Day 12 On The Island!

This week was pretty good. The work here is really slowing down with the summer, but that has been making it fun for us, because we have to try new things, so we have been visiting different places trying to do service, and we have been passing by or calling all of the old investigators, and stuff like that. Also, we have been going through the past 8 years of contacts the missionaries have made, and trying to contact them all. It's been crazy, but we have seen miracles happen! I know that if we work hard we can see results! It's just the waiting part that's rough.

This week also, Elder Ponce and I got a little sick, so that was kind of a bummer, but I was really impressed by how determined my companion is, even if it is almost to the point of stupidity.   He wouldn't go sleep, because he wanted to go work even though he felt like trash.  Haha, but I guess I'm the same because I didn't want to sleep either:) it kind of just attacked us. He got sick first one day, then the next I was out for the count as well. But, we are back up on our feet now so that's a good thing:) Oh...speaking of feet...I found a hole in my shoes!! Yay!!! Now I look like a real missionary, with shoes that I have worked in:) Haha, good thing it doesn't rain very much here:)

So, here's some tidbits of info about where I am now. On the island of Menorca are two major cities, Cituadella, and Mao. I'm in Mao, the bigger one, with Elder Ponce as my companion, and with Elder Neumiller as my district leader and his companion Elder Johnson, and we are part of the Baleares Zone, which includes all the islands, not just ours, so go to conferences we have to fly to Palma, the big island. So basically, I have half an island as my area:) The weather here is beautiful, but I'm told it will get really hot soon. It's super pretty here though. Tthe sky is so clear and blue, and  there isn't any pollution.

The branch here is really small, and actually most of the people are in primary, so that's kind of funny.  There are two families - with 3 kids each, and a few other members as well. But here is the crazy thing. Out of all the members in the branch, half are recent converts, within the last 6 months.  It's crazy!!!  It's super neat to see.  Apparently, when Elder Nuemiller got here 6 months ago there were only 7 people in church each week. Yesterday there were 25:)

That's pretty much the run down.

I hope you all have a great week. Always look for the miracles in your lives. They are EVERYWHERE!! All you have to do is look.  Then thank Heavenly Father for them. That's the most important part.

Stay Strong.

Love you all,

Elder Dixon

PS - Since I am on such a small island the mail system is terrible.  Please send all letters and packages to the mission home.  It will take longer to get to me - but at least I will get them :)

Last post until Monday...

May 19, 2014

This week was crazy!! We have seen so many miracles already! The biggest one was yesterday, the Clark's took us to two different pueblos to visit some members, and it was pouring rain, so that was a blessing, but the miracle came that we got to go see our ward mission leader, who we haven't seen for the past 4 weeks! We had a great lesson, and it was super great. Then we went to a menos activa lady and that was great too. I love the rain.  It seems that when the weather is bad, somehow, the miracles just explode. It reminded me of when I was in Zaragoza with Elder Wiscombe after we had gotten 4 fechas and it was a really rainy day. I loved it.

 

My companion is really great as well.  We have our differences, and we work super differently, but its good.  I'm learning so much.  He really likes to work quickly and efficiently.

 

I am still trying to adjust to life here, it's just really different, but, I love it already, and my district is great.  It's so pretty here.

 

One thing that was neat too, is that yesterday, one of the recent converts gave his first talk, on faith, and it was so good.  He did a great job, and it was a really spiritual experience, even though he was super nervous before hand.  I love the members here. They are really great.

 

that's really it. Maó (the city I'm in) is super small, and so there aren't that many people here.  It's really pretty though.  Everybody knows everybody else too.   It's crazy, but good:)

 

I hope you all had a great week too:)

 

Love ya!

Elder Dixon

Number 2

May 14, 2014

 

This week was a crazy rollercoaster of miracles, surprises, adventures, and everything in between. It was super fun. One great miracle that Elder West and I saw happened because we followed the Spirit and it yielded miracles.

