September 15th: "I'm loving my mission so much, but at the same time, I miss you guys!"

Oh, sweet joy this sentence gives: "I know that my Redeemer lives."

Friends and family,

I honestly can't believe how fast time is starting to pick up. It felt like it was just a couple days ago when I sent out an email! I remember the first week in the MTC and how felt like a month! I guess it's a good and bad thing. I'm loving my mission so much, but at the same time I miss you guys!

Leading up to Kathy's baptism, we focused most of our efforts on her

and preparations needed. There is a lot of work that needs to be done

prior to a baptism at I had never thought about, (cleaning the font,

letting members of the ward know, making a program, etc..) but the

feeling after the baptism was indescribable! This area hadn't had a

baptism in 14 months! I was so happy for Kathy and the covenant she

has made with our Father in Heaven. I was also very excited for our

other investigators that were there. They said It was a very spiritual

experience just watching the ordinance, and it strengthened their

testimony so much! When we met with the investigators that attended

this week, we were able to feel the impact it made on them. Now that

Kathy is baptized,  we only get to meet with her once a week. This

leaves us more time now to meet with our other investigators and spend

more time finding.

We were outside finding so much this week, and I loved it! I love

being out in the sun sweating to death, even if I'm in a shirt and a

tie! I did have one pretty embarrassing moment though... On Thursday,

it was 91 degrees with 70% humidity. This is like a perfect formula to

make a grown man sweat to death, I swear! We were on our 3rd

consecutive hour of door to door knocking, when a nice, older man let

us in for some lemonade and air conditioning. As you can imagine, we

were both extremely sweaty and gross. We took our backpacks off not

realizing we were soaking wet and about to sit down on his light

tan,very comfortable couch... We explained what we do as missionaries

and got to know him while enjoying our cold lemonade. He ended up not

being interested and said he had to go. We stood up off of his couch

to find that we had both left an imprint of our back-sweat all along

his couch! We were both extremely embarrassed and luckily, the older

man didn't care too much. We apologized over and over again and walked

out disgusted in ourselves because of the the amount of sweat we had

left. You can definitely say we ( left our mark..)  TA DUMMM TSSSS!

(Shout out to my sister Brittany)

We had an awesome experience on exchanges this Saturday. One of the

coolest experiences in my mission for sure! Me and Elder Husbands were

biking home Saturday evening for dinner, and we were passing by the

church when we stopped to talk to a man walking a long the sidewalk.

Right off the bat he asks us if he knows where we go after we die and

what we do. At this point we hadn't even introduced ourselves yet. We

talked to him for a little bit and he agreed to go in the church to

get out of the heat and for us to continue to talk to him. He ended up

being 24 years old and got out of prison 2 years ago. He'd been trying

to find God and didn't know where to turn. We taught him the first

lesson and by the end of it he was just crying his eyes out. He was

repeatedly saying throughout the lesson,  "I know this is where God

wants me right now." It was so spiritual! This man had never truly

felt the spirit before and when he did on Saturday night, it changed

him. He agreed to the baptismal invitation and couldn't stop smiling

after we had talked to him. SO AWESOME.

I know this is a shorter email, and I'm sorry! We had to shorten our

emailing time today because we are headed over to help a member clean

out his horse stalls and fix up his barn! His name is Brother Buffalo

which I find kind of ironic because he is a big time rancher and loves

horses. He said for dinner he's going to cook up some rabbits he

killed this morning. I don't know how I feel about that, but i'm sure

it will be fun. I'm normally not one to enjoy this "cowboy" work, but

I'm actually pretty excited to go out and see some farm animals, fix

up a barn, and wear a cowboy hat. I'll make sure to take a lot of

pictures and I'll e-mail them next week! To finish, I just wanted to

say being on a mission is so cool. Just look at that scenario that

happened to me on Saturday. We just happened to be riding past him the

same exact time he was looking for someone to answer life's questions.

This church is so true. Our Heavenly Father is blessing us in so many

different ways. He has a plan for each of us, and I know that to be

true. I love being a missionary and seeing our Father in Heaven direct

his sons and daughters to us missionaries!  I hope everyone is doing

great!

Much love,

Elder Doman

"You are going to face some Goliaths ahead--big challenges. Don’t fear

them. Meet them. Move into them, knowing that the Lord is with you, if

your cause is righteous."  Wendell J. Ashton,  April 1971 General

Conference

In his letters home this week:

“I love it that murph broke his paw. I think it's hilarious. I can't believe how much of a spaz he is! He is so big now! When I saw that picture of him I was dying! He was so tiny before I left. Tell him I say hi and give him a treat for me”

“I can't believe St. George is flooding again! I thought they had it prepared so good for if it were to ever happen again, it would be okay! I'm glad everyone is safe though! The world is crazy. I only hear bits and pieces about "Isis" and what is actually happening. I hear they are capturing people and cutting off their heads and sending them in video? Soo messed up. As a result, we are no longer able to teach Muslims! Kinda racist, but it's for the best I guess. Better safe than sorry!”

“Can you believe it's been a year since I blew my knee out?! If 2 years goes by this fast, you better start making preparations for me to come home! Goodness that has gone by fast! So mom, I honestly think I'm the skinniest I've ever been! I'm loving it. I've been running 2 times a week and lifting the other 4 now. Unfortunately, my pants are getting a little too big. I think we may go to target later today and I may get some more pants. I'll keep these in case I gain the weight back, of course. And my arms feel like they are getting smaller! I really don't like that fact. Could you maybe send some of those workout elastic bands with some exercises you can do with them. When you aren't able to exercise when ever you want to, that 30 minutes in the morning is like golden time. It's been getting dark early here, so I've been able to work out a little bit at night as well. There is a jump rope I've been doing here, and I think if I have those bands my arms won't lose their muscle as fast.”

“So my favorite person this week was a new investigator we found! We

knocked on her door on Friday, and she invited us to come sit down on

her porch. We were kind of sketched out because we were in the ghetto

part of town, and we saw a bunch of beer bottles and cigarette

packages laying around. She has an Hispanic boyfriend and he was home

as well. This lady is covered from neck to toes in tattoos as well. We

went through her house to get to her back porch and through out the

house, there were hundreds of crosses hanging on all of the walls (and

I'm not even exaggerating) it was solid crosses on every inch of every

wall. They must have spent thousands of dollars on all of them. I

don't know about you, but when I see crosses and candles, I get a

terrible feeling in my stomach and just feel kind of sick. I felt like

I was in a scary movie. I mean, It's good to remember Jesus Christ and

his Atonement. But I'm so glad our religion doesn't focus on that and

we are more centered on the fact that he lives and performs miracles

daily. Anyway I was so glad we got out of the house quickly and onto

the porch. We sat down and got to know her and established our purpose

right off of the bat. She was acceptng of our message and wanting to

learn more. We went through the first lesson (the restoration) and she

loved it! She was so excited to read from the Book of Mormon and

thrilled there was more teachings of Jesus Christ found outside of the

Bible! It opened up a whole new world for her!  She committed to come

to church as well and was just so anxious to learn more about our

religion! It was so fantastic. She loved church and felt totally

welcome, even though she stood out a little bit with her tattoos. The

members were awesome and super accepting and welcomed her with open

arms!  It was just awesome. Totally cool!”