Thus Saith Our God

 

This week has been crazy! I left the MTC on Wednesday at 5:13 and flew to Minnesota! We had a pretty big travel group which was good but I was mostly sleeping. I met President and his wife right away, they were nice but I only talked to them for like 5 seconds. I met the assistants to the president and the sister training leaders and they were pretty amazing. We had kind of a kickoff training at the hotel and then I spent the night with Elder Enniss who was reassigned from Kobe Japan. We had about an hour to talk and he was super cool. He has a scholarship to play football at Utah but I told him to play for BYU and he says he always wanted to play for BYU so let's hope that works out. 

The hotel was super nice and I was beginning to relish the joys of stateside service. The next day we had some more training from President and then we drove to transfers. I met my trainer Elder Twardecki, who's from all over because his dad works for the government. He can't tell me what he does so we don't have a lot to talk about. We both worked at Subway though so we've gotten that twice so far. We drove 4 hours from Bloomington to Virginia and moved all my stuff in. Our apartment is very humble. There's at least 4 different colonies of mold growing in our bathroom so I try to shower when I'm tired and can't see that well. Ignorance is bliss. Apparently this is a tough area because we have zero investigators. We did some service and worked on Facebook finding. 

I had the opportunity to speak yesterday to the ward which was so fun! The median age of our ward is probably 70. It's hard for us to get people to invite us over and hard for people to share the gospel because their social circles are pretty small. Wish I'd known my audience a little better before I spoke about how members can be better missionaries. My favorite time of the day is personal study. The scriptures contain so much truth and as a missionary I feel like I learn much more than I ever have before. God gives us knowledge line upon line, which I think is why we are commanded to read the Book of Mormon every day. There is knowledge that you cannot obtain until you have read it several times already. The only music approved in the mission is what's on the sacred music app so I've started building a playlist to work out to. The tabernacle choir has some fantastic songs that easily fill the void of some of my premission favorites. 

The mission is quite a purifying experience and I get lots of time to ponder and feel the Holy Spirit. I love the gospel and its truths and I love becoming a better disciple of Jesus Christ. Remember the end goal has always been eternal life with our Father in Heaven. 

- Elder Dahl