Elder Jay D. Pimentel

This past week was super awesome! We had a special meeting with Brother Hemingway from the missionary department this past Friday, which was awesome! He came earlier this year, but he was in town working on an application that's going to help missionaries give tours of the church buildings (they are using the same building that I met in when I was in La Mesa!), so he offered to come give us some training.

This weekend was also Stake Conference, and we had the pleasure to have Elder Jay D. Pimentel of the Seventy come and preside at the meetings. We had four different sessions of conference, including a special missionary lesson. IT WAS AWESOME! Elder Rodriguez and I were able to eat lunch with him too on Sunday afternoon, which was super cool!

One of my favorite things that he talked about was the parable of the good Samaritan, but comparing all of us in the church as the inn keeper. The parable took on a new meaning when we look at it from the perspective that we are to generously take care of those that come into the fold, no matter how sick or wounded they may be. I didn't explain that very well, but hopefully that made sense.

This morning we played four-square during our exercises.....best idea ever. We are going to go pro.

Yesterday we had an awesome lesson in one of our members' homes with the Sanchez family, who is a family of four that we are teaching. We taught the Plan of Salvation, and the Spirit was super strong. Lessons should always be taught in the homes of the members because the Spriit can be felt so strongly! It was an awesome lesson!

I'm going to send a bunch of pictures to make up for my slack recently. I love you all!

Elder Dahl

1. My green shake turned into a brown/black shake last week. Blue berries spiced up my usual morning breakfast.

 2, I've always wanted to try one of these Sonic Popsicles, and a member insisted that I have one. It had already melted and re-frozen, which explains why it looks melted and then refrozen.

 3. Stake Conference shenanigans! Elder Rodriguez, Elder Hampton, Elder Aguirre, and me!

 4. We are helping out tear up an old house of a woman in our ward. She has priceless artifacts.

Tongans and Goats

The highlights of this week were my international exchanges! I was able to go with Elder Taunauta (Elder Tarzan is what I secretly call him) from Tonga and Elder Sharp from Australia. I had a blast with both of them and we worked really hard!

This past Sunday was the first Sunday with the new boundaries and it was crazy! We had a total of 20ish people in the Spanish group, and the English ward was massive! The craziest part was that Elder Rodriguez and I were chosen to be the speakers in sacrament meeting. It really got intense when I looked at the clock after Elder Rodriguez sat down and realized I had a half hour all to myself. *Sharp rocks at the bottom? Most likely. Bring it on!*

I got to go back up to Brawley for my exchange with Elder Sharp and I found a young boy walking his goat in the middle of the town! Oh I almost died! This is the best place in the whole mission!

Well I'm itching for a good game of basketball, so I'm out for this week. I love you all!

Elder Dahl

SO MUCH FOOD!!!!!

First, I just wanted to comment on the amount of FOOD we have received in the last week. It's a little ridiculous. Anytime we want to visit a member they always ask if we want to eat too! The struggle is real! And they have a real dinner calendar that actually gets filled! It's almost frightening....almost.

The new area is going awesome! The members here are crazy amazing. We have loved the chance to work closely with the members, and we had a particularly awesome time eating with the Ball family this past Sunday after our first day at church (we got so lost and took us a good 6 minutes to find out where our class was).

As of now we are teaching mostly in English because that's what we inherited from the other missionaries, but we are starting to see some awesome miracles from the members and we should be back to teaching in Spanish again soon. The plan is that we will attend church in whatever language we have investigators in, so if there are more English, we will go to English, and vice versa. We might have to go on splits though coming up in these next few weeks. It's been so fun :)

Here is a miracle concerning one of our members. We met with one of the families in our ward, the Garcia family. They are from Mexico, but have been attending the English ward for a few years. They are bilingual, but we normally speak in Spanish because it is just more natural.....it just kind of pops out....but anyways, we shared a message and asked them who did they know that needed this message in their life. Hna. Garcia told us that she had a neighbor that she said hi to the other day that was nice, and that his face had come to her mind during the lesson. She didn't even know his name! So we committed them to go introduce themselves and see if we could come and teach them!

Well the next day we received a phone call saying that they done it! That Sunday we met with their neighbors (the Lucio family, an older Mexican couple) and were able to give the husband a blessing from a recent operation! We are going to be teaching them in the Garcias' home tomorrow! It was so awesome to watch how these wonderful members went and were able to share the gospel with someone that they didn't even know!

This work is true! This Gospel is true! I know it! El Centro is miracle city right now and I am loving my life! I love you all too!

Elder Dahl

Whitewashing to El Centro!

So like I said last week I was being transferred out! Well I have some great news! My companion, Elder Rodriguez, and I both were transferred to the Imperial Valley 2nd Ward! But wait there's more! So the ward is an English ward, but this coming week the one Spanish group that they have here in El Centro will be split into two. Let me explain...

From now on every unit here in the valley will have the English and Spanish groups meeting at the same time. The Spanish speakers will meet in the Relief Society Room while the English speakers meet in the Chapel. Then, the adults will stay separated by language, but all of the youth will be joined together in the English classes. Did that make sense? Probably not.

Elder Rodriguez and I are the only missionaries serving in this ward, aka we are now bilingual missionaries! We will teach all English and Spanish speakers here in El Centro! It's going to be awesome!

We also inherited a lot of new investigators because of the boundary changes. We are currently helping six different people progress to be baptized soon! It's awesome!

We live in a four man apartment! But now there are two separate bathrooms with their own sinks and showers. THANK THE HEAVENS ABOVE!!!!!!!!! I love it!

Well we have to leave early to go visit some of our new members! Wasn't General Conference great? I was absolutely thrilled the entire time. You better bet Elder Dahl's going to be Ponderizing every week!

I love you all!

Elder Dahl