Weekly challenge from the Elder we love:

This week.... this week has been AWESOME!!!!! haha as every week has been I just wanted to let all of you know how amazing serving the Lord is! Elder Decker and I have been trying really hard to stay focused and getting the members in the wards we are over more involved! And man have we seen miracles!

haha this week on Saturday we went and met with 2 of our investigators that we have been teaching for a little while and we walked into their apartment and noticed something very different, we noticed that one of our investigators (Dan Barton) his ash tray was not in the room... and he always smokes in his front room, he never moves it. And so I sat down and I was like Dan, your ash tray is gone! And he said: yes I know! I’ve decided to quit smoking! And we were way shocked! We asked him why, and he said cause he wanted to be baptized and he knew that smoking is against the word of wisdom!

haha it was so cool! We talked with him for a little bit and we asked him when he would like to be baptized he said about mid august! And in order for someone to be baptized they need to be free from smoking for 2 weeks. (Elder Decker and I prayed before this lesson on a day that we felt would be a good date for him to be baptized and we both felt that the 13th of Aug. was the perfect date!) haha so when we went there and he told us that it was crazy! haha but we asked him if he wanted to be baptized on the 13th he said yes! And then yesterday at church while we were in priesthood opening exercises! he told the entire priesthood body that he decided to be baptized on the 13th! So it’s been an awesome weekend! And this is like a crazy thing! He went from smoking 50 cigarettes a day to none, he has been clean sense Saturday, I know it’s only 2 days but I know that he has set him mind on this! haha we are going back tomorrow to visit with him again to make sure he is still going strong!

The other investigator, (Danny Regan) is still unsure about our message, but this is someone who has read the Book of Mormon 26 times and just takes it as a historical record, so it’s been kind of hard for him to accept our message, but we have had way powerful spiritual messages with him and Dan, and I think that as we continue to come over and share these things with him he will realize how important it really is!

But so quick story, so the ward next to me (bel-aire) the missionaries in that area are Elder's Headman and Williams! Elder Decker and I are like best friends with them! haha I got the chance to go on exchanges with Elder Headman last night cause sense I’m the district leader companion, the DL needs to do accountabilities with the other missionaries in the area (that means basically have a weekly report about their area) and sense our phone is broken right now, we are unable to call anyone... so we did exchanges last night so that Elder Decker could use their phone, so Elder Headman and I were at our apartment last night getting ready for bed, and we just started talking! And kind of had our own little accountability, it was super spiritual and we started having like a gospel discussion, I don’t know how it led it, but we did, and while we were sitting there I was wondering to myself.. hmmm, why did I never do this before, as in why didn’t I ever have gospel related conversations! Cause really I love talking about the gospel now, and looking back before my mission, I never really talked to much about it, usually only at church and when we had a big family discussion or something! But I kinda wish that I would of cause of how awesome this church really is!

haha I love it, but I’m not sure if you guys do, do this but I would really (exhort) you! haha to if not at least have a spiritual conversation with someone like once a week, bare your testimony in any way every week! haha I’ve been really trying to bare some part of my testimony to everyone that I talk to! And it’s actually making a huge difference in me, its growing my testimony by sharing it! And sometimes we think that a testimony is something that is way big, but really it’s very simple!

haha like honestly I was riding in the car yesterday, and the song (come thou fount) came on while we were driving back to our apartment and the sun was setting and the sky was bright orange and way pretty! And I couldn’t help but tell Elder Decker how amazing God is! Just the fact that we live in the wonderful world that was created for us.... it’s amazing to me! And that is just a way small testimony, but I know that it will help those you tell and yourself! I love you all and hope everything is going well! Thank you for all you do! Hope to hear from yall soon! haha love ya!!!!!

Elder Dahl!

1st Zone Conference:

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! So my mission President and Sister Keyes are way awesome! They are from Utah! And way spiritual! The zone conference seemed to last only a few minutes but I learned so much! There were so many different talks givin I don’t even know where to start, next letter I’ll bring my notes so you can get the full just of it, but one of my favorite talks was from the assistant to the president, Elder Nichols, (no not max!) haha, he talked about why it was important to remember that we are missionaries! Haha I won’t give you the full just of the talk, but I can totally see how missionaries can forget, when I was sent into the mission field it wasn’t like a dramatic change that I thought it would be. Sure it was different but it felt right, it felt normal, life didn’t change just because of the choice that I made, people are still people and I’m still me! but the thing that did change was my willingness to listen to the spirit and put myself in situations where I can feel the spirit and know of the blessings it brings into each of our lives, I also thought it would be service, I can say that there has not been 1 moment of my mission that I have not loved yet. I’ve always loved service in the ward and other such things but I never thought that it would feel so amazing to do it all the time!

