Hello from Zuni! I had a great week, with lots of surprises. First of all, yes, you heard that right! I blessed a house to get rid of evil spirits. Honestly, I knew that it would happen eventually. We were going to an appointment at the house that supposedly had evil spirits in it, and nobody was there. So we went to the mother's home behind the house and they had their whole family there. They were telling us how they had scary shadows lurking in the house and that an evil spirit was throwing stuff around in their house. They had already tried holy water and using incense, and they thought we would be able to do it, so we went over to the house and prayed the evil spirit away. I'm not entirely certain there was really an evil spirit there, but it was a fun experience anyway.

Me and Elder Briscoe also visited this person named Jason. Well, Jason wasn't really at his home at the time, but a whole bunch of little kids were. One of them actually opened up my car door for me before I could and instantly invited me into his home. We decided we wouldn't go inside because there wasn't an adult around. There was another kid standing in the doorway of his home with a kool-aid stain on his upper lip, and he talked to us for a while. While we talked to him, the other kids were looking at a wooden swing and laughing hysterically.  We ended up just saying goodbye and moving on. That was super weird but funny at the same time.

Well, I'm out of time for today. Thanks for reading!

We got an amazing letter from Isaac this week.  Get the tissues ready : )  (at least for his parents)

A quote from another Mom that I felt expresses how I feel:

"when love and joy nearly break your heart."

Hello from Zuni! I got transferred! All the Navajo I learned in Kayenta has now been tossed down the drain, because the Zuni people speak a totally different language! Yaaaay! Not only that, but the Zuni people don't like the Navajo language very much, so the name tags that I got that have Navajo words on it won't be used until I'm out of the Zuni reservation. Oh well, diversity has it's pluses, I suppose.

Well, this past week has been rather interesting. I left Kayenta on Monday at 5:30pm and went to Farmington, where I stayed the night with the Farmington 5th ward missionaries. The next morning, we had breakfast at the stake center where I separated from Elder Oftedahl. I packed everything I had into the transfer van and headed off for Gallup, where I would meet my new companion, Elder Briscoe. It was when I arrived in Gallup that I realized that I forgot my bag with my camera, scriptures, and all my study materials behind in Farmington at the stake center. Hopefully my bag can make it back to me someday, but for now all I carry around is a Book of Mormon and a few pamphlets. Elder Briscoe drove me to Zuni, we unpacked, and went to work. It was a rather tiring trip, but I'm grateful for the living quarters, which are much nicer than where I stayed in Kayenta. 

So far, trying to remember the names and places and faces of the people in Zuni has been difficult. I have been devising ways I can commit to memory lots of the things that I need to remember, but most of it goes over my head. Hopefully all or most of the puzzle pieces will eventually fit into place, and I'll be able to serve the Lord with full proficiency!

I stay even closer to the church than I did in Kayenta! It's only about 2 or 3 yards away from where I stay. I stay behind the church in one of these photos. (I can't tell if I actually sent the photo or not)

Thanks for reading! Here's my new Address:

Elder Isaac Sherman Dittmer

P.O. Box 1086 

Zuni, NM 87327

United States

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We finally got snow in general! it was about 4 or 6 inches or something like that. It made it so that the meeting that we usually have every Sunday was instead spent just shoveling the parking lot for the church. If you use google maps to find the lds church in Zuni, that's where I'm staying!

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I called the mission office this morning (1-23) and they found his bag and will have it delivered to him today!
There is a zone conference where it will be delivered.  
Tender mercies!

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Isaac didn't email last week but I received a text from Sister Buetler that he was transferred to the Zuni Reservation.  Here's some information I found on the Google.

First Transfer!

