Last week of March

This weekend was wonderful! we had our first baptism in the area in 2 years! it was so cool! she even got confirmed on Easter Sunday! other than that it felt pretty short since my last P-Day was Thursday! a few crazy things for the coming week! me and my companion are doing 3 exchanges back to back! i wont see my comp for 48 hours! that is insane! but we gotta do what we gotta do! love you all, hope everything is going well back at the farm.

Isaac in his "cas" (casual) clothes 

Isaac visited the Redlands Temple last week.

Also this week i went to by far the coolest Easter party on the planet! it was a mix of Armenian, and Bolivians! their kids had a band and they are actually really good! they are called daydream time machine! they are really good for a garage band!  https://daydreamtimemachine.bandcamp.com/ these guys are my buds! we walked into the backyard and they stopped at the end of a song and through the mike announced "Look our boys came!" everyone was so confused! but it was pretty awesome!

we where walking along and this garage had this band playing in it! we where like wow they are actually pretty good! so we went and knocked on the door... a man answered and invited us into his house, he fed us talked to us told us about himself and then asked if we had anything we would like to share? boy did we have something to share with him! he has cancer and has a 5 year expectancy, we shared the Plan of Salvation with him, it hit home for him! he invited us back and now we have had 2 dinners with him and 2 lessons. it is worth saying that that was the most extraordinary finding situation of a mission, it is never that simple or easy!

love

elder Dickson

Some of my questions he answered:

What time is church?

church starts at 9

but we are at the church at 7 for ward council

Did you get the card Grandma Sharon and Grandpa Lynn sent you?

i did! i don't know what to do with $50 at McDonalds

but i did the math i could get 200 chicken nuggets!

tell gma i love her and she is amazing!

What was your Easter dinner like?

we ate at a Samoan feast and then we ate at an Bolivian feast

SOOO MUCH FOOD IN SOO LITTLE TIME 

3rd week of March email

hey 

so this week has been crazy, first my comp. was sick then i was sick, and then i got sick again! i spent two days holding down NO food at all! that was horrible! sleep, tract, sleep, teach a lesson, sleep, throwup, throwup, throwup, sleep, tract. the real missionarys just keep spreading the germs with the word! i actually threw up every meal 100% for like 2 days it was horrible!  we did get to meet a new investigator recently. He is Armenian! so he immediately invited us in and tried repeatedly to make us food(we had just been fed!) so he invited us back for dinner! we ate Armenian food and talked a lot about just everything and then shared a gospel message! it was pretty fun and a huge change of pace for us. overall it has been a LONG week.

Questions to ask a missionary:

how are your member lessons going?

what can we do to help?

will you teach us the first vision?

when can we have you back?

these things will boost a missionarys moral! and allow them to practice their teaching

just treat them like you would treat me at the dinner table. to often it feels like we are on display at the dinner table, but if you treat them like family they will be right at home

Questions not to ask a missionary:

how long have you been out?

what is your favorite food?

what do you not like?

how is your family at home?

March 14th email

so this week was kinda slow

my comp got sick so i actually spent a LOT of time cooking, i made a lot of treats and even made pulled pork this week!

other than that i spent a lot of time studying sorry there isn't more to tell.

this details hungry mom enjoyed a glimpse of Isaac's kitchen!

on the upside this week i met Elder Bednar( one of the 15 most important people in the world!) he is one of the 12 apostles (Isaac wanted me to insert a link about apostles here) that was really powerful and amazing he helped us to know how to better be missionaries! and blessed us that we will never fall away from the church as long as we continue to study the scriptures! that was really powerful! so it has been a fairly exiting but boring work.

--------------------------

I had some questions I'd emailed him that I wanted answers to.

What do you do at the food bank?  How long are you there?

i spend 3 hours every Wednesday putting together peoples food packages.  

What food treats do you want instead of candy?

trail mix

beef jerky

guy food i guess

Where is your companion  from?

my companion is from twin falls idaho

What did you eat for breakfast?

i did not eat breakfast this morning! too busy with studying the abrahamic covenant

Peppers, Tongans, and the homeless.

Isaac's breakfast

Isaac's pet palm tree

Street view in front of Isaac's apartment building
"it is a really big place!"

this week was eventful

thus i will name this weeks email

Peppers, Tongans, and the homeless.

we started this week just like any other week. we started the day with our studies, then as we began to go out to talk to people NOBODY wanted to talk to us! then we got a break, there where a couple of 20 year old guys outside of a house picking  peppers! we where so exited to have someone who wanted to talk to us! so we started talking, about 30 seconds later i was offered a pepper... naturally i accepted, this was tiniest narliest pepper i had ever seen! being the smart young man i am i just threw the whole thing in my mouth and popped it! i started crying like a baby, my nose started running, and i started thinking about eating the grass... grass has water right? not only that but then they wanted to talk for like 10 minutes, THE LONGEST 10 MINUTES EVER! i was going through heat syndromes for the rest of the day! i had the AWESOME opportunity to attend a tongan baptism! i understood like 3 words it was awesome! those guys can SING oh my goodness it is crazy. it is a crazy experience to feel the spirit while you can understand nothing of what is being said! then last night while on the way home from a lesson a homeless guy started talking to us, so i was like ok cool i can talk to you for a while. little did i know this would culminate in a HUG, that was the biggest strongest hug that ever happened to me! you can blame my companion for that one!

i am having a blast out here! and i am exited to serve in a tongan ward sometime!

Here's some of the question and answer session we had:

What library are you at?

none of the above we found some computers at the apartment complex!

What do you do for lunch?  How often do the members feed you?

we get fed nearly every night.  we usually back at the apartment for lunch. i cook so much out here i love it!  i am cooking everything from scratch! so much fun

but i would appreciate a cook book if you can find a good one

Did you get your packages?

yes i did thank you!

did you ever find my sweatshirt?

I'm actually cold here now that i have climatized!

Has anyone been mean to you?  We watched an LDS movie last night, one mans treasure, and in it, someone threw a slushy out the car window on the elders, I realized something like that could happen to you.

i have ppl yell at me everyday! but that is alright.  i know that i am doing a good job when there is adversity! ppl are mean all day that is just a fact of life

Have you done any service?

i went and did service at a food bank last wed. actually!

What's the farthest you've ridden your bike in a day?

i rode 20 miles saturday...no hills, it's very flat here

we also have a car though for when we have CRAZY days!