 Haha, this week there is something that really stood out to me, I am teaching these 2 guys in their mid 50's? Maybe 60's? And there names are Dan Barton and Danny Regan, and they are the best of friends! One is a 90 lbs Indian, and the other is a 300 lbs white guy! They do everything together! haha but I’ve had the opportunity to teach them about the gospel of Jesus Christ and in the past they never came to church, we would invite them they would say yes, and then never open the door when the ride we arranged got there, but we never gave up hope. We had a way awesome lesson about faith in Jesus Christ and the word of wisdom; they both have a problem with smoking. Dan Barton came to church for the first time last week and loved it! Then we taught the lesson, and this Sunday we went with a member of the ward to go pick them up about 30 minutes before church started and they were waiting for us to get there so they could come to church! Both have almost completely stopped smoking and have been able to feel of the spirit!

It’s so amazing to see such wonderful miracles! I’m seriously in awe! Before I left home I totally took for granted being a member of the church of Jesus Christ! And see the blessing that it truly is in our lives! I love it. I’ve also had the chance to really commit myself to the work! haha let’s just say I prayed to be humble and it happened.. haha but I know that my calling as a missionary is much greater than me, I just continue to strive for what god would have me do! I must apologize for such the short letter! But I just want all of you to know that you guys are truly a blessing in my life, for the examples you have been! Always let me know if there is anything that I can do to help out in any way!

 I love you guys and hope everything is going well, you’re in my prayers and always will be!

 Love ya! 

Elder Dahl

Wow Testimony Building:

Dear Dahl and Glazier families!!!!!!

This week was probably in the top 10 weeks of my mission so far! We have a family that we are teaching (Sheila and Kelly) and a girl who they have guardianship over! (shana) so we have met with them twice this week! And the first time we watched the restoration dvd with them! and had an awesome spiritual message about why it would be important that God called the prophet Joseph Smith and why He has called prophets in these days, Shana wasn’t able to be with us cause she went to young women’s with some of the girls in the ward, but we have been helping them moving there store to their house cause there business isn’t doing so well right now so they are selling their shop and are going to work from their house. (They own a pet grooming shop) and so we have been helping them box up things and move them around! They have been attending church for the past couple weeks! And this Sunday (yesterday) Shana told Sister Bly's daughter (there fellowship into the ward) that she wanted to be baptized!!! So Shana has a baptismal date for her birthday on Oct 2nd... (Which we feel is too far away but we haven’t had a chance to talk to Shana yet) and we have been thinking that how awesome it would be if Kelly would be able to baptize her! So we have been truly blessed I feel! haha so yesterday we had a lot of excitement! When we heard, but it’s up to us to keep that spirit present and fuel that fire that Shana has right now! Hopefully everything will turn out in the end, which I feel it will if we keep doing what god asks of Elder Decker and I! Little by little I’m started to see why love is so important, this family truly knows that we love them! haha and its so amazing to see the changes in their lives and the happiness they are getting out of going to church and studying the scriptures! It urges me to do better!

This month there are a lot of birthdays in my district I think 3? But we have been having way good district meetings, not just ones that are fun, but powerful meetings that make us want to go serve! haha and we have the opportunity to meet our new mission president this Tuesday! We have a zone conference with the other zones in the area! So I’m way excited for that! We have 3 or 4 other companionships coming to our apartment tonight, cause the conference is at 7 am I think so a lot of the missionaries that are far away come down tonight and spend the night at my apartment! I’m pretty excited for that, but today we will have to do a bit of cleaning... I know I know, I’ll get on it! haha but man I’m excited to just go out and work! It’s a joy that cannot be measured! Feeling the spirit can’t be judged haha I just love it more than anything else in the world!

As in my past letters I’ve mentioned about experiences I’ve had, but I honestly feel that I’m the one being blessed from all those experiences! I’m sorry that this is such a short letter! I just wanted to let you guys know that I love you and know that we are blessed for the things that God would have us do, if we do them, and I’ve seen time after time people deny this wonderful blessing that is waiting for them! I know that keeping all the commandments is hard! It even is for me as a missionary, to obey with 100% diligence! We will fall short but I can promise you we are blessed depending on our efforts put in to the thing we decide to do! if we decide to only read half a chapter of the scriptures instead of a chapter, we won’t see the blessings of our efforts, it reminds me of a scripture in the book of ether, ch.12 v.6- I don’t have it memorized or have my scriptures in front of me, but it ultimately says that we will not receive any witness until after the trial of our faith! And that’s what everything we do in this life is! At least I haven’t found something that isn’t a trial of faith. So this feels weird but I want each of you to focus on just one thing that you could do where that trial of faith will grow your faith, not push it further away! Cause I can promise you that we all have faults and by filling those faults with Christ focused actions that we will see blessings and we will find more happiness! Love you all and hope that everything is going well in the things happening in your life or soon to happen! Look forward to your emails or letters!

