Elder Dittmers Journey to New Mexico

Monday

In the morning we got a call from a lady named Sister Cleveland asking us to come and help her fix her cable television, so we went and miraculously we fixed it! After that, we spent a few hours exploring the ruins of Toyei, Arizona! It is neat to see abandoned buildings like an abandoned police academy and stuff like that. We found badges from the original police department in the ruins, which are pretty neat.

Tuesday

Me and Elder Asher bought a neat wooden doll from a man named Raymond this morning. We were pretty much swindled into buying them because Elder Cahoon said we would come back so I and Elder Asher could pick one out that they like. They are pretty neat, though! After buying the wooden dolls, we walked across the street to Sister Cleveland's house and we helped her weed her yard. By weeding, I mean we tore out every bit of grass that she had in her backyard until it was completely bare, and it took over 2 hours! Afterwards, we went home, got dressed in proselyting clothing and visited Irene and taught her the message of the Restoration. I had to talk most of the time because my companions were a little sleepy, but it turned out to be a good lesson. Later, we drove far out into the boonies of the reservation and tried to visit a couple of people at a hooghan in the middle of nowhere, but they were busy cooking dinner so we made our way back home.

Wednesday

It rained all day today, so there were a lot of flooded roads blocking many of the people that we wanted to visit. We were, however, able to visit the Namokies, a really nice family who haven't been to church in a good while. We had a great lesson with them and I really felt the Spirit working on them. When we got home for the night, there was some relief society thing that had just ended at the church about tie-dying shirts, so we went over there when it was done and Elder Asher and Elder Cahoon tie-dyed some shirts! They turned out looking pretty neat.

Thursday

This day in history, I left my family to go to the missionary training center! I was able to celebrate my year mark with Elder Asher and Elder Black, who entered the MTC at the same time as I did. After district meeting today we had a district lunch prepared by Elder and Sister Libbert! The food they prepared was the number one enemy to a white shirt. I won't say what it is because I want to leave you guessing! After district meeting we visited with Laura at the rez golf course and talked about reading the Book of Mormon and how important it is for us. After arriving back at the trailer, we drove out to visit an old man named Jackie, who is a very nice old man with a contagious smile. We returned to the church after attempting to visit a few other people and we hosted our weekly Book of Mormon class. After the class, we had some rolls cooked by Sister Wetzel that were super delicious! We played ping-pong afterwards and it was super fun!

Friday

We got dressed in service clothes early in the morning around 8am and drove out to Jackie's hooghan to help him chop some awkwardly shaped wood for a couple hours. Me and Elder Asher celebrated our year mark afterwards by burning one of our shirts at the abandoned police academy in Toyei! We found a crobar in while we were at Toyei, that was pretty fun. We drove home after visitng Toyei for a bit, and we spent most of the rest of today doing our weekly planning session. We visited a family in the evening and had dinner with them. They are Jeremy and Jewels, and they have sons named Chris and Jacob. After that, we drove home, set up tables and chairs for the harvest festival coming up, and turned in for the night.

Saturday

We played basketball with Chris this morning for our exercise time, and afterwards we got into our service clothes to help a different Raymond shovel dirt for a couple of hours. He fed us breakfast after we helped him out. When we drove back to the church, we helped Elder and Sister Wetzel set up for the harvest festival a bit more. The harvest festival started later in the evening, and we were there for about an hour before we had to go home and take a video call from the zone leaders. We went back to the harvest festival after the phone call to help clean up, and Sister Wetzel gave me some nice gloves and scissors for helping out.

Sunday

At sacrament meeting, I played the opening, sacrament, and closing hymn, gave the opening prayer, and passed the sacrament solo. We also cleaned up the sacrament afterwards and taught Sunday school. I think this is the most involved I have ever been in a sacrament meeting in my entire life! After church was over we ate lunch prepared by the Wetzels. After our personal studies we drove out to visit a couple people with the Wetzels then drove home because we didn't want to get trapped in the rain. Later in the evening we helped Raymond (The one across the street from the church) move a couch to his backyard for some reason. We turned in for the night after that.