Dallin reached the benchmark of 100 days as a missionary today. We have a chart that we put stickers on each day. I thought I'd give a little update on him. He's doing fantastically well and loves serving as a missionary! At first, he didn't send home any pictures. We asked and asked for pictures. The pictures started coming...but they weren't exactly what we had in mind. We got pictures of dinosaurs, a pile of junk, and the back of a cereal box. But hey, it's progress.
So we started requesting pictures. Like, send us one with an investigator in front of the temple. The picture selection has gotten much better. Here's one at a pioneer day activity.
This is Dallin's second companion in Fresno, Elder Draney.
Random palm tree or view from the apartment? Hmmm.
Yeah! What a pic! This is Salvador, a wonderful young man they are teaching. They were able to teach him a discussion in the waiting room of the temple.
Here's a sample letter:
Its so crazy, just this week I finally realized that the thing I most look forward to on preperation day is hearing from my family. Those are some awesome pictures, I need to get some pictures of Elder Talbot so I can send them home. Its so much fun to hear about seminary, I would Dayton and Drew to start marking their scriptures in a way that works for them because otherwise you forget, that is something I am really learning and will apply back at home, just write everything down, it makes everything so much easier. Things are getting easier, but I still have a hard time sending out a group email because so many things happen in a week. Sonja is sadly the same, she is still smoking and she says she wants to be baptized but she needs to act on it otherwise things are never going to change and she will not be able to reciave the blessings of the constant guidance of the Holy Ghost and doing baptisms for her own ancestors. Salvador is 17, has 2 jobs, and is learning super well, we have taught him most of the lessons and now we are helping him so that he can bear his testimony to his mom so that he can have her permission to be baptized, he was camping and couldn't make it to church this week, we usually teach him 3 or so times a week so that is so much better than once a week or so. We are hoping to take him on a tour of the outside of the temple this week so the Spirit can testify of the truth of Gods kingdom hear on the Earth. We see the temple all the time because its next door to the church and its always nice to have that question if see if people have seen that building. We still have a car and we are very blessed that we because otherwise a few miles would start seeming like forever away. We are also teaching Paul, he promised to come to church every month, but he says he is too tired or something and won't get in when the ride comes to pick him and the boys up, he still insists that a world ending meteor is coming in a few weeks but I don't watch the news but I'm not buying that story yet. He is struggling with finding his purpose in life, and staying off topic, he love talking and will talk to us all the way out until we drive away. We are also trying to teach Efrain, Salvadors dad but his appointments fall through, which is strange because he is always their except at those times. We are also teaching Steven, the fiance of a less active member, they are living together but we will cross that when we get their, we have had 2 amazing lessons and the last one was extra awesome becasuse we had a member with us and bore a beautiful testimony of eternal families, and the Spirit was so strong and so many things made sense while he was talking, like how could we possibly enjoy heaven without the people we love most, our families and so thats why eternal families are the best. We have some other people we have been trying to call without much success, we still have 0 investigators in the Sierra ward and so we are trying to visit less active families without much success yet, but we won't stop trying. Another amazing thing this week was we had the oportunity to go and pick grapes in the vineyard, so its some sort of church farm and they turn the grapes into raisins so they can give them to people in need. I had a great time cutting grapes for a few hours until it got dark, and i only cut myself once. We were so dirty after that wow, we were covering in dirt my farmers tan was extra crazy with the dirt making my skin darker than normal. It was so much fun to do service together in the ward and it makes me want to find more ways to help people and just to do things, its such a great feeling. I also have been out visiting new move ins as we printed out a list of moveins from may and its been fun trying to find people, not much yet with lack of things like gate codes and apartment numbers but thats ok.
