Opposition in All Things

Wow what a crazy week this has been! I have a strong testimony of opposition in all things. In order to know the good we need to know the bad, but wow the bad took a cheap shot this week. The Sanchez family (investigator family, single father with three awesome children) couldn't come to church this last week because the grandmother stole them away to Mexicali until next week! Oh that lady is simply not nice at all! This family needs some Cindy Dahl prayers right now.

Armida and her family are doing awesome! We had a Family Home Evening with the Zinn family, who is an awesome couple in our ward. It was so fun and the girls really liked it. They are doing great and are totally getting baptized on December 15!

Fun fact, the Spanish group always provides food after sacrament meeting. Last week we had mole (it's like chocolate, Hispanic chicken) and it was delicious!

Last week a member family in the ward invited their sister-in-law to come over for dinner and also talk to us. Her name is Iris and she is wonderful. She was filled with questions, and the Hernandez family did an amazing job at explaining her answers and it was awesome! Her husband died a few months ago, so we talked about temples and the Spirit was so strong. She is super interested and we are so excited for her!

Life here in El Centro has been pretty chill for the most part! We are super busy everyday and it has been a blast being here. I hope I never get transferred!

I love you all!

Elder Dahl

1. Bunk bed selfie fun!

2. I love all three of my companions!

3. Too much fun.

We are on Fire!

GOOD AFTERNOON FRIENDS!

This week was so much fun. Armida and her family are still doing great, and she made us enchiladas on Saturday so that means they are doing extra well! We love them so much!

Please pray for Miguel and his family! His grandfather died last Friday and we have not been able to see him since. They weren't able to come to church, although they did let us know, which was nice. They are so special and we hope we get to see them soon. 

Transfers last week were super awesome. Do you all remember that kid named Elder Welch who trained me? Well he has two transfers left on his mission and he just got transferred to Calexico and he is in my district! WOOHOO!!!! Round 3 here we go! I am so ecstatic that he is back!

Yesterday we destroyed this rock formation in the background in one of the backyard's of a part-member family. It was awesome and we hammered that thing hard!

That's all for this week! I love you all mucho!

Elder Dahl

1. This one's for you Mom! Just imagine that I'm not at a funeral and that this is all for you!

 2. Just invited to a party with a surprise Mariachi band! Sister Clawson, another missionary, is in the background with the best face ever. I still can't tell if she's disappointed or impressed :)

3. Just the Elders that I live with and I having a good time!

4. We are having a Biggest Loser and a "Who can spend the less this month" competition. I'm so going to win this. haha One taco Elder Dahl? I crack myself up.

5. Elder Rodriguez hurt himself and Elder Aguirre had to carry him for a bit. No worries, he was fine by the next day.

 6. Safe and sound in bed.

7. Elder Hampton is pretending to be a caterpillar again. Silly Elder Hampton, everyone knows that missionaries don't turn into butterflies.

 8. Elders gone transformers. Robots in disguise as missionaries!

 11/17/15 at 5:02 PM

9. Elder Aguirre loves me too much! I almost died!

 10. This cat at the Rolfe's pool house just about kills me. That's the biggest bed I've ever seen!

 11. We did some service where we destroyed this huge rock formation with some sledgehammers! It was too much fun!

 12. I swear this picture makes me look like a pansy, but I was really tearing it up.

13. We go to extreme measures to give our investigators nice furniture. The Mama Ship was stuffed full!

 14. It wouldn't be a true Hispanic house without something like this inside.

The Curse has Been Lifted

Transfer calls were today and I'm proud to report that the curse has been lifted! Elder Rodriguez and I are both staying together for a third transfer together, which is the first time that has ever happened! YIPPPEEEEEE!!!!!  We are so excited!

We have had some awesome miracles this past week! We had a family home evening last night with an awesome family that we have been teaching, and we had some amazing member teach the lesson on baptism, and the family we were teaching decided to be baptized on December 15! They are so awesome and Elder Rodriguez and I love them so much. (In this family there is a Mom named Armida, and three daughters- Cassie (13), Ivory (10), and Sophie (7))

Speaking of baptismal dates, there is another family that agreed to be baptized on December 5th! (In this family there is a Dad named Miguel, and three kids- Angie (12), Ivan (11), and Sarah (9)) Both of these families are so near and dear to our hearts! My life has been absolutely and completely changed because of the incredible Spirit I have felt here these past few weeks in El Centro. Miracles are real and the Book of Mormon is true.

We had a super cool open house this past week where we had a devotional filled with mostly music and videos, and then people could eat homemade desserts and stuff as they toured the gym of the church and could look at different booths with activities and information about the church. The movie Meet the Mormons was also playing separately in other rooms. The activity was a huge success, and the chapel in our stake center was FILLED! It was awesome! 

The next big news was that we had cleaning inspections this past week. Mom, you are going to be so proud of me because we won! You taught me well! You too Dad! I'll try to send pictures if I have any.

I love you all so much! Have an incredible week!

Elder Dah

Burgers and Beer

Yeah you read the title right. Somehow or another we have eaten at this awesome restaurant three times during these past two weeks. Between people giving us gift cards and members paying for us that happened to be there at the same time, Burgers and Beer seems to be the most popular place for the Mormon Missionaries. We also by happenstance ran into the Hermanas at Golden Corral. We had a gift card from a member, the Hermanas on the other hand........the chocolate fondue fountain can get to the best of us. :)

The next fun news of the day is that Elder Hampton, one of my apartment companions, cut my hair and wow is it crazy! Let me know what you think world because I'm still uncertain....

We are so busy here in El Centro! We are teaching a few families that have been coming to church, and a bunch of part-member families. Our goal is to help 10 people be baptized before the end of the year! Say a pray for us!

Next fun story. While we were studying last week we had knock on the door by none other than the El Centro police department! The officer asked if we were victims of a bike robbery, to which we responded with an awkward "not that we know of." Well Elder Aguirre had bought a new bike the night before, so he left his old bike outside on our balcony. Luckily we have nice neighbors who tried to catch him in the act, and the cop was already on his case after twenty minutes. The bike is still gone, but we found the whole thing absolutely hilarious. I probably shouldn't have written this down, no worries Mom we won't get robbed ahead!

I am so grateful for the opportunity to be a missionary of the Lord! It is the best decision that I've ever made, and it has been eternity changing. Prayer is real! Counsel with the Lord! He will always be there for you, so make you are there for Him!

Elder Dahl

 P-day photo shoot!

 1. Elder Rodriguez is going to be a model for cell phones. I know it!

 2. My green shake was left in the fridge overnight......halloween magic!

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