Musical Number-I Believe in Christ (Creo en Cristo; ¡El es mi Rey!)

Written 10/13/2014

This week has been really nice. As always, my companion and I are trying to stay busy and work hard in our area. 

We spent a lot of time in the Stake Center in Kensington this week for music practice for me. Yesterday was "Night of Music and Inspiration" in Spanish at the Visitors' Center. I was in a group singing a 6-part, a cappella version of "I Believe in Christ" (of course in Spanish). All of us performing were from all over the mission and it was a hard time for us practicing together on a rather difficult piece of music. Of course, you have already heard the piece and hopefully it was ok. We had one investigator and four members go to the performance so we were excited for the attendance we brought out.


Wednesday we had the privilege of watching some of the lunar eclipse that happened here at 7am. We all went up on our roof at 6am and played some sports watching as the moon became a vivid red. The sun starting coming up so by peak eclipse time at 7 the moon was nigh impossible to see. It was still a fun morning for us.

Photo Credit: Kevin Ambrose

Photo Credit: Randy Taylor

Wednesday my companion and I also had exchanges and I was with Elder A for the day still in my area. We had a few appointments cancel on us but we still had a good number of lessons from going around finding people. We also were able to take a member out with us for a couple hours of the day; which really helped us have the spirit and teach powerfully.

We also had interviews with President Cooke on Saturday at the Stake Center. The interviews went well and were enjoyable.

Autumn Fields at Capitol Arboretum by Nichole Pretty 

I'm glad you enjoyed the photos that I took. It covers a wider timetable but they were certainly fun to take. Don't worry though because I'm still taking pictures and still enjoying seeing what the area has to offer. We are now approaching fall. Some trees are beginning to loose their vivid green color and start the changing of color. It also is starting to get colder again. I've had to put on a windbreaker a few times this week. It's also starting to rain more but not as hard as the summer thunderstorms.

Nature's Beauty with Sculpture by Patricia Vesey

The area we live in is North West. I'm not sure what area we are exactly in. Mount Pleasant's a little west of us and Columbia Height's is a little south of us. 

We still are teaching a lot and working hard. We are hoping to have another great week. I hope that you have a great week. I love you lots.

Love,Elder Braden Dahl

P.S. I think Dad asked me when transfers are; they're the 29th of October.

Dad,

I'm glad to hear that everything is going well overall. I hope everything continues to go well and that nothing is too crazy.

Our area is going well. We have a few good investigators that are progressing. We are trying to find some more people to teach right now. The city is just a lot of hard work trying to keep members active and to get less-active members to come to church. There never seems to be a dull moment.

This Sunday was the Primary Program which was really nice. The primary here is nothing size wise compared to Roseville 2nd, they fit in about two rows on the side. It was still a really nice program and it was fun hearing them all sing. Our investigator actually was in the program and gave a short one minute talk. It was a good time and the classes afterwards were also great.

I guess you already know and have heard "Creo en Cristo", the song I sang last night at the Visitors' Center. The number was really fun to do but ridiculously difficult. It was the Eclipse version of the song and we translated it out. It wasn't great but it was the first time all of us singing together and we had 2 weeks to put it together. Of course during mike checks they balanced it all out and then during the performance the mike I was on was blaring and turned way up. It was still fun to perform and I enjoyed performing.

One thing I forgot to mention was today we went over to the ghetto Chinese shops on the east side of DC. It's not somewhere I'd ever even think of taking Mom but they have little shops packed with all kinds of stuff from knives to shoes, watches to toys. Everything is straight from China and the shop owners barely speak English. It's all super cheap things but cash only. It's pretty close to a metro stop. Around the metro is pretty nice but suddenly about a block and a half away it's pretty ghetto. I might bring you and maybe my oldest brother over there; just don't have too much on you. It was cool to go and check out. It's always cool seeing all the great diversity around here and seeing some of the interesting things around.

Love, Elder Braden Dahl