Christmas Was Great & a Baptism This Saturday!

Well, it has been quite sometime since I have wrote a letter for the blog. Christmas was great! It was so good to Skype with my family. We spent most of the day with a member here in the ward. 

This Saturday we are having another baptism. So excited!! Her name is Karla Guadalupe,she is 10 years old. We received a referral from some Elders in Ark City. We went to the address they gave us and a spanish lady opened the door. So we just started saying who we were. She said that she did not speak english. We set an appointment with her the next day so we could bring a member with us that could speak spanish. So the next day we went to her house and talked with them about church. We thought that the mom and daughter were not members. The member that came with us started talking with her and found out that she is a member. She has lived in Wellington for 7 years and did not know there was a church in Wellington. She has been traveling to Ark City very seldomly because she has no car. So we told her where the church is and she came that Sunday. So now the daughter (Karla) is on date for the 3rd. She is so excited. So this Sunday at church she came with her daughter and her other less active daughter. The work is still growing in Wellington!! 

But next week are transfers. I feel that I will be leaving! I hope that you all have a great New Years!! Love ya all, Elder Dickson

 A flock of birds flying south

 Waiting for the train

Pictures for Cameron because he has been building a chicken coop.

Making a Christmas treat

 Champeny's Old Oxford Mill--1874

The river that runs through Oxford

Beautiful Sunset

A Great Thanksgiving & Many Getting Baptized

Hello Everybody!!

I had a great Thanksgiving here in Kansas! Missed being with you all, of course! I got a new companion last week. His name is Elder Liechty, he is from Lindon, Utah.

This week is going to be exciting! We have 3 baptizms this saturday. Tyler, Taryn Stark (brother and sister) and Charley Hielig!! We have had great teaching experiences with them this past week! Charleys countenance has completly changed from the first time we taught him. He is so excited!!

Last night we were going through the Area book at dinner time. We found a Part member family that has 2 unbaptized children! The one was baptized but the bishop did not sign the record. The baptizm was not complete. So we will be baptizing him and his little sister. They have been taught everything!!! All we need to do is test them and see where their knowledge stands! This will be 5 baptizms since I have been here! I am hoping to get another one before I am transferred!! Alyssa is so ready to be baptized!!

Love you all!! Elder Dickson

Visiting Barry at the Hospital

"Miss that smiley face"

A wonderful family had them over for Thanksgiving

His new companion Elder Lietchy

Had to pull over the pick some cotton from the cotton fields

Relaxing during scripture study at a ladys home

Zone Conference last Friday

A Spiritual FHE & Cutting Down a Tree

Oh boy!!! It's almost winter time! We have several inches of snow and ice! The roads this morning are packed with ice! Love it! lol I am being safe Grandma! (Love ya) But this week has been incredible! We have a Less active family that has been coming to church since our visit with them a few weeks back. They have 2 children that are not baptized. So they are on date for baptism on the 6th of December! They are solid! We have another man named Charley. We found him through a less active family also! So he is on date for the 29th of November!! He is so ready to be baptized. It has been a struggle with teaching him because he has dementia. We have been communicating with our leaders as what we could do to help him more. They said as long as he know about the Restoration and the covenant that he is taking then he can be baptized. Because the ultimate teacher is the spirit. If we hold off with baptizing him then we are prolonging his teaching from the spirit. I love it!! Last night Bro. Taylor and I went and did his home teaching. We went to a less active families home and taught her. I had no idea what to teach. So with full intent relying on the spirit to guide me and the amount of Faith I have, the spirit told me to open up to the index of the Ensign of G.C. As I opened it my eyes laid right on the talk given by Neill F. Marriott called "Sharing your light" as I turned to it on page 117 I knew I was not suppose to read it all. I just said in my mind "ok spirit tell me when to stop" so I read and the spirit told me to stop. I looked up at her and started to teach her. I said that our bodies are a temple. Just like the Temples here on earth they are bright. Well in each of us our light varies within our own temple. (Then I compared our light to those stupid halogen bulbs that are curly. They are the ones when you turn on the light switch you look up and realize that they are on but dim) So I said we need to keep that light burning bright with reading and praying. Then she opened up just like a vault! (This makes life easier on missionaries) She said why she and her family have not been coming to church. So I helped her resolve those issues and she is willing to come back to church to take the sacrament!! And allow her kids to be introduced to the activities!!!! Miracles!!!

