that is fishing out the
right side of the boat. However, this presents a problem. Not very many
members have referrals to give us, and i cant blame them. I never gave
the missionaries any referrals before my mission. So we are now trying
to figure out how to get the members involved more in our work. It will
be good! :)
So i have a pretty cool story this week. This
experience pretty much turned this week from "not very good" to
fantastic. Emotions are all over the place out here in the field.
Everything is super dramatic. (if you couldnt tell from my emails)
Anyway, so we were having a tough week, lots of rejection. Then on
Friday the Sister Missionaries in our area asked us if we would go to
the Migrant camps(these are camps where all the mexicans live during the
picking season of all the fruit) with them because there was a less
active man there who wanted a blessing. So we went with them around 6:00
and the less active guy wasnt even there. But a drunk guy who wanted to
"learn God" started talking to us. So we talked to him quite a bit and
eventually all the Hispanics started flocking to us! It got to the point
where me and elder Hansen were teaching 7 different guys and the
sisters were teaching 7 different guys. It reminded me of the stories
you hear of old times when everyone is in a big group listening to
someone preach. So we taught the plan of salvation to all these men for
two hours!! In Spanish. You know in the scriptures when it says "the
spirit of the lord was upon them and they spoke with tongues" or
something like that. Yeah that happened to us. The spirit was with us
and we didnt have a language barrier at all. Or if we did, it was at
different times so we could still continue teaching. For example if i
didnt understand something, Elder Hansen did. Or if he didnt know how to
say something, the words came to me. It was a very cool experience that
just made the whole week! Then after the lesson elder hansen gave the
less active guy a powerful blessing. It was really cool.
My favorite part about being a missionary is all the
service we get to do. Not too many people want to hear what we have to
say, but there are a lot of people who need help chopping wood or
weeding or putting up christmas lights or even moving. It has been
fantastic. I made a book this week and i am organizing all my emails and
written letters that i receive. They lift my spirits when we have a
hard day. I have no doubt that all these challenges are to help me grow.
Sometimes they arent very fun though. I pray for you all everyday.
Thank you so much for all the love and support!! Until next week!
Elder Doman
