Blessings of a Fast

2/13/12
This was a great week. I have such a testimony of fasting. Last week was the beginning of our ward missionary fast. Each day someone in the ward fasted and the next 3 weeks there will continue to be one family fasting everyday. Well last week was the best week for each set of elders in the ward. We taught many more lessons and made some very good progress with our current investigators. We had a lesson with Pam on wednesday with one of our ward missionaries it went really well and we invited her to church, and wouldn't ya believe it, yesterday she came. We have really only been able to meet with here once week and sometimes less, so the progress has been slow, but steady. She came and really enjoyed relief society. She works for the state as the head of the optometry department and the church speakers were perfect for her. Pam's hold up for baptism is recieving an answer if the Book of Mormon is true and the talks yesterday were on reading the scriptures and one of the speakers related it to his humanitarian trip to El Salvador with a group of optomologists! It was great! The releif society president invited her over for dinner on wednesday with 5 other single sisters and we are teaching her afterwards. She has really come out of the woodwork.

We also saw Vince this week. He is doing really well and is on track for baptism except for not being married. He has not gotten married to his 15 year girlfriend because she has her college paid for because her father died in the military so her schooling is paid for. Their combined income would be too much for her to recieve those benefits if they did get married. On Thursday we fasted to overcome it, but it is going to take a lot of faith for him to do it. The ironic thing is, how nearly quoted Doctorine and Covenants about how important it is to receive a good education while we are still here. Satan is putting some tough stumbling blocks in front of him.

Zone Conference was also this week. It was focused how we build others testimonies thru improving teaching - clarify, simplify, verify, tesify. As well as changing perspective by teaching doctorine then aligning commitments. You might not think it is useful unless you are a missionary, but the more I think about it, the more I realize those are the basics of communication. It is understanding why someone has a particular belief, how it relates to how they act and then clearly sharing why you choose to act differently. It was a really good conference.

We are excited for another faith building week. I sure love yall and have a Happy V Day.
Much Valentine (in an elderly (missionary) way) Love,
Elder Dumke