Monday, February 14, 2011

Happy Valentine's Day Everyone,

First off a quick reminder to go read my blog davisdailybread.blogspot.com . There you will find a Valentine's Day message. Also Congratulations to Brendan on his mission call! I was so excited to find out where you are going to be serving. Trust me Brendan, you are going to love your mission. It's amazing how the Lord puts us in the best place for us to serve. And the best part about serving in the states is just like you said in the letter you sent me, we can go visit the people we come to love pretty easily. Road trip in 2013! haha

Hope everyone had a good week. Things are going good here in Dillon if I can just stay healthy. Friday I felt like junk and Sat. night well let's just say I lost my dinner. Elder Hineman's been good so I don't know what I've had but I feel a lot better today. We missed church yesterday though which I hate! I've missed two Sundays now with Elder Hineman. I keep apologizing to him but he keeps telling me not to worry. We did hear good news from church though. More on that later.

So the week started off good with some ribs. Brother F, a less active member who we are just getting back to church, has a smoker. We talked to him about setting up a dinner where we could smoke ribs all day and then enjoy. So that's what we did. They were really good! We've got Brother F thinking about what we could do next. I think he's decided on doing bbq pulled pork sandwiches. That'll be really good.

The best thing about this week had to be the lesson with J. He's the one that came to church last week with his friend from BYUI. We set up a lesson at a members house with some guys his age who go to the college here. He had a really good basic understanding about the restoration so we just had to fill in some gaps and teach it to him in an orderly manner. He seems really excited to learn and said he's already read 30 pages of the Book of Mormon. The neatest thing was when he told us he's looking to make some changes in his life and as he's started to do that God's told him that he needs to follow his common sense. So the first thing he thought to himself was there is no way I can truly change by following the Baptist beliefs. He doesn't agree with a lot of things his pastor dad has taught him. He doesn't like that his dad starts a church, makes a bunch of money, and then turns and sells it off to another pastor. He also said the thing that impressed him the most was that when he went to Elders Quorum he didn't see a bunch of men just arguing doctrine, he saw men discussing how to be better husbands and fathers. I was really bummed we weren't able to be at church with him but when we talked to him last night he said he loved all three hours of it and he's going to the Elders Quorum ice fishing trip on Tues. We are really excited to keep teaching him and see him progress.

Another thing that I feel went really well was my first district meeting. As a district leader the biggest things you have to do is to plan the first hour of district meeting, report numbers for your district, and go on team ups with your district. This week we focused on goals we wanted to set as a district. We made some good goals like teaching a quality 20 a week, praying and fasting more specifically for our areas, and tract an hour a day. To help us remember these goals I talked about about Captain Moroni and the Title of Liberty. I created a Title of Liberty out of a pillow case for us and Whitehall and our district to remind us of our goals. I think it kind of fired up the elders. They thought it was pretty cool. We wrote what Moroni's Title of Liberty said on it except we put future before wives and children and then we wrote our goals. I'll have to send you a picture of it.

Elder Hineman bought a little plastic roping dummy like Elder Mortenson's. We have fun at night just relaxing and roping. Mom's gonna laugh at me and call me cowboy and maybe it's a little true. haha I guess Montana is rubbing off a little.

Well I better get going. It's been good to hear from you all. It's good to have the Js back. They have had only good things to say about Gma and Gpa Gwynn so you guys must have done a great job of hosting. Thanks again for doing that. We are excited about a lot of things that we feel are ahead of us. Zone Conference is this Friday in Helena so that'll be fun too. Hope you all have a great Valentine's Day. I love you all. Talk to you later.

-Elder D

GO BYU!!! Way to beat Utah!