This week has been crazy good!

Well hello there! This week has been crazy good! Joseph our investigator is going to be baptized on September 27th at 3:00. A member in the ward was chosen by Joseph to baptize him. I am so excited to hear that he is starting to get integrated with the ward members! He even spoke up in Elders quorum and shared a really sacred moment he had in his childhood! He is so ready to be baptized a member!

This Saturday we are having a mini MTC at our church. The missionaries will be teaching 4 different classes that will talk about: Conversation starting, team-ups, social media, and fellow shipping. It will be a great time for those who come! I can't wait to teach the members how to become better missionaries!

I have been going good! The weather is finally cooling down. The water here in Kansas is so nasty!! I have been buying a case of water each week and drinking it all in one week! So that is 36 bottles a week! Crazy! Nothing much to report on this week besides it was transferrs and got a new companion. That is going great! He actually helps keep the apartment clean!! Shocker!!

Love you all.
Email me if you have questions!
Elder Dickson

Transfers & Teaching the Gospel

Hello everybody! It is transfer time again! I love a new beginning! My new companion is Elder Cook. I have no idea who he is. But it will be a good time. We are going to be baptizing our investigator this September! He is so golden! He has attended 2 different baptisms attended church 2 times already. And we have only been teaching him for 2 weeks now! Crazy! But the weather has finally been cooling off! I am so excited about that. All last night there was lightning lighting up the sky! It was so awesome! I am so excited to bring another sheep into the Lords fold! His name is Joseph and is in his 30's. Love you all!!

Richard Was Baptized

This letter from Elder Dickson was from the 18th of August. I haven't been able to get on the blog as a Admin. So I have it figured out now. Judy

Hey everybody! I just received news that this man was baptized! I helped teach him and helped get the ball rolling with his progression in the Gospel!! I am so stoked right now!! His name is Richard!! I am so glad that he made the choice to be baptized!! Oh man!! Boo yeah!!! Love it!!!

A Quick Visit From My Uncle, Aunt and 2 Cousins

Well, Taylor didn't write for the blog today, but we thought we would share in his behalf.

Taylor had an exciting day today. John, Paula, Preston and Stockton were driving to Texas for a Firemen's Conference. So they were going right through Wichita. Taylor was able to get permission from President Bell to visit with them and go to lunch. John took some pictures and sent them to me.

The backside of Taylors apartment

Waiting at the Library for Taylor to get done emailing his Mom.

At the same time, I was talking to John, until they came out.

After lunch they took them to the Stake Center where they were having P-Day activities with their Zone. I heard Taylor was going to play tennis with the Sister Missionaries. 

They said, "Elder D is going down."  Hilarious

Elder Hamelwright & Elder Dickson

They just were spoiled with John & Paula's homemade jerky, it is the best!! I hope Taylor shares?????

Thanks to John, Paula, Preston and Stockton for spoiling my Son and his Companion, and for making his day!!

Taylor is doing so good. He loves his new area and all the people there.
A few things he said in his emails lately:

"I wanted to call you so bad the other night!! Remember those times I had such a good day that I came home and talked with you?? Ugh… I wanted to call you the other night!!"
(That made me feel good as a Mom)

"I am doing pretty good. I am starting to see what I need to do to engulf myself into the work. I am going on exchanges with Elder Taluega this week and he is going to help me out with that."

"I am doing pretty good! I have been doing better now than I have since being on the mission!!"

So good to hear of his growth and happiness serving the Lord!
Love you all, Denzil & Judy

Make sure to check out his Birthday post below, I just put on from last week.

Thanks for the Birthday Wishes!!

Hey everybody!! I just wanted to say thank you all so much for the birthday cards and wishes! I loved them!! Thank you!! 

Things have been going pretty good here in Auburn Hills. I love this area! It is one of my favorite areas! Especially where the Balzers are in the ward! They are so awesome. In my first area they would bring us food and make sure we were taken care of! Then I moved to Harrison Park and their daughter and son-in-law lives in that ward! Now I am in Auburn hills and they are here! Such a treat! For dinner the other night they made us Salmon and Pork chops! Mmmm... my favorite! Also, we are taken great care of by the Coopers. He is the Ward Mission Leader, so we see them all the time. They do so much for us and all missionaries. The work in the area is going good! This area is full of potential!

Love you all!!
Elder Dickson

Happy Birthday Elder Dickson

Surprise!!