Love you all!!! 

Pictures of me up in a tree cutting it down. 

We are helping a man on his 100 acre farm.

Planting Seeds & Carving Pumpkins

This week is going good! We put two people on date with a total of 5 on date for baptism. Wahoo!!
Yes it is getting colder here, but it has been really nice. We were able to go to lunch with the Coopers from my last area, I love the Coopers. They took us to a good Mexican restaurant!!! It was great to see them and to be with them. Charley is doing really well! He is on his 3rd day of not smoking. He will be baptized in 2 weeks if he does not fall back into smoking. Please keep him in your prayers. We gave him a blessing to help him and it seems to be working for him! We have a few new investigators. Some workout some don’t answer the door. So it comes and goes but we have planted the seeds so it will start to grow within them. We went to the border of the mission the other day it is in our area and great to see the other part of the state and peek into Oklahoma.

Thank you so much for all you do for me!!
Love you!! Elder Dickson

My Halloween Carved Pumpkin

On the edge of the Kansas, Wichita Mission

Oklahoma & Kansas Boarder

Taylor's package from his Grandparents

Wellington is great!!

Well, it is going great here in Wellington. It is a different town for sure! But there is a lot of progress going on. We have on man that wants to get baptized but he has some smoking issues that we are working on. This area has a lot of less active families in it. So the other day we had a Bonfire at a member’s house and had a lot of less actives there! We are going to teach them tomorrow night. My companion is great!!! We are having a great time serving the Lord and sharing his light!! Love you all!!!

Bonfire

Transfer Day PIcs

My New Companion Elder De Jong

Elder Cook

Elder Limb

Prayer being said

Transfers to Wellington KS

It’s time!! I am moving to Wellington Kansas and my companion is Elder De Jong. He and I came out at the same time. He went to the Mexico MTC because he is a Spanish Elder. I am in a Spanish district. No… I will not be learning Spanish. I have not been called a Spanish Elder.

We had a Road Show this past Saturday! It was a blast!! Most of the missionaries in my district played a part! I was the DJ for the show! Ah yeah it was sick!!! And we went to get sushi for some birthdays in the District! Party!!!!!

We just had somebody move into our apartment next to us and they are Mormons!! The Dad has fallen away from the church and the 15 yr old daughter has not been baptized. She was taking the lessons in Washington before she left. We went over last night to talk with them and she already know, we pulled out lesson after lesson and she said, "Yep, I already have gone over that". So right now we are just getting them to read and pray daily! Then when the time comes right she will become baptized. The Dad said when he was driving the 30 hours here he was thinking how much he needed to get back into church and when he got here he saw us and knew what God was trying to say.

Love you all!!!

Joseph and Elder Cook as Goblins

Thug life!

Sushi!

 Yeah it’s on fire!!

Mahalo

General Conference & Meet The Mormons

Hope things are going good at home! This week was awesome! I loved watching/listening to conference. We were able to watch conference with Joseph at a member’s home. He thought it was pretty good! We even had an investigator watch it on the internet at his home. So we went over there and talked to him about it. Tonight we are going to watch the movie about the Restoration with him. I can’t wait!! The members are the Hoppers. I love them they are in there 80’s. He is a sand dune junky. He hand built a sand rail that has an automatic transmission and a V8 32Valve V star engine in it and just bought a Polaris Razor 1000!!! He asked me if I wanted to go to the sand dunes with him and his son this weekend… Later that day he bought a new freezer so we helped him unload over $5,000 worth of meat into the new freezer. Party!! They have their own business here in town.

Also, I went to the mission office last week and talked to the Car Manager of the mission. He is from Kaysville and knows of Jerry’s family. His dad had a heating and air conditioning business right next to Speirs Plumbing. It was called Holbrook heating and air. They had to move their business to Salt Lake because it grew so much. He actually converted me to Ford now. I was telling him about the new Escalade and he said that his family converted over to the Navigator. So he taught me about the Pros and Cons of Chevy and Lincoln!

