LDS Branch building.

View from the church.

Basketball court.

Aerial view of Dulce, pronounced dool-sey or dool-see, not sure which yet.

Probably where Elder Dittmer will be living, since white people must live on the LDS property on a reservation.

When I did an initial google search of Dulce, first is Wikipedia, followed by several hits about how this is considered the second Roswell (alien encounters!)  Apparently there is a secret underground alien base, plus so much more!  I'm very excited to hear stories!
Anyway, the reservation is made up of approximately 3,000 people, 90% are Jicarilla Apache Native Americans.

It looks like there is a supermarket, a couple restaurants, True Value, a gas station, schools, and a small casino.

Elder Dittmer's new companion is Elder Spencer Sperry from West Jordan. (This upholds Isaac's run of a new companion every transfer.) His mom said he replaced an Elder that had been there ONE YEAR.  

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Monday

It was a pretty normal prep-day. The other missionaries went to Durango, so we went around town visiting places like the bookstore and a few members.

Tuesday

Today we went to take care of some dogs owned by a man named Chris, then we went out, saw a few people, and ate food. It was a pretty normal day without much excitement.

Wednesday

We took care of Chris's dogs again, and we did some Family History stuff. I did some indexing! After that, we set out, tried to find people to teach, and were able to hand out 3 Books of Mormon. We also helped the owner of the Millwood in Mancos take care of 7 years worth of receipts and other papers. Luckily, it was pretty organized.

Thursday

We went to district meeting and for the first time since I've been in this district we had a district lunch with tortillas, beans and cheese. We also had popsicles. As always, we went to Coldstone afterwards and got ice cream. After that, we went back to town and tracted a lot, and we were able to hand out lots of copies of the Book of Mormon. We even went to the library and talked to the front desk lady named Sherry. She was happy with us coming by and sharing messages with her.

Friday

Today is the day that I and Elder Adams do weekly planning, so that took up a lot of our day. After planning, we visited the Fellows family. Sister Fellows wants her son to be baptized, so we are teaching him the missionary lessons. Our district leader randomly decided our district needed to meet up and have a little discussion about being unified because he felt that something was keeping us from being unified. I think that issue was more of a Cortez thing, because me and Elder Adams thought that the meeting was kind of silly. It was fun, though! I played piano to start the meeting. After that random meeting, we drove back to Mancos and basically just turned in for the rest of the day and did our companionship studies.

Saturday

We woke up at 5:30am and went to the library to help set up for a 5k and a half marathon. We talked to a lot of people and had fun setting up canopies and the start/finish line for the runners. After that, we did more service at 10:00am for Sister Wilson, who just took ownership of a thrift store in Mancos. It was fun looking at all the weird stuff they have there. Later, we helped out with the marathon again by taking the stuff down, and they gave me and Elder Adams a Mancos t-shirt. TRANSFER NEWS!! MANCOS IS GETTING SHUT DOWN!! This makes me unhappy because the work was picking up in Mancos. In fact, me and Elder Adams had planned on setting someone on date for baptism today, but now we don't know how that'll work because there won't be missionaries in Mancos. Elder Adams is going to Bayfield Colorado, and the missionaries are calling him the Colorado King because he will have served in Colorado for over a year now. I'm going to Dulce, New Mexico! I am excited to go to a place that people are calling 'dangerous'. I think the more dangerous an area, the more excitement there is to be had! Obviously I'm a little danger prone, but that's OK!

Sunday

Me and Elder Adams pretty much were saying goodbye to everyone, and people were very sad. it was a sad day for Mancos. Elder Adams got all of his stuff packed in like an hour, and my stuff is still unpacked. I don't know how he did it so fast!

I'm looking forward to being back on the reservation! 

Today me and Elder Adams are going to the book store where they give us free books in Cortez.

This week has been great! We didn't get any new investigators, but we got some great potential investigators.

One of those potential investigators is named David. He just opened a shop in Mancos a couple weeks ago called "Bomdiggity" and it's a percussion shop! There are a lot of neat drums and various trinkets. He also has some Hopi and Navajo trinkets like tops and even a prayer stick from the Hopis. He is a hippie and knows all about meditating and stuff like that. He didn't seem all that interested in learning more, but his shop is pretty fancy. He was totally open to me and Elder Adams banging on some drums and stuff.

We also met a man named Ben. He has a really fancy yard, but we don't know him too well yet. I'll have to let you know how well he takes our message next week.

Well, I gotta go. I didn't bring my Alphasmart keyboard again, and I left my camera too. Next time I'll see if I can send pictures.

Thanks for everything!

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Regarding the fire in Durango: 

I can see a giant mushroom cloud-looking-thing from Mancos. It looks scary. I think Mancos is okay right now, but I did notice how everything seemed a bit foggy today.

I have been getting really comfortable with driving. Something I'm excited about with going home is that I won't have a TIWI thingy in the car I will have. That thing makes me nervous like unto a dish 

My companion studies the craziest things! He will study Greek and Roman mythology and compare it to the bible. His last companion Elder Lindsey said that Elder Adams is the only person he knows who can read anti-Mormon literature and it will strengthen his testimony. He literally spent about 40 minutes just studying the words "I Nephi" and he found a bunch of crazy stuff about it in the Hebrew dictionary he has. He has taught me that everything testifies of Jesus Christ, even other religions. He also loves talking about the Masons.

Monday

We went down to Durango and played scatter-ball (free-for-all dodgeball) with most of the zone there. Afterwards we headed home and basically tracted the rest of the day. 

Tuesday

We got together with our ward mission leader and helped him haul some wood around for one of his neighbors this morning. After that we were able to visit a recent convert named Chris, and we set up a time to come and paint his walls on Saturday. We did some family history stuff in the library, too.

Wednesday

We visited the Fellows first thing this morning, then went to Cortez to do an exchange! I got to go with Elder Oftedahl and Elder Ross. We visited a few people in Cortez, and we went to Taco Bell and stuff. 

Thursday

This morning we went to zone conference! We exchanged back into our normal companionships and we got to say goodbye to President Adams. He leaves on June 29th, but he said he probably won't see us again. After zone conference me and Elder Adams went back to Mancos and walked around town for most of the day. It was fun.

Friday

Brother Ashkroft, a 93 year old man, gave us a call and told us some great news! We had given him a blessing the other day because he was diagnosed with cancer, and an hour later the doctor called him and said that they couldn't find any cancer at all in him! I'd call that a miracle. We visited him that day and congratulated him and shared a quick message with him. We also went out of our area boundaries on accident to visit a member in our ward named Brother Jacoby. He was very nice and willing to come out with us sometime.

Saturday

We started our day by tracting around until we got to the library. We were able to talk to a lot of people, but so far we haven't gotten any new investigators. Later, we drove to a recent convert named Chris to help him paint, but he told us to try another time. He was busy fixing a workout machine, and he had a massive splinter in his toe so he couldn't walk around, I guess.

Sunday

We went to church and we had one investigator there, which was exciting. It started pouring rain in the afternoon, so we didn't tract today. We helped an investigator named Kathy move a big box in her garage with tons of spiders on it, and we went to the church again later in the day to hear the Prophet's address and we got root beer floats. 

Thanks for everything!

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Driving is going really good! I am getting really comfortable with driving. I have gotten 2 aggressive driving warnings on my TIWI card so far. I don't know if that makes sense. The TIWI is the thingy inside of the front window of our truck that gives us warnings about our speed and if we are driving too aggressively and other stuff. It sends those warnings to the mission office. I have 2 aggressive driving reports so far because I hit a bump really lightly. I promise I wasn't driving aggressively when they happened, it was more like going over a speed bump or something like that.