The Sister Missionaries decorated his door!!

The Coopers took us all out to Pizza Hut for lunch!

Happy Birthday cake made by the Hansel family

25 Candles

Get out the fire extinguisher!

A picture that his Grandpa & Grandma Taylor sent to him.

He said he put it on his dresser.

Thanks For The Prayers and Fasting

     Hello everyone! Thank you for those that have been fasting and praying for me! Things have been kicking my butt these past weeks. I have been having some issues lately, which brought on some major anxiety. But I know with all the issues that have been going on the Lord has been behind me 100%, obviously. But things are going to change! I am getting a new companion and a new area this Wednesday! I am so excited for this new start! Last week I went in and received a blessing from the mission President. After receiving that blessing I have felt my roots extend further into the Kansas soil. I felt that things are going to be starting to pick up and time will go much quicker!

     But this past week has been pretty good. The area I am in currently is a rougher area to find people. We have been working with less actives a lot!! So we went to a LA’s house last night and had shown him the Mountains to Climb video. He and his wife (the wife is active) started crying. He so felt the spirit! This is what I love about this work! I love to see LA’s feel the spirit! Something they might be lacking in the most. I love it!!

Also if you want to send me letters please send them to: 

7011 East 13th St North. Wichita, KS 67206-1219

To all you Philippine lovers!! 

We went to eat at a family where 

he served in the Philippines and she is Filipino.

Bad Bugs, Good Bugs, and Bed Bugs!!!!

Hey, blog time!!

So this week went by so fast!!! We wake up at 5:00 every morning to work out at the gym on McConnell Air Force base. I love doing this!! But it sure does make for a long day!

Here in Kansas the weather has been a delightfully hot with a great 95% humidity!! Oh so wonderful, lol. But right before it rains it becomes SUPER humid!!!! It gets miserable at times!

So last week we went to a former investigators house and visited with him. As we were talking about the gospel with him I felt bugs all over me. I looked down and there were little bugs all over me! I told the guy politely that we will have to finish up and have to re-schedule. After we did so we walked outside and I flipped out!!! There were also bed bugs on us!!! So we went to the store and bought Lysol I sprayed my bag inside and out then took off all my clothes and put them in the washer!! Eliminated those buggers!!! Ugh you Utahan’s are lucky to not have such devilish bugs!!! OHHHHHH, OH, OH I SAW LIGHTNING BUGS FOR THE FIRST TIME!!! They are so cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is one thing we need in Utah!!

So this past week we had a “solid” investigator say he would come to church! Well we show up and he was still in bed!!!!!!!!! He is so ready to be baptized besides smoking and not going to CHURCH!!! Grrr. But we have a new family that we met with last week. They are so awesome! The mom has visions during the night so she was telling us all about them. She is such a religious person but she currently does not have a church to attend! So we are going to bring them into the church, well the spirit will!! But the other day we biked 10 miles and walked 10 miles (flat tire). So we went to a trailer park and tracked over 20 trailers in the morning. When we show the Lord we are willing to work and bike 10 miles to his lost sheep, he will provide. We ended up getting 4 new investigators in an hours time!! So blessed! Now we have return appointments with them this week!!

Hope you have a great Fourth of July!! 

Love Elder Dickson

Received a new tie from Tanner and Niki! Thanks!

Chicken Fajita Nachos!! Home made chips!! 

While watching "How Rare a Possession".

My Mom begged me to take a picture with my companion, Elder Jones.

Sporting my other new tie from Tanner & Niki.

Burb Washed, Then Went Home to Read the Book of Mormon

     Hello all!! I hope you are enjoying the warm weather!! I know I am…………hahahahahaha I love humidity!! This past week was well crazy!! All I am going to say about last week is…. This church is the true Church of Jesus Christ!! While on the mission you come in contact with so many different opportunities, situations, and companions that enlighten you in so many different aspects of the Gospel!! But there is one church on this Earth and that is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Stay true to the iron rod!! This church is true!

     This morning we had a Zone car wash/wax/water fight at the church!! We had so much fun! We got all 15 cars washed and waxed. I took over the Presidents car to make sure it was perfecto! I love to clean cars! So after all the cars were washed and waxed we had a water fight. Who would have thought to move the cars out of the way?? Nah…. We had too much fun!!! We even got the President into the water war!! He was in his suit pants and white shirt! He loved it and was laughing!