Anyway, last Friday we got a special treat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We were able to watch “Meet the Mormons!!!” It was awesome!! I was able to set up the theatre! Big speakers and a 200 inch screen!! What could beat that!? Watching Meet the Mormons with a bunch of missionary friends and relaxing!! Oh man it was the best! Sorry I won’t tell you too much about it cause you still have 4 more days to wait! Hahahaha lol! But I will tell you this part!! *Spoiler* The last scene made me miss home so much! It showed the “Mormon Escalator” at the SLC airport. Then it showed the University Mall and a pre-missionary buying his mission suites at Mr. Mac! Oh man, I started to tear up so much!! TRUNKY!!! To all the moms that have a missionary out right now take a roll of toilet paper not a box but a roll. You will need it! Transfers are next week!!! Oh, last night we left a members home and I looked at the sky and it was green!! I freaked out!!!!!! I called my neighbor and asked him what it meant when the sky turned green, he said that means hail! I was so glad but I was freaking out still. I had to protect the car from hail! But it never hailed! But earlier this week we got a text saying to cover the cars because we were suppose to get large hail storms. I have a 2014 Ford Fusion and it has no dents in it! I was not going to let it get dented by hail. Most of the cars in Kansas look like they drove through a golf course, they have so many dents on them.

I love you all, hope you have a great week!!

I am off to get a hair cut and go to a Luau!! Mahalo

Joseph was Baptized Saturday

Hello everybody!

Joseph was baptized Saturday at 3:30! It was great! He was so excited to be baptized!! He even took us all out to Red Lobster for dinner! He told us 3 missionaries (the ones who worked with him) the places he would take us and all 3 said different places. So Elder Hamelwright said well I guess you get to choose which place we are going to go because we all 3 said something different. So Elder Hamelwright said, “Who is your favorite missionary”. Joseph said well then, I will have to go with Elder Dickson since he has been with me the whole time! Wahoo!!! Endless shrimp!! Joseph ate probably 50+ shrimp!! Joseph was baptized by a member of the ward by Josephs request and he requested me to do the confirmation the following Sunday. When I did the confirmation it was incredible to pass on the gift of the Holy Ghost and confirm him a member. The efforts have paid off for him, of finding and teaching him for such a long time.

Before he was going to get baptized the Bishop of the ward said no that he can’t be baptized because of some requests that he had. I was so upset. There were some things that needed to be worked out. So the baptism was off for last Saturday. I was NOT going to let this happen! He was going to get baptized!! So we had a conference call with the Zone Leaders, us and Joseph about the requests. Later we met in person and the spirit opened up to us and Joseph. Between the one Zone Leader my companion and I the spirit told us what to say. The spirit was literally speaking to each missionary telling one at a time what to say. Joseph noticed we were in sync with each other. I told Joseph, “And I think you know why we are in sync with each other”. He got a smile on his face. I said, “That was the spirit!!” We said to him,” How do you feel now?” He said, “I feel calm”. Then I said, “Are you ready to be baptized tomorrow without the stipulations?” He replied, “YES!!!” So we left the room and Joseph was interviewed for the Baptism!!! 

 Love you all!!!

I Am So Sick

Well, this week was crazy! We went tracting and came across a man and he did not want to hear about the message we had but was interested in our free services. So we came back a few days later and replaced his siding on his house (trailer). Then Saturday night we were out on team-ups and I started to get sick! My nose was running like crazy. So after team-ups we were dropped off at the apartment and I told my companion that we needed to go to the store to get meds. So on Sunday I was still so sick! We had to miss the Sunday portion of Stake Conference! Ugh no fun! I forced myself to get out today so I could come email. It is great being out on a mission, there are so many people that look after you when your sick. The Coopers came over and gave me some Chicken Noodle Soup, a get well card, and some Halloween candy. It was great!!

But this week is Joseph’s baptism! He is so excited to get baptized! We were supposed to go out shopping today to get him some church clothes, but I have been sick so I cancelled it so I could rest. But hopefully satan won't work his hardest this week to break him down! Pray for him please!!

Love you all!!