Happy 4th of July...Written 6/29/2015

Well this week has been fun. Tuesday my companion (Elder O) and I went on splits with the Elder's Quorum President and the Ward Mission Leader to do some Home Teaching since the program kinda died in the ward and we have a new Elder's Quorum President. We were just helping them know what to do so that they can train the Elders in the ward and get the families assigned. I was with the Elder's Quorum President and we were able to visit 2 less-active member families that we are trying to reactivate in the church. We had awesome lessons and 1 of the families came to church this week and a few members of the other family came to church as well.

Thursday we had our Zone Conference which really was mostly explaining our new Tiwi systems. You might ask what a Tiwi is; a Tiwi is a computer installed in every mission vehicle to monitor our speed, location, and driving skills.

It gives alters on aggressive driving, speeding and not wearing seat-belts, etc. They take a bit of getting used to and figuring out logging in and out of the car but overall it's a great program that will help a lot and luckily I'm already a pretty good driver so I'm not getting any violations. It was a good zone conference and I enjoyed learning some new things. 

Anyways, now to the part that will get you jealous; also on Thursday the Mission had the opportunity to go to the Strathmore Music Hall and

attend the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Concert. It was their opening concert for the 2015 Atlantic tour. The choir were accompanied by the Orchestra at Temple Square and guest singer Alex Boyé performed two solos during the concert. When we heard that we were going to this concert I was super excited naturally but I thought we'd probably be sitting in the nosebleed section since tickets for this tour range from $15-$200. To my shock when I got my ticket I was sitting in the Orchestra Section second row from the front in front of the 1st Chair Violin. It was awesome being so close to the performance and getting the surround sound feel of the choir and

orchestra. All the music was wonderful and the choir sounds like one voice. The music was wonderful and you could really feel the Holy Spirit testifying throughout the performance. We also were able to briefly talk wit the people sitting behind us who were not of our faith. We explained a little about what we believed in and out purpose as missionaries which was a great missionary experience right before seeing the choir. After the concert we were able to talk to a couple members in the choir and thank them for the performance. 

Not all the missionaries were in the first two rows. Some were on the sides in the back of the orchestra seating, others were on the mezzanine level, and some were in the nosebleeds depending on when you picked up your ticket. But every missionary and senior couple went to the performance. The concert was great and it was cool to be so close to Mack Wilburg and Ryan Murphy conducting. Alex Boyé stood right in front of us and in between songs he whispered hi to all the missionaries in the front. The first chair violin was amazing and it was cool to watch her at times.

Mormon Tabernacle Choir starting their 2015 Atlantic Tour with Alex Boyé

On Sunday, my companion, Elder O and I were able to go to the Young Men's class and talk to the boys about why we chose to serve a mission and what blessings a mission brings. Since this month is about Priesthood and Priesthood Duties the Young Men's President (who is a Returned Missionary of 2 years) asked us to help teach. A lot of the boys in the class have never thought about going on a mission and a couple were unsure. I think it was a great opportunity for us to help them out. There are some great guys in that class and a lot do have desires to serve a mission.

If you want to know what the weather here is like, imagine it getting up to the lower 90's with high humidity and then in the evening have huge clouds come in and dump rain and lightning. The weather here is basically bipolar and you get used to it quick. There is a lot of rain here and there have been a few flash flood warnings but nothing has happened here. Don't worry about me in the weather here because I'm doing just fine. Plus what are you doing anyways watching the weather in Maryland, the capital of Colombia (Washington D.C.) is closer.

As for the 4th of July, sorry I won't be getting any pics of the National Mall. President Cooke has felt impressed that it is too dangerous for us to be at the National Mall this year. We can be in DC until 6:30pm and then we have to start heading home. We found this out last night so we are still working on our plans for the 4th this year. It still should be fun just a bit different than last year. We can't see the fireworks in DC but the zone leaders are working on getting permission to see some around Silver Spring.

The ward here is pretty diverse there is a bit of everything here. Generally in the mission there are a lot of people from El Salvador.

I did get your mid week email and tell Grandpa thank you a ton for me. Tell him I'm working on Family History and have indexed around 300 records in Spanish (per request of my stake indexing coordinator--aka my Mom).

Dad, I'm glad that you had a good week and that everyone enjoyed the classes you taught on Sunday. It sounds like it was a really great Sunday with all the missionary farewells and tell everyone I say Hi back. 

This week has been nice; my companion and I kept pretty busy. We've been working with a lot of people and trying to get them all to come to church (less-actives and investigators)

Dad, I want to wish you a happy early birthday! I hope you have a great birthday this week and a great 4th of July as well. I hope you can have a stress-free week and enjoy yourself.

Tell my oldest brother congratulations on getting his Patriarchal Blessing and to keep working on his Bird (Eagle Project).

Love,
Elder Braden Dahl

Wasn't conference great!-Claro que sí ... Written 4-6-2014

Conference was super awesome. I'm glad you're enjoying your time with Aunt M and fam. Sounds like a ton of fun!

It's been a great week here and it's so amazing to see the work of the Lord here. Today was a nice fun day. We went down to Fort Washington (forever away) and had our Zone Activity with the neighboring zone. We had a sports day and saw briefly Fort Washington. It was nice and it's sunny and warm here. My companion and I got matching batman shirts for our group color just for some fun.

