Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Finding people to teach...written 3/30

Dad, I'm certainly glad you missed the stomach bug this year and that everything is returning to normalcy. It sounds like you had a lot of fun on your recent excursions and I'm glad that you've had some fun times.

Great job on wanting to get healthier. It's a world of difference (and let me tell from experience). I'm not all the way there but it's great feeling better and better about yourself.

Mom,
I'm glad that everything is going well and you've had a good past week. Sunday sounded like it was a lot of fun. However, I'm sure you are all loving spring break right now.

My companion and I are finally starting to get the area down and know how to get from one place to another with relative ease. We've also been trying to get to know all of the members and investigators we have in the area. This last week we were able to visit a ton of homes and see if the members still lived there or not and share a message with the ones still living there. We've passed by around 70% of the members. We had on a huge list of names that we received, a lot of them no longer live there. At the same time a ton of people still do, with several that haven't had contact with the church for a very long time (some have said they can't really remember the last time the missionaries came over). Our huge list of members is more manageable now (which is also a little sad too). We still have a good amount of people to find but they mostly live in the newly acquired part of the ward with the boundary change and it's difficult to find the time to go down that far to find them all. It's about a 30 minute drive down to that section of the area and then trying to find where everyone lives. We've been able to make a few excursions down there and find, and visit some of the people living there and invite them to their new ward. Most of the active members in that part of the area have callings and were going to be released before General Conference so that after General Conference they could attend their new ward. A couple members have begun to come to the Glenmont Ward and they are being warmly welcomed.

We also have been doing a lot of tracting over this last week to find some new investigators for our area. Unfortunately, usually when two new missionaries come into an area many of the existing investigators suddenly disappear. It's super sad and there have been several in our new area that we've had to drop because of lost contact. However, we still have a few investigators from the old companionships that covered our area which is really awesome! Still, our pool of people interested in the church was relatively small. So we've been out knocking doors in our area trying to find if there are people interested in our message of Jesus Christ. It has been really fun talking and teaching a lot of people this last week. We found two new people interested in learning more this week in our area that speak Spanish plus we found 4 people interested that speaks English and 1 person interested that speaks French.Thankfully I have a companion that speaks French because we have run into a lot of French speakers here (plus a few of other languages that neither of us can understand). We've been able to share the message of the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ several times this week and teach other investigators of the church more about our beliefs.

It has been amazing that we have been able to teach so many people this week; both members and non-members of our church. The Lord is truly hastening his work here like it says in D&C 88:73.
"Behold, I will hasten my work in its time." Our area feels like it is on fire and we are just watching miracles occur several times each day. 

Love,
Elder Braden Dahl

1 comment:

  1. Elder Dahl,
    You are using your given talents as we read in Matthew 25:14-30 "The Parable of the Talents." I am so proud of your desire to serve. Love Uncle Patrick

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