So I lost my Alpha-smart keyboard somewhere. Chances are that I put it somewhere weird in our trailer. That or it could be in Ganado. Until then, my default email format will have to be halted until further notice!

This past week went by really quick. We got transfer news! Elder Cahoon is going to Cameron, Arizona and I'm staying with Elder Asher. This is officially the first time on my mission that I didn't get a new companion on a transfer day! Wow. Elder Cahoon will be companions with Elder Daffer and someone else whose name I can't remember. I was companions with Elder Daffer in Aztec, so I am excited for him to talk to one of my old companions!

We had an extra zone conference in which we got to listen to Elder Pieper of quorum of the 70 speak to us about missionary work. He had some great knowledge to bestow upon us missionaries.

On Saturday we spent 5 hours helping the 2nd counselor of our branch build a fence for his garden. Apparently a bull had ransacked his garden recently and it tore down all of his plants except his squash plant. We worked in the hot sun all day, so I took the opportunity to try to get the spot of pasty-white skin under my watch a little darker. It's bright pink now! 

We had a very successful week because we have 5 new people being taught! The majority of them are old Shima's, too. 

Sunday was pretty crazy. None of the presidency showed up, so we had to call the branch president, and he gave us permission to lead and preside over the meeting. I played piano, prepared the sacrament, passed the sacrament, gave a talk, AND taught the Sunday school lesson! This is officially the most I have ever been involved in a sacrament meeting in my life. It was weird being so involved in everything, but it worked out.

Thank you for reading my email!

 Scenery at the place where we built the fence

This goat got stuck in a chair. Ha!

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Shima is a respectful term for old lady. I think it technically means mother, but it is always used for older Navajo ladies.

The music on the mission just isn't the same as music back home. Mostly because most of my companions like country music to some degree. Oh well, I'm used to it by now. 

Here's a picture of my favorite creation out of beads so far! 

I enjoyed the past week, it was fun! I went on a couple of exchanges, ate carrots fresh from church gardens, and played some fun board games. We were able to help a member of the presidency on Sunday set someone apart as a relief society president and we also helped give the Melchizedek Priesthood to Brother Begay! The Priesthood is definitely what this branch needs.

I am emailing today instead of yesterday because we were in Gallup all day yesterday listening to Elder Piper of the 70 during a zone conference. He talked a lot about the Priesthood and some good methods of doing missionary work.

Well, thanks for reading my email! Until next week.

 Us with a Sister in our branch. We are helping clear out her storage shed! 

It has been a long time since I've seen a caterpillar...  

The aftermath of the Window Rock fair (I'm the one sitting down)

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I have been enjoying my time here in Steamboat. I beaded a ring for Elder Vea on exchanges a few days ago and traded it for an expensive nerf gun that shoots little yellow soft spheres instead of darts. Elder Asher keeps putting the bullets into this white bed-bug powder and shooting them. I also got another nerf gun for free from the Window Rock Elders that is in the style of a shotgun! It's pretty fun to shoot at Elder Cahoon. They also gave me an LDS keyboard to practice piano on! I am looking forward to learning more hymns on the piano. 

Elder Asher won a game of Clue while we were on exchanges with Elder Vea in Window Rock, and when he came here in Steamboat and Elder Asher was in Window Rock we played Exploding Kittens. That was super fun! Other than that we haven't played too many games yet. 

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Gallup and Chinle zones.

Monday

We decided to go exploring today, so we drove out to one of the roads that was super flooded previously. The road was completely unusable to the point that we could not drive down it. We explored around that area for pretty much all of preparation day.

Tuesday

This morning we helped Iris weed a portion of her yard. She is very nice to us and she bought us some burritos at the gas station and a drink. After weeding for a couple of hours we went home and got dressed in our proselyting clothing and visited with a few people including Irene and President Yazzie. Later in the evening, we attended the Book of Mormon study class and ate dinner with the people that came to it.

