Elder Dittmers Journey to New Mexico

Monday

The highlight of my P-day was probably being able to play piano. I got to play basketball with the other missionaries in my district also, but I forgot to bring tennis shoes! After the P-day hours ended, we were able to talk with President Yazzie for a while before we had to get home.

Tuesday

We were super busy today! The first thing Elder Asher and I did was clean President Yazzie's bus so that it can pass inspection at the fire station. After that, we went to Sister Gorman's home (she called us again) and we chopped/stacked her wood. Then we got a text from Sister Allen asking us to come and help her stack wood, so we went and did that, then we got a phone call from Sister Bowman again, so we went over there and chopped/stacked her wood also. We accidentally left our axes at her house and didn't realize it until we pulled into the church, so we did a 180 and drove back out there, grabbed our axes, and finally found the time to do our studying for the day! It didn't last very long because we had our Book of Mormon class. I spilled a giant glob of honey mustard on my slacks while I was over there, and miraculously it hit nothing else, not even my shoes! It's a good thing those slacks were machine washable!

Wednesday

We went over and helped Grace get some wood chopped for her and her family, and when I found out that they didn't have an axe, I gave them my wooden one. I didn't really need it because I have another axe, so I decided it would be nice to give that to her family. After that, we drove out to Jackie's house in the middle of nowhere and we chopped some of his giant logs! Looking back, I wish I had taken a picture of that. Later, we drove out to Jeddito and met with Tasha again, who was going through a lot and was very happy that we remembered her. We gave her and her husband Chad a copy of the Book of Mormon and a Plan of Salvation pamphlet. We also visited Sister Norris a couple houses down, and we met her grandson, Angelo! He straight up said that he wanted to get baptized, so we are very excited for him. He has a sister who we think wants to be baptized also! The problems with that is that Sister Norris doesn't have any transportation to make it to church and she doesn't have another man home, so we can't go into her house without bringing another man. We are going to do our best to make it past these stumbling blocks. Afterwards, we drove back to our trailer and turned in for the night.

Thursday

We had district meeting this morning, where we learned that we now don't proselyte on the major holidays! Instead, it is like an all day preparation day. Since Thanksgiving is already coming up, our district is already starting to make plans for what we will do on Thursday, but nothing is solid yet. After district meeting, we visited Brother Nelson, who was working on his car next to his house. We talked for a bit, then later went to visit Jackie's neighbor, who we chopped some wood for. Afterwards, we were able to have a lesson with Colon, which went very well. We know Colon as the guy who works at the gas station here in Steamboat. He is very smart and even holds the lesser Priesthood currently. After his lesson, we visited with Hannah again, and we had a lesson with her involving a pyramid made out of cups! She asked us a lot of good questions which we were able to answer. We drove home after that and turned in.

Friday

Elder Asher pulled out my recipe booklet and made the both of us German pancakes for breakfast! They were very tasty. Today was kind of boring, we mostly did weekly planning then chopped wood for the Vasquez family. We visited President Yazzie also, and he gave us MRE's and Gatorade, which was very nice of him. Someone turned off our water last night, hopefully they come back and turn it back on at some point. 

Saturday

Our water was still off, so we took to the opportunity to take SPONGE BATHS! that was interesting, to say the least. We were invited to a luncheon with the Jim family, so that is where we went first. They fed us a lot, and had us take even more to bring back home! After eating, we offered our service to them by going on a wood haul with them. It was fun! We gathered a lot of wood from chopping down trees. After saying goodbye and a short prayer with them, we went back to the Vasquez household to finish what we started. We chopped logs into the night, and when we were finally done, we drove home only to find that our water was still turned off, so we called someone from Facilities Management, who directed us to another FM person, who directed us to ANOTHER FM person, who had us grab a water key and try turning the water on, and when more needed to be done, he directed us back to the 2nd FM person who had us grab a flathead screwdriver and shut a valve on one of the pipes. After we did that and turned the water back on, it finally was working perfectly! They had us test all the waterworks to see if they are working okay, then we were able to turn in and enjoy not having to take a sponge bath again.

Sunday

We had little attendance at church today. I only played hymns this time though, because our Sunday school teacher was finally able to make it to church. She had been sick for a while. After church we visited with Gilbert, a man who was not in the right state of mind at the time we visited him. We were later able to meet up with the Jim's again so that we could share a short message about the 10 commandments. We visited James after that on our way back, but since the rest of the family wasn't there, we just left him with a commitment and went on our way. We drove out of our way to visit the other Kee family, and we were actually able to share a message with them! We did the cup pyramid thing again. We turned in after that.

If anyone has any questions for me, please let me know! 

Hagoónee, 

-Gaamalii Dittmer 

James and his kittens.

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We have taught Sunday school every week until yesterday, which is when the Sunday school teacher showed up after being sick for a long time. Yeah, we do all three hours of church even though we get such a small amount of people. We had 2 other people at Priesthood class, which is especially small.
One thing led to another, and we ended up showing the young man who showed up how a blessing was done, by us giving a blessing to he-who-I-will-not-name-for-privacy-reasons, and we gave him a blessing of healing, and after that we gave the young man a blessing of comfort for his anxiety/stress.

All we have are concrete curbs in one small neighborhood 

If you're curious about my mission area, imagine sage brush as far as the eye can see with the occasional hogan (circular house made of dirt and/or wood) every few miles. Sure, there's not much out here, but there are Native American artifacts all over the place just sitting on the ground! That's pretty neat.

(I send him Chick Fil A sauce on occasion)

The best for last.