 

Elder West had been wanting to go to a certain part of our area for a while, but we hadn't ever been able to because of other things that would come up. However, we finally just set aside the time to go, and we saw an amazing miracle. On our pass by list there is a menos activa with a note that she doesn't want anything, but we decided to try and go anyway, and when we knocked on her door, she actually invited us to come back again, gave us her cell number, and we talked for about half an hour in her doorway (there wasn't a man present so we couldn't go in) Well, later, we talked to some ward members about it, and they said that something must have changed, because just last month she didn't want anything, but now she does. Following the Spirit really is important, and even if the first few times that we try to we can't, at least we are showing the Lord we are trying.  It was really great.

 

Also, this week there were the transfers, and so now that I am on the island of Menorca. I hope to be able to see more great miracles. The area here is absolutely exploding! My new companion is Elder Ponce.  He is super great, and I can tell he will be a ton of fun to work with.  He is from Ecuador, but lived in Madrid, and now lives in Belgium, so he speaks Spanish and French, but little English.  I'm super excited to work with him.  I flew out of Barce last night at 8:50, and now I'm here on a super tiny island in a super tiny city.  It is a huge change from the packed Barcelona I'm used to!

 

So yesterday while I was waiting to leave we went to a museum, called the Cosmic Caixa, that is HUGE!!!!  It has a flooded Amazon forest inside, with all the animals and everything, and its super neat...it also has a ton of physics stuff and a ton of stuff about the Mediterranean ocean....all on the bottom floor.  Wait...how many floors are there? Ya...5. and how long did it take us to go through a half of the bottom one? Ya...2 hours. I HAVE TO GO BACK!!!   Oh, and it was super cheap too. Best museum ever.

 

Anyway, I hope you all had a great week. Love you all!!

 

Elder Dixon

First of Many posts....

May 5, 2014 

This week was a great week, even though our numbers don't show it.  We had an amazing zone focus where we learned how to teach repentance, and that if we teach repentance we will have a ton more success in converting, and retaining and reactivation. Also, there is the promise from Elder Holland that if we teach baptism FOR THE REMISSION OF SIN, then we will quadruple our baptisms.  Incredible.  

We have also been doing a ton of service this week. (we painted two pisos, and cleaned up from a remodeling, and we also visited a menos activo who is the hospital twice) and to top it all off, yesterday we had fast Sunday.  I have been spiritually fed, and I know that we have seen miracles because of the work we have been doing.  One that we have seen already is that we had correlation with our ward mission leader for the first time in awhile, and its because we went and helped clean/paint his piso, and so he had more time to spend with us. (side note, I got to paint a huge picture of Bruce, the shark from Finding Nemo, on the wall of his sons room.  Seriously it is bigger than he is. I'll send pics :) I had a blast!!) I know that as we serve others as a much as we can, we can be blessed.  And beyond that, I also got to see Elder West be amazing like always with how caring he is and willing to serve however he can.  It was really great to see that, and I know that he is going to finish his mission super strong. Also, one cool thing that we have decided to start doing is trying to contact, either by calling or knocking on their doors, at least 10 members a day.  So far we have been averaging about 12 a day, and one day we even got up to 18.  It's crazy though, that even when we knock on 15 doors, and call each of them plus three more people, only 4 answer. but we are still trying!!! 

Anyway, I hope you all have a really great week, and also HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!!!! Shout out to mine:) She's the best:)

Embrazo,

Elder Dixon

...once again, and we saw miracles!!!

April 28, 2014

This week was a good once again, and we saw miracles!!! The neatest one was that we have been meeting with a lady named Yahira, who was a reference from the hermanas of the other ward.  Well, we invited her to be baptized a week ago, but she said she wasn't ready, and since then we haven't been able to have a visit with her because she works a ton!  Well, this past week we got a phone call from the hermanas of the other ward, who told us they had an awesome reference for us, who they just barely had a visit with and who accepted a fetcha!!  And that's when we realized it was Yahira.  The hermanas had forgotten they passed her to us.  The lord works in mysterious ways, but those ways work!!!  We have also been working with a lady from Brazil named Neidi (pronounced Negie) and she is absolutely amazing, and super ready to hear the gospel.  It's incredible how prepared she is, and the best part is, she has invited one of her friends, Lele, to church, and a bunch more to English class!!  It's incredible!!!