The Zuni people have lived in the American Southwest for thousands of years. Their cultural and religious traditions are rooted, in large part, in the people's deep and close ties to the mountains, river ways, forests, and deserts of this ancient Zuni homeland. Primarily being farmers, the Zuni people raise maize and wheat and engage in Jewelry making. It has become an important additional source of income for the people. Traditional Zuni life is oriented around a matrilineal clan system and a complex ceremonial system base on a belief in the ancestors (ancient ones). There are six specialized esoteric groups, each with restricted membership and its own priesthood, devoted to the worship of a particular group of supernaturals. During the well-known Shalako Festival, held in early winter, dancers representing the couriers of the rain deities come to bless new homes. One way the Zuni people express these cultural traditions is through their art: in painting, pottery, jewelry, and fetish carving, for example. These things have significant meaning, and, to the Zuni, serve to help unite the past with the present. So, on the one hand, Zuni art is a material record of the past.

Looks like he's living in an RV!!

Now that it's 2018, I have to remember NOT to write '2017' in my journal. I've done that three times now.

We've been visiting a crazy amount of less-active and recent convert members. We had a district meeting last Thursday where we were told to focus on our less-active members and our recent converts, and it seems like we've been doing that pretty well. 

Me and Elder Oftedahl visited a long-time investigator named Tina Zonnie yesterday. When we came over, she told us she would love for us to give her mother a blessing because she was having really bad pain in her stomach, so we gave her a blessing. Since Tina's mother didn't speak English, we couldn't communicate with her. She only spoke Navajo, so we could only say hello and goodbye. That was kind of weird, but it went well.

I'm out of time, but thank you all for rooting for me! I really appreciate the letters and emails you send.

Picture #1: I got some new PJ's from Grandma Dittmer. Thanks Grandma!

Picture #2: It's a picture of a painting on a wall in the living room of our home at the church in Kayenta. 

Picture #3: (left to right) Elder and Sister Johnson, Elder and Sister Beutler, me, and then Elder and Sister Aylworth on the far right. This is on New Year's Eve!

Picture #4: This is the main portion of Kayenta. The houses with colorful roofs is the neighborhood called 'Monopoly' because the houses sort of look like monopoly houses because of the colored roofs.

Picture #5: This is in the outskirts of the town, where there are dirt roads and not many homes. The house on the very left through the car door is called an 'octagon'. It's like a hogan but shaped like an octagon.

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I've been studying my Patriarchal Blessing a bit. Sometimes I see something that seems to make perfect sense for me.

This new year has been great! Not too much happened, but I've been having a good time just visiting people and exploring a little. 

While we were out proselyting, we went out of town to try and find a referral given to us from some members in the ward. Outside of town there are a few scattered homes here and there and none of them have addresses, so it can be really hard to find the correct home without really good directions. So we were out there for a while trying to find this person's home and we didn't really know which house to knock on because we got bad directions. Eventually we just decided to try this random house on the right side of the road some distance from the main road. We knocked on the door a couple of times and nobody answered, so we decided to keep looking. We drove past that house and down another dirt road and came across an old lady with a kid riding his bike. We stopped and asked her if she knew where this investigator was, and she pointed at the very house that we had knocked on! However, since the person wasn't home or didn't want to answer the door, we just headed back into town. That was a fun experience.

On New Year's Eve we were supposed to be home by 6pm, but we got permission to go over to Elder and Sister Beutler's home for an hour to have a New Years Eve party with the Johnsons, Aylworths, and Beutlers. We had a great time, and there was a lot of food. They all kept telling stories about their past Christmases and what they would do traditionally for Christmas.

We had a potential investigator come to church on Sunday, and he was a little drunk. Still, we had a good talk, and he says he wants to start coming to the LDS church now. He also talked about how he fights at street tournaments for money. He joked with me about beating me up, which I thought was kind of scary. Eventually, we had to find him a ride home, and Brother Gibson happily offered to do so. We rode with them to his house and it turns out his house is about four miles out of Kayenta. It will be fun to visit him some time.

I would upload some photos, but this computer doesn't have any space on it to do so, so it won't let me send any. Sorry about that!

Happy New Year!