Wednesday

Today was very busy. We drove out to Ganado in the morning to catch a ride with the senior couple in Ganado to the Window Rock fair. We had a booth at the fair that was indoors talking about family history. It was our responsibility to hand out family history brochures and cards. We walked to the flea market and back many times, and one of those times we were stopped by some people who were ‘not in the right state of mind’ and they offered to feed us some sandwiches. We turned them down, but they talked to us for a while. One of them who was sitting on the fence got arrested while we were talking to the others, and the cops left without arresting anyone else probably because we were talking to them. That was weird. We got given free breakfast and free dinner while we were at the fair, so that was a blessing. For dinner we had steak and a big chili pepper inside of a large piece of fry bread. I think they called it a steak sandwich. It was super spicy!

Thursday

We went to district meeting in the morning and brought some cinnamon rolls that Sister Wetzel cooked for the district as a final goodbye. After. District meeting we ate the cinnamon rolls and visited a bunch of places on our way back to the church. We were able to visit with Laura again and we addressed many of her concerns. She said she would like to come to church but she doesn’t have a ride. I’m willing to bet that’s one of the reasons why a lot of people don’t come to church. We found out that Laura was friends with some members so we decided to go and talk to them and ask if they could give Laura a ride to church on Sunday, but both families we tried by weren’t responding to our texts or answering their doors. We were eventually able to make it home in time to do some studies and turn in for the night.

Friday

We helped President Yazzie this morning by weeding his yard of some nasty weeds that will stick to the wool of sheep and could kill them if eaten. He has valley in his backyard full of them, and he wants us to pull every single one so that he doesn’t have to worry about his sheep. We were able to do maybe a fourth or a third of what needed to be done in a couple hours. We had to go and do our weekly planning so we said we would come back another day and headed back to our trailer. Weekly planning took all day, and because of the appointments we had later in the evening we weren’t able to finish it. We drove out to Window Rock to stay the night there, and we played lots of games with the other missionaries. Many rules were abolished by President Ackerman, which we found out at district meeting yesterday, so now it is okay to use playing cards and play games on days other than Monday! We just have to use our time efficiently.

Saturday

We were at the fair ALL DAY! It was exhausting! We talked to a lot of drunk people, got free food, and walked for miles talking to people. While walking to the flea market a lady selling stuff at the side of the road gave us a super good strawberry lemonade for free and a little further down the road a lady at a big white tent who fed us the steak sandwiches on Wednesday gave us free fry bread. It had to be among the best lemonade and the best fry bread I have ever had! At the flea market we met an African man who was telling us to go to his church and he kept asking us to say ‘amen!’ To the things he was preaching about. We also had a group of women asking us if we had ‘accepted Jesus’ and stuff like that. By the end of the day we all had sunburns, especially Elder Asher who has turned into a ripe tomato.

Sunday

We had very low attendance at church today. I operated the piano to play automated hymns today instead of playing because I was tired. We were asked to give a short talk about what we shared at the fair while sacrament meeting was going on. This is probably the latest notice I have had and will ever have to give a talk! It went well, though. Time went over and I only had time to share a brief testimony after Elder Cahoon and Elder Asher had gone up. After sacrament meeting we got to teach the young adult Sunday school class and we completely fooled them by putting cardboard inside of a Twix bar and putting the Twix bars inside of capsules and allowing them to choose one. Sam chose the Twix, opened it, and he was super surprised to find the cardboard inside of it. He had to ask us how we did that, it looked so good! That was a fun lesson. We were able to visit the Namokies later in the evening and we read 3 Nephi chapter 13 with them. We turned in about an hour later than we were supposed to because thee lesson with the Namokies went overtime.

Thanks for everything!

 Random pond that appeared after a rainstorm.

 Sister Wetzel.

Possible Toyota Tacoma ad? 

At the booth.  Elder Barajas is on the left front.

From Facebook:

We are very glad to be able to represent Jesus Christ and serve a mission. I recently found out that when I and my companions were at the Window Rock fair, us missionaries talked to a man who, ever since he spotted us at our stand at the fairgrounds, has been trying to go to church every Sunday in Window Rock! It is becoming obvious to me that miracles really do happen, and even though they are not always apparent, they are happening all the time.

