What a Week!

There has been a ton of stuff that has happened in the past week. It has been pretty crazy!

To start off we set another baptismal date! I can't remember if I already told you about that or not, but we set a date with our investigator, Nick Anderson, for May 15th!! It was an awesome lesson. Nick was feeling the Spirit and he told us that there wasn't any way that he could say no. So, that was one of the things that happened.

Next, we had interviews with President Pendleton. He mentioned in my interview that he was thinking about putting me in leadership soon, probably next transfer. Okay, no big deal. At the end of our district meeting, Pres. had me come back into the room he was using in the church building and sat me down. I had no idea what was going on. He told me that he was calling me to be the District Leader for our district. Well, alrighty then. Now I'm District Leader and I've got more responsiblities that I didn't have before... more on that in a moment.

Moving on, we have continued to meet with the Condons. Our lessons with them have been going pretty well, until last night. We showed up, Janine was asleep, and Jason was just sitting around. We started teaching Janine, who we found out was on all kinds of drugs for the pain that she was in. Teaching people who are on a medicinal high is not a good idea. Janine was doing the best she could to participate, but Elder Garner and myself could both tell that we weren't going anywhere. It didn't help that Jason was falling asleep in his chair either. I asked Janine how she felt knowing that the only true and living church of Christ was on the earth again...dun dun dun! Man did that open a can of worms. Janine started to comment that she believed that all the other churches were right as well, and then Jason jumped in with his two cents. He said, "You're not going to like this, but I don't believe that you can make a statement that your church is the only one that is right. I believe that this church is right for me, but the Catholic church might be the right church for somebody else. It would be blasphemous to state otherwise unless God or Christ himself were to come down and say it." I couldn't believe it!!!!!!! Jason has been a member of the church for a year and he has completely missed the entire message. His own skewed ideas about what is and isn't right has really presented us with a problem. We now know that neither Jason, nor Janine have testimonies of what we are teaching. They feel that it is good and they recognize that it is helping them, but they don't have a witness that it is TRUE!! Jason also share with us how he decided to join the church. Through his story, we learned a couple of things. First off, we have every reason to believe that Jason has been influenced by evil spirits in the past. I can't go into details right now, but he's had some seriously scary stuff happen in his life, recently too. Jason has based his entire conversion on intellectually, "it makes sense, and how could it be other wise." Because of these things, he has influenced his family to have the same ideas about religion. We can't baptize Janine, or anybody else for that matter, when we know they don't have a testimony. We'd be hosing them over if we did! So, after Elder Garner and myself came home and prayed, discussed what we had heard, prayed some more, and studied this morning, we have come to the conclusion that we have to just keep doing what we've been doing with the Condons. They don't have any concerns with what we are teaching (other than our stance on being TRUE) and they keep the commitments we give them. As long as they continue to do (that's really important) what we ask of them, the Spirit will work on them and eventually they will gain a testimony. Elder Garner and I are going to have to step up to this challenge and really rely on the Spirit to help. I don't know if any of this makes any sense at all, but it has sure caused us some serious stress in the last 24 hours (our lesson with them was last night). I am hoping and praying that Jason "gets it" and that Janine "gets it as well," because they don't right now.

Okay, next with what is going on. Remember Nick? Well, we found out when he came to church on Sunday that he doesn't live in our area. Noooooo!!! We have to turn him over to the other Elders and he has to go to church in his own ward. It's kind of a bummer that we can't teach him anymore, and he definitely isn't happy about it either. Thankfully he understands the situation and he still wants to get baptized. We're going to help him transition over the next little bit too. It's a good thing we're all on the same team huh? : ) Because Nick is not going to officially be one of our investigators anymore, I will actually be the one to interview him for baptism. That will be a cool experience.

That brings me to the last part of my email. Because I am the DL, I have to interview all the investigators being taught in my district that are going to get baptized. I've been thinking about that a lot lately and it's really helped me want to do even better as a missionary. I get to be the one that these people come to to witness that they are ready to enter the waters of baptism. This morning I actually got to do just that. I interviewed a girl from the Nevada City area who is scheduled to be baptized on Saturday. It was a great experience. I really felt the Spirit and I could tell that she was ready. Hopefully everybody I interview will be ready, but if not, I have to tell them. Fun...

Well, that's about it for now. I'm out of time anyways. Mom, I don't have anything specific that I could give you for your talk on Sunday right now. Just know that everything you have taught me has helped me as a missionary! I'll try and send a letter off to you if I get a sec for something a little more in depth.

Thanks for everything everyone! Love you all!
Be mighty

Elder J. Hammer