Hallelujah! Easter!

Happy Easter everyone!!! What a beautiful weekend it has been here in San Diego! I realized last week that I left out a lot of details about my new area, but luckily my dad is always there to remind me :)

My new companion is Elder Gunther! He came into the mission one transfer after me, and we actually had the same teachers in the MTC! He is from Mapleton, Utah and is a great companion! He is the district leader for our district of six missionaries (four sisters [two of which serve in the Mormon Battalion] and it has been a blast so far.  We have a car, but parking here is somewhat ridiculous, so we do a lot of walking. We have to leave to all of our appointments way early because there are so many people to talk to on the streets! And of all ethnicities! This past week we talked to people from Somalia, Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia, Puerto Rico, Columbia, Argentina, Mexico, and Canada! What an awesome group!? The language barrier for some of them was very hard to work around!

This area is filled with such humble people! Everyone works so hard and it has been so much fun to teach these amazing people. It has been weird to go back to solely Spanish work here in Barrio 20 (20th Ward in English), but it has been a lot of fun too. There are WAY more people here that speak Spanish than English, so that's nice :) Sorry Dad, I can't see the zoo from my window, but you're right I'm pretty close to it again!

I got so spoiled again! Elder Gunther and his previous companion were putting in some good work, and there are a lot of investigators that we are teaching. We had four of them come to church yesterday! Again, I a super blessed to be here! Pray for Jesus Fierro (an awesome man that overcame drugs a year ago and is now looking for God in his life), Maria Juarez (who just needs to get married to be baptized, and her "husband" of 25 years gave the ok), and Blanca & Ruben Toscano. Blanca and Ruben are a miracle. We received them as a referral from our ward mission leader, Hermano Mejia (this man is an angel), who just met them while he was working (he's a maintenance man for apartments) and invited them to meet with us. Hno. Mejia met them last week, we got the referral on Thursday, on Saturday we had our first lesson, and on Sunday they came to church!

They are so cool! In our lesson we only showed them the Easter video Hallelujah, and explained about what we do as missionaries, and the member that we had with us testified about how the gospel has blessed his family.  We also got to learn a lot about them, like how they just moved here from Columbia eight months ago. It was awesome, but we didn't have time to teach anything about Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, or anything like that. You know, the really important things. But we figured that it was Easter Sunday, so everything would be pretty basic....right?

No....the first talk in Sacrament meeting was on Patriarchal Blessings, Gospel Principles was on the Word of Wisdom, and then they had a special class for the Priesthood that they thought it would be best for investigators not to be there, so they sent us out with the Deacons Quorum....I'm not going to lie I was terrified of what Blanca and Ruben were going to think about the whole experience. Right after church we talked to them.....and they loved it! Miracles still exist! ray for them!

The weather is SO different! I have been bringing a sweater with me this past week because I have been freezing! I had forgotten that March was still considered a cold month in some parts of the world!

We didn't do anything special for Easter. A very nice family gave us a food, and so we had our Easter feast of turkey and cheese sandwiches and blue Peeps back at the apartment, and then went back out to tell the whole world about how we are able to find new life through Jesus Christ! That night our ward had a devotional and us missionaries sang a musical number! Oh I almost forgot about how Elder Gunther, another member of the ward, and I had a solo in a special musical number in Sacrament Meeting. Yeah, we didn't know about that until we showed up to church on Sunday.....it's good to be back to Spanish work :)

I hope that I filled in all of the blanks! I love you all! What an amazing time of year it is right now! Easter Sunday, followed soon after by General Conference. I can't wait!

Elder Dahl

1. Look what Elder Gunther has? It's a face massager thingy! It's incredible!

2. Our ward mission leader bought pizza or us after we practiced our musical number for church! He's the best!

3. Elder Gunther found a lizard!

4. Easter Feast!

5. Don't ask me what this is....we are having way too much fun here in Barrio 20!