This week was great! We are still finding lots of people to teach in Sanders and we are finding SO many service opportunities! 

First of all, we had a baptism on Saturday. We spent basically the whole day at the church filling the baptism font. It was boring but someone has to do it. We also set up all the chairs and tables for the food afterwards. Eventually the time came and Shanna was baptized! She's 9. She was a bit shy about the whole thing but she also seemed happy to finally be baptized. After the baptism we set out all the food and we were there until it was time to turn in. The next day I confirmed her during church services and it was such a good experience.

Friday we had a potluck, too. We had a good turnout and ended up with a lot of food from all the families that came. 

We also have been able to meet with more people than we have in the past month. Thank goodness for members who are willing to go work with the missionaries!

Today we went to the branch president's ranch and helped him with a few things. He talked about a place on his property where we can find lots of arrowheads and ancient tools from the native Americans thousands of years ago. We didn't get around to finding anything, but one of these days I'm really hoping to go out there with President Winn and find some arrowheads!

Thanks for taking a look at my email!
Hagoónee!

 

Sanders Branch President

 Fixed the PVC pipe under the feeding trough.

Mending a fence.

This email is so late, sorry! I'll get one out next week. Thanks for the prayers, they're working! (from April 16th).

Yá'át'ééh!

Honestly, this week was filled with a lot of disappointments, but that happens at times. Our teaching pool that we have accumulated here reaches to nearly 30 people now which is huge, but getting into these people's homes has been nearly impossible. The new people we have found since being here with Elder Hansen haven't been home when we try by, and when we try to call them they are often too busy or they don't answer their phone. On the plus side, though, we met with the stake president yesterday and he is planning on sending people down here to help improve the missionary workforce. The people he will be sending down, whoever they are, will be helping us meet with our mass amount of people we are teaching. 

Another plus that happened is that Shana, one of the people we have on baptism date, came to church with her entire family besides her mom! Her mom got kidney stones and couldn't make it (oof). Her baptism will be this Saturday, so we're looking forward to that.

I got some sort of 24 hour stomach flu that had me awake all night and the rest of the next day. I missed church, dangit! Stuff happens. Glad I'm over it now, though. If that flu lasted longer I would've been in a lot of pain. The branch president's wife was a lifesaver. She gave me a bag filled with Sprite cans and chamomile (herbal) tea that really helped settle my stomach.

We finally had a lesson with Tim, one of the people we had on date. We ended up basically dropping him because he expressed his desire to not change. He is no longer on date for baptism, that's for sure. When we were pulling onto his roadside driveway loop thingy before the lesson, we saw a bull snake! And Elder Hansen touched it! It was big! It hissed at Elder Hansen when he touched it.

We did service on Tuesday for a member here. We chopped wood for him and loaded up some massive wooden poles onto his truck and unloaded them in another spot. The poles were super heavy and we had to flip them around to keep them from falling out of the truck bed. 

That's the extend of my week. Hagoónee!

-Elder dittmer

We found a Chinese chicken recipe on the All Recipe app. It was so good that we made it twice so far!

 Kǫ́' means fire and dooda (doe-dah) means no

Bull snake!

_____________________________________

From our Facebook chatting:

We missed church, but apparently a family we were trying to get to go to church was there!

We got in contact with them. The mother got sick too. She had kidney stones! But the rest of the family went to church.

So far we have played a fast game of Monopoly and played piano for a bit. By a fast game of monopoly I mean that Elder Hansen got super lucky and robbed me of all my money super early in the game

Missionary Peeps.

Elder Hansen taught me something that you may or may not already know. He peels his peppers! It makes them taste 100% more delicious than if they have the skin still on there.

They told us pizza edge was supposed to open last Friday but it isn't open yet! Kinda sad about that. But a member here bought us some dominoes pizza that was really good .

I just realized that I had diarrhea on easters

#nacholibre

I got a few more little strawberries, by the way. They tasted a lot better than the first ones I tried

 The church in Sanders.

"We had our annual salad luncheon at the church building in Holbrook. It is used to bring money in to help our local thrift store that employs people with special needs. All of these amazing missionaries came to help."  Posted on Facebook by Marianne Meeks.

Yá'át'ééh! I am a bit rushed, so I'm sorry about the length of this email. I went on a hike today and it was a blast! There were pine trees all over and the river we hiked to was beautiful. 

We also found another 5 people to teach. We are getting so many people to teach it's hard to follow up with them! I am so glad to be part of the Lord's work. Sorry again for the short email! 

 Pine Springs Hike

Playing ticket to ride with the other elders who came

Yá'át'ééh!

The work here in Sanders has been skyrocketing! We have 3 people with a baptismal date and 10 new people being taught. Shana is the one with the closest baptism date, April 20th. In our last lesson we showed the family a video about baptism, then committed her to prepare herself for baptism on the 20th of April. We believe she will make this date, no problem!

We went for a hike today out in Pine springs. It was very beautiful, and we got to do it with a member and his friend. I'll include pictures of it.

Nothing else too exciting happened. We are planning on taking the bikes out of the garage and using those, but we need to wait for our bike helmets to arrive from the Winslow zone leaders. 

Thanks for your prayers, they are working!

-Elder Dittmer

Kyle and Isaac (not Elder Dittmer)

Most of these are of the hike, but one of them is me and my trainee, Elder Barajas!