Monday

We drove out to Ganado after emailing time was over and we played games with the district leader, his companion, and the Ganado missionaries. We had fun playing 3-hit kill with a hacky-sack and playing the "Bean-Boozled!" jelly bean game. After our preparation day hours were over, we drove to a couple of appointments on extremely damaged dirt roads, which was pretty exciting. We ended up staying out a bit later than normal, so we drove home on damaged dirt roads in the dark.

Tuesday

We helped Sister Rosie Allen weed her garden early in the morning for a couple hours, then later visited a really old lady who could barely understand us. We later visited the Namokie family and we did a fun lesson where you have to find all the letter 'F's in the first verse of 1Nephi chapter one. We went back to the church after that and we did the Book of Mormon study class and read about Abinadi and Alma.

Wednesday

We got up at around 6:00a.m. to head to Ganado and get a ride with them to zone conference in Gallup, NM. At zone conference I got to talk to a bunch of my old companions, including Elder Briscoe, Elder Barajas and Elder Bruning. At zone conference, President Ackerman challenged us to testify of Jesus Christ in every single lesson that we have. When we arrived back in Steamboat, we participated in young mens/young womens combined meeting and we made pizzas! We also watched "Johnny Lingo" while we ate our pizzas.

Thursday

This morning we went with Elder Wetzel to remove some church gardens that people weren't using. It required a lot of effort to remove the poles that were stuck in the ground, but it was pretty fun. After we got changed and did studies, we drove out and visited Laura again, who explained a lot of her concerns about the LDS church. Since we heard that President Yazzie, our branch president was back in town, we decided we would pay him a visit. We mostly just correlated about missionary work. I almost fell asleep a couple of times. He was super nice though, and he gave us a bunch of different varieties of drinks to take home afterwards. Later in the evening, we made some strawberry jam with Sister Wetzel. Jam requires a LOT of sugar!

Friday

This morning we had interviews with President and Sister Ackerman in Ganado. They were super nice and we mostly just talked about random stuff with them. I got permission from President Ackerman to practice piano for 30 minutes every day during our companionship studies, so I am super hyped about that. After the interviews, we drove out to the rezzy wastelands of Steamboat and tracted for a couple hours without success, but still having fun exploring Steamboat!

Saturday

We were gone almost all day today driving down to Shiprock with President Attson to help him haul some hay. We got permission to go on this trip, so we made the best out of it while we could! President Attson drove us up Buffalo Pass and at the top of the mountain we got to stop and check out the view. I got some neat pictures of that. If only I had brought my actual camera! The view was really neat. After another couple of hours driving, we finally arrived at Shiprock and we helped President Attson fill up his truck bed with hay. It was pretty messy. President Attson got us some steamed corn for free from the farmer's market in Shiprock, and he later bought us some drinks and food from Sonic. He gave me a brand new hat, also! He is super nice! The drive back took a couple more hours, and it rained a ton on the drive back. We helped unhaul the hay from the truckbed in the rain and then President and Sister Attson gave us a pizza. Elder Dye and Elder White (the Ganado missionaries) were completely soaked and muddy when we met up with them back at the Ganado church because of the intense downpour. They had been chopping down trees in the woods when the rain began pouring down. By the time we got home, we didn't have any time to proselyte, so we did some studies and turned in for the night.

Sunday

I played piano for church again. I think the members here aren't used to having someone play piano for prelude/postlude for sacrament meeting. It is an automated piano, so the are used to the robotic hymns that play automatically. We had to teach the Sunday school class again today, and we will have to do it again next week, too. Sister Wetzel made some meatball stuff for lunch, and we had it after church hours were over. It was really good! We later got to go and eat dinner with Roselyn and Raymond, and we taught them the third lesson in the Preach My Gospel. It rained really hard during our lesson, and it only died off as we were trying to get back home. There was a torrential river in place of the road we were taking to get home, so we took a bunch of pictures and waited a little while. After a long time, we decided to turn around and try our luck on a different road, and we made it home that way. Because of the flooding, we weren't able to see any more people that day.

Thanks for everything!

 Elder Asher helping haul hay.

 Elder Cahoon eating steamed corn.

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Elders Asher and Cahoon.  

6'7" and 6'3" respectively.  

 Elders Vea and Benson (not companions)

President Ackerman

Elder Dittmer's creations.