Fort Washington - Zone Activity: Silver Spring and ? Zones
Can you find Elder Dahl and his companion in their matching Batman shirts?
Hint...they are sitting down...just right of center...oh there they are!

It was been a wonderful week teaching the people here. My companion and I met a lot of new people and we knocked a lot of doors. We found several new investigators via our work and the work of members. We were able to teach a lot of people this week who are interested in learning more about the church. We had some amazing lessons and experiences with them. We have been able to have some great discussions between them where the Holy Spirit is strong. There were several times where I said things that definitely didn't come from me.

We're really trying to work on building a solid foundation for our area and are getting in the swing of things (now with transfers just around the corner). We are getting to know the members really well. We've met a lot of them and we have attempted to visit all of them. It's coming around and we're trying to help them all the best we can with the help of Heavenly Father.

Conference was great (as always). The time seems to pass by so fast when watching it. There were some really wonderful messages and a great spirit. There were many wonderful messages shared and a lot of great, edifying things I learned. I don't know if I can pick a favorite talk but I loved the conference.

I hope my youngest is doing better and feeling well. It's a bummer he got so sick. I hope my oldest brother survives his cue to cue today. Tell him congratulations on his college of choice. I'm glad he's got his decisions all down. I'm glad everyone has been having a lot of fun and doing well.

Love,
Elder Braden Dahl

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

Silver Spring, MD-Week 2 & a New Suit...Written 3-16-2015

LDS family releases Spanish translation of 'Glorious'

Elder Braden Dahl with his companion in his 4th area-Silver Spring, MD
His companion is a native Spanish speaker from Canada

This week has been really nice and a bit crazy here. As I mentioned they changed our Ward boundaries two Sundays ago. Initially that had no effect on our area. However, the Glenmont Ward gained a very large geographical area that used to be part of the other Spanish Ward. The mission decided to give us the old part of the Silver Spring Ward because the sister missionaries are often at the Visitors' Center on shift, making it hard for them to visit everyone especially if the person lives far away. Also because Elder M served in that area when it was part of the Silver Spring Ward and he knows most of the members that live there already. So our new area just got doubled in size. We gave away a small part of our area with a few members to the bike elders on the west to give them some more members and lighten our load. It's exciting but a bit crazy getting it all figured out. Most of the members that live in the new part of the ward are in leadership in the Silver Spring Ward (and ironically 2/3 of the leadership in Glenmont is now in the Silver Spring Ward). So the changes to the boundaries are more gradual and they expect that most of the change will happen after Stake Conference in about a month when the leadership can be released and new members can be called to those positions. However, a few people were able to make the transition over to the Glenmont Ward yesterday at church. Many people in the ward welcomed them to their new ward which was great. 

The dark green area (toward the right) is the area that Elder Dahl & his companion, Elder M cover in Silver Spring, MD

This last week we finally got our area map made and put up after some effort. We were busy trying to get to know everyone this last week. We passed by most of the investigators given to us twice but they didn't answer or told us another time to stop by. It's been a bit difficult getting into contact with all of them. However, my companion and I have found a couple investigators on our own or with them help of members and we are very excited to be teaching them. The members here are great and they always want to help out and come out with us. My companion and I had members come out with us 6 of the 7 days last week. It's great having a strong member support in the ward. 

We are also trying to get to know some of the members that live here too. We tried to meet with a lot of them and stopped by to see if they were home. Most weren't home when we stopped by, but we did end up finding a few of them and getting to know them. When their not home we just knock around the building to find people possibly interested in the church and to get a feel for our new area. 

We still can ride our bikes if we choose and we did ride them one day in the rain when we were checking up on some people that lived close by. We can also use public transportation and whatever other mode of transportation. It's just our area is big and we need a car to head around to some of the farther parts of the area.

My companion is really nice and easy to get along with. His Spanish is great but he claims if it wasn't for church, he wouldn't really know any Spanish at all. I think he feels a bit more comfortable speaking French [than English], it's just been 6 months since he's spoken a lot of French.

As you probably already know, last Monday I went and got a new suit. I had been thinking about buying one for a while now since I haven't worn my grey suit since Germantown because it got a little big for me and now it's ginormous on me. My charcoal suit also has been really big on my for a while. President Cooke once rolled it up on me to show how big the suit had gotten on me. Since I'm in a car area it finally gave me the shove to get a new suit that would fit a lot better so if I started gaining weight I'd know really quickly and be able to do something about it quick. I've been saving up for a bit for a purchase of a new suit so I was totally fine and not heading over to debtor's prison for it, nor am I going to be living off scraps for the rest of the month. Anyways, I checked a couple of stores in the area to see their prices and I ended up going to Sears and found a black suit for a decent price and in my right size. It's 8 sizes smaller than my grey suit and 6 sizes smaller than my charcoal suit, no need to say more. It fits a lot better and I'm trying to stay in shape so that it continues to fit me well.

Have a great week. I love you lots.
Love,
Elder Braden Dahl

Here's a fun video. Elder Gabe Guerrero was one of Braden's roommates. Can you find Braden in this video? I found him in 4 photos...(Spoiler alert: answers below!)

It was posted in an article on Deseret News here:

LDS missionary takes a selfie every day for 2 years, posts video

Give up? Here are the 4 photos I found Elder Braden Dahl in...

They are all right around the 1 minute mark. (0:56, 0:58, 1:01 & 1:02)