 

Other than that, not much really has happened.  There are two missionaries leaving from our ward to Madrid, Peterson and Joselyn, so we got to go to their farewell last night, and that was good to see, but beyond that not much has happened.  We have some new investigators and we have been meeting a lot with recent converts and less active members, and overall we have just been having a blast.  One thing that's kinda funny, is since Elder West and Elder Sutton(one of the other elders in my piso) only have 2 months left of their mission, we have little signs up everywhere that say "finish like a man" it's pretty great:)

 

I hope you all are doing well.  Keep reading the scriptures, and praying and going to church, and if you have any friends who want to learn about the gospel, talk to the missionaries!!!

 

Love,

Elder Dixon

20 Lessons in a Week!!

April 21, 2014

 

This week was really great!!! The work is picking up in our area a little, and it feels really great. Want to know why? Because we have turned our focus on the menos activos and conversos recientes. Because of that we got a new friend to teach!! We almost had three, because we went to visit a menos activa lady, and she had three friends she invited to come listen. Two of them had other stuff they had to do so they only stayed there for about 10 minutes, but we got a return visit with Jaime! Only bad part is, well, he is moving to Madrid in about a week....but he has come to church, and we are going to go eat at a members tonight, and he is going to come with us. It's really great. Visiting menos activos and conversos recientes is a really effective way to find new people to teach.

 

Also, this week one cool thing that I learned is that I need to stop focusing on what we haven't done, and instead realize what we HAVE done. Example: this week I was feeling bad because we only had 8 member present lessons. And then I realized we have had 10 with less actives/recent converts, and 2 Other lessons. That's a 20 lesson week! In Zaragoza, that was always our goal, was to have a 20 lesson week, and we did it this week!!! Even though we didn't hit the mission goal of 12 member presents, we still had great successes, and that is part of why this week was so great.

 

Also, I wanted to tell all of you that if you haven't already, go to mormon.org and watch the video on there..in Spanish its called "gracias a el", which means "Thanks to Him", but idk if that's the title in English. All I know is that yesterday if you went to the homepage of YouTube it was the first video on there, so that was pretty cool:) anyway, it is awesome!!!! Only 3 minutes, but incredible. Go watch it. Now. 

 

Anyway, that's pretty much it!!!

 

Love you all!!

 

Elder Dixon

the next installment....

April 14, 2014

This week was good, and we saw miracles, but really nothing extraordinary happened. One thing was just that we had been feeling we needed to go to arc de triumf, but since that is the boundary of our area we have been putting it off, and this week we finally went and we found a menos activo who was really happy to see us, so that was a small but simple miracle.  Our numbers this week are kind of low  unfortunately, but not because we weren't trying.  Our visits just keep failing on us!!  Satan does a really good job of making people forget they have appointments with us.  Another part of it too probably was that I had to put my foot down and make Elder West sign up for his classes, because up until Wednesday he still hadn't. That took a lot of time unfortunately, but Oscar was with us (he is a member who doesn't have a job so he is always with us, and if we don't call him to go on visits he gets mad.  He literally is with a companionship at least once a day) and so I was able to help him try and find his line of authority, and figure out how to use lds.org, so it was a good use of time, and then later that day we had a couple really good member present lessons with him helping us.

 

This week was also really difficult, because we had kind of a spiritual hiccup, where for my part at least, it was tough to feel the Spirit for a day or so, due to an argument we had with the other elders in our piso over a small little thing.  It's all better now, but it was super hard to break through.  But, fortunately I have an amazing companion, who holds the Priesthood and was able to give me a blessing.  I really needed it, and for him to have been there was great.  He is what I imagine having a brother is like.  Someone that can annoy you to no end, but as soon as anybody says anything against them, they are going down.  That's the kind of relationship we have.  Also, being able to fast helped out a ton.  I love fast Sunday.

 

Anyway, that was all that happened this week. Love you all!!!

 

Elder Dixon