Love you all!

Elder Maki and I taking over! The suburban that we are washing is a miracle story! They were just going to turn around in the parking lot to drive north. But ended up getting forced to get their burb washed. So we get this text later saying that her passenger went home and started reading the Book of Mormon!! God works in mysterious ways!!

Car washing fun with my cuz, Sis Blood.

We Were Guided by the Spirit

     Well, we had transfers last week!! I received a new companion from Orem, Utah. His name is Elder Jones. He is from the Marine Reserves! Do work son! This month we have been challenged to get 50 baptisms, as a mission. So we have been out pounding the pavement all day on Saturday. We started out by tracting for a few hours. We came upon this older man walking into his house. We said hello to him and he turned around and smiled until he saw we were Mormons. He said, "Don't stop here!" But we had already stopped at his house. This guy lived in Ogden, Utah for some time and said he knew Mormonism. But he knew NOTHING about us! He said that we were a cult and our church was of the devil. So we tried to address his questions but wouldn't let us. He said that his church was the one. We asked how many people attend, he said 9,000. I wanted to tell him that our church had over 15 million members. Oh well!!

     But through the rest of the day we had no luck, the Devil just wanted us to fail. I started off by twisting my ankle in a hole covered by grass. But that would not keep me down. A man we stopped to talk with was a bible basher. My companion started to bash for a while. I could not see a good end so I just said to this man, “Would you accept a Book of Mormon?” He said, “No I won't read it.” So that shut him down. He was just trying to prove a point that he knew nothing of. So after a long day we saw no success with finding even one person to put on date for the 50 baptisms. My companion had a vision that we needed to go to a park so we walked to the nearest and started knocking. No success!! So we went down a street that was bit darker than the rest of the neighborhood. As we started our journey down this dark road I could feel the presence of some spiritual beings walking with us to protect and guide us. We stopped and said a prayer to know which door to knock. We only had 5 minutes to get somebody on date. So we walked to a few houses that had the lights on, on the door step. No answer at all on all 3 houses. It was time to turn in. We started back to the car and I walked by a house and I was punched in the stomach by the spirit. I stopped told the companion that we needed to go to this house. He looked at me like are you serious! In a good way! So we knocked on the door and a man opened the door. He was a man that kept walking by us around the park. So we were sure this was the man. We started talking to him about the priesthood and how we have the proper authority. This man said after we stated that, that he just had chills go over him. We testified that what he felt is the Holy Spirit. We kept teaching him and invited him to baptism on June 28th. Wahooo!!!! This was a great spiritual/faith promoting event.

     Have faith in all that you do. We did not see our trial of faith for 12 hours. So take this as a lesson that it is on the Lord's time to continually keep faith within our Savior. Things may not happen as soon as you would like but the Lord knows what is best for us!!

Love you all!!

Celebration after a hard day’s work. Smoothies in a chilled mug!

My New Bike Adventures

Hello my Familia!!

So last week I got my new bike!! It is so great! If you have a missionary going out on a mission get a bike on ctrbikes.com. They have good deals. So after I got my bike all set up we went on a 10 mile bike ride to a referrals house. As we are biking to this house my companion is attacked by the awesome Kansas allergens. His eyes were itching so badly by the time we get to the house. But as we are sitting outside the house an older man just got in his car and pulled up to us and asked how we were liking our mission. His wife is a member but he is not. So he told us not to bug the man we had the referral for. So we didn’t.

So the next day we went out and saw people that lived far away in our boundaries. As we were visiting them one of the guys said to go visit this certain family. So we did. As we went down this long driveway we were approached by dogs, we see a lot of dogs in Kansas. So this man came walking towards us and it was the man that told us not bug that man we were going to see the day before. I thought this was ironic. So we sat there and chatted with him and his wife and he showed us his garden. See pictures below. We started asking him why he has not joined the church since his wife and kids are members. He said I just love smoking, I have done it since I was a kid and he did not want to change. So my companion bore testimony and I bore my testimony to him. And he just did not want to change. But I loved talking with that man.

Hope all is well for every one of you! Thank you for all those that have fasted with me this past Sunday. May the Lord bless each and every one of your souls and families.

Love,
Elder Dickson

The new bike 2014 Specialized Rockhopper with 29” wheels 
and Hydraulic brakes.

The largest Coy they have is 23 pounds.

White squirrel?