From your lil bro! And son!

 Elder Spencer Dahl!

4th of July-Mission style:

Hey Dahl Family!!!!!!

How’s everything going!! Thank you so much for the pictures in the emails I’ve loved them all! So this week in the Missouri independence mission we got a new mission president!!! His name is President Donald J Keyes! (its pronounced (kise) I haven’t had the chance to meet him yet but we have interviews coming up in a few weeks so I’m super excited to see him and find out what he is like, although I’m sure he is awesome or else he wouldn’t be called to be a mission president! but so far this week I have seen almost too many miracles! ok that’s false! but I’ve seen a lot! I’ll just point out a few of the main ones! so one day we were unsure what we could do and we were riding our bikes so we were coming down 9th street and we both thought that we needed to tract this one street, so we turned on to it and went to the 2nd house on the street and we started tracting. we tracted the whole street and only talked to 1 person who was far from interested! we got to the end of the street, and decided to stop tracting and walk back to our bikes. While walking I remembered what our ward mission mom (Sister Bly) told us, she said that we needed to knock one more door before we were finished tracting! and so remembering that we never knocked the first door on the street, we starting going towards that way, when we got there, this guy opened his garage and we started talking to him! He wasn’t super interested but we talked for a little while and we asked him if we could drop by a DVD to him about how families are eternal! and he said sure that we could stop by in a few days, so (fast-forward) so we went to his house, and he wasn’t home, we noticed his neighbor was lifting newspaper from his garage to his car, (the guy was like 80) so we ran over and started helping him move these papers! and we started talking to him! it turns out his wife had passed away a few years back and he has become a bit less active in his church sense then, we talked to him for probably close to 45 minutes, and remembering that we had the DVD in our bag, we took it out and said: here, we would love for you to have this, we invited him to read it and asked if we could stop by in a few days to see how he liked it, he said yes!... it’s amazing how god works! It all started with Sister Bly telling us that morning that we needed to knock one more door that day, and then moves on to talking to the guy in his garage, then his neighbor! I love how it works out! god seriously works in mysterious ways! he is also throwing me some curve balls! both of my companions were not supposed to be my companions! But the day before transfers I got re-assigned to a different missionary, but I can’t complain I’ve loved both of my companions so far! Elder Decker is a pretty strait forward guy, he doesn’t beat around the bush, he will usually tell our investigators exactly what they need to hear, and it’s worked out so far, but he loves the work and the people so it never comes across as overbearing! That is something that I have been working on, each week I choose a christlike attribute to work on, this week is love! So hopefully that this next week will be a very eventful one! we are teaching this family ( the Regan's ) Sheila and Kelly, and they look over their cousins daughter (Shana) and we have been teaching them over the past 6 weeks or so, and up to this point it didn’t seem like we were getting anywhere, but they came to church on Sunday, and I teach the gospel essential class, and they were the only ones in the class that day, and the bishop really wanted to meet with them, so the bishop came into the class, and my topic was to teach about prophets, but the discussion didn’t even come close to prophets! But after I talked to them and they said that today was like the best day ever! they loved church! and they are reading the BoM daily and progressing like crazy! Sheila actually told me a story about one of her friends who was saying the Mormons are Christians cause we don’t have any crosses in our church buildings... and she stood up and defended our church! Haha (I’m unsure why we don’t have crosses but the answer that Sheila gave me sounded good to me! haha) she said: the reason why they don’t have crosses in their church is cause they don’t worship idols... we worship god and christ, not a symbol of something, and so i was super impressed! And I know for a fact that they are coming to know that the church is the right choice! I love seeing little changes in people; it strengthens my testimony so much! I haven’t seen a baptism yet but that’s perfectly ok to me, I’m having the time of my life by just preaching the gospel, I always strive to bring others to the waters of baptism, but I also know that I work on the lords time schedule, not my own! I love this gospel with everything I have, and I can honestly say, coming on a mission is by far the best choice iv made in my life, besides being baptized into the church, from having the opportunity of serving a mission I’m starting to really understand the importance of the things that, didn’t always seem very important! its changed my entire outlook! I can’t help but wonder, if I didn’t write you guys for 2 years if you would even be able to recognize me! haha but I love the change, and I love the opportunity I have! Be sure to keep me in your prayers, I know that I do the same for each of you! love you all! Hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July! I know I did!! Oh by the way I am still at the same address if you didn’t know! thanks for all your support it helps me so much more then you know! love ya! Elder Spencer Dahl.