Monday, April 13, 2015

Navy Football Coach & Physically and Spiritually Fit...written 3-23-2015

I'm going to go back and forth between Dad & Mom's questions and Braden's answers. His letter makes more sense when you know what Dad & Mom asked him...

Dad: I have a stomach bug outbreak and work with about 30 residents and 9 staff members. We are hoping to get a handle on it. It should be a busy week.

Dad, I'm glad to hear that you're doing well. I hope the stomach bug problem gets handled and over with quickly at work. 

Dad: The ward is going to start a missionary training class for the adults. It is a program initiated by the Stake Sunday School. The ward Sunday School has asked that I attend the adult class and then teach the youth of our ward the information. I am actually excited about it. I think it will be fun.

It also sounds like the new missionary class should be really fun. I hope it all goes well. This week has been nice for me. It's been great getting to know everyone and finally starting to get the area all down.

Dad: It was also nice to get the picture the family sent mom. We assume that is from a family in your ward? 

Oh, and that photo that was sent to Mom on Thursday, March 19th at 11:52am... It was from a senior sister missionary. I don't think you guys have seen Meet the Mormons as many times as I have because they have a certain Navy Football Coach and his wife from Annapolis, MD featured. Yeah it's them from Meet the Mormons because they went to the temple (DC being he closest to Annapolis) and we caught a pic with them when we were at the temple the same day.

Barbara & Ken Niumatalolo with Elder Mayta and Elder Braden Dahl. Ken is the Head Football Coach of the
U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland and was featured in the movie, "Meet the Mormons"







NCAAF head coach Ken Niumatalolo believes in teamwork on and off the field. 










Mom: Wow Braden! I can't believe you lost 6-8 suit sizes!! I was teasing with Dad saying that you are going to come home the 'crazy' missionary who will be whipping us into better spiritual shape and the 'crazy-exercising' missionary that will also be whipping us into better physical shape! I told Dad that you'll get home and have us up at 6am jogging -- in matching jogging suits for the whole family -- while reading our scriptures as we go! I hope you get the joke, it's a women/mom thing always trying to keep up with all those other perfect Mormon Moms thus the matching jogging suits, jogging & scripture reading all at once.

I'm not sure about matching jogging suits; I'm still not a huge jogging fan. I could get you all on bike though and I can get some matching reflective vests. Roseville isn't too-too bad so we could probably read scriptures while on bike, or Dad will just have everyone download the audio for the scriptures and play it on their iPod at the same time.


This past week has been great. Monday evening we started doing A Family Home Evening with a less-active member who is also a recent convert. She has gone through a lot of hard times but is super nice. We also having her home teachers come over and help us share a message.

My companion and I also helped move a less-active member in the other Elders' area. She used to be a member in an area I previously served in. It was a little short notice but we were glad to help and finish moving everything. It was a great opportunity to serve and they really appreciated it. This week we also went over to a member's home to fill up bike tires with the two small bike pumps I have so they could give it to another member for transportation. It's fun to see all the little things you can do to help. (Don't worry I still always offer to wash the dishes at everyone's home-they just never let us do it.)

We have the goal to meet all the members in our new area to better know them and help them. We started doing that this week and have been going around looking for the members. We have had good success already and have found and met with a lot of the active and less-active members. They all seem great and we are getting a better grasp on how to help each of them. So far we're probably about a third of the way through visiting all the members but we are hoping to visit with a lot of them this week.

We also are trying to visit all the investigators the Sisters and Elders gave to us when the area was created. We've been able to visit with a couple of them now but not as many as we'd like. However, in our searches for members and investigators we've found a lot of new and potential investigators that we are really excited about. The area has so much potential and the members in the ward are super willing to help with missionary work.

On Thursday, our Zone (Silver Spring) went to the temple to do baptisms, confirmations, and initiatories for our ancestors. I brought my 5 names and performed the ordinances for them. It was a great time at the temple and super fun. The senior missionary couple in charge told us that the mission had completed over 900 family file names!

On Sunday I got to quickly go back to the Mount Pleasant Branch in DC for the baptism of one the investigators I taught. We set his baptismal date a little after the transfer when I left and he was able to complete it. We arrived just before he was baptized and we had to leave shortly after because the member that brought us down was helping at the baptism of one of the primary kids in our ward the same day. It was great being there for a few minutes and congratulating him. It was awesome feeling seeing him be baptized and knowing that he is coming closer to Christ.

It snowed here for the first day of Spring. It's still cold here but it is supposed to warm up this week so we can finally have some real springtime weather.

Love,
Elder Braden Dahl

PS-Just so you know, on Saturday we all received our new iPad minis. So I have it now and it's all good.

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