The 27-Day Week

​Missionary work is a trip. Usually days are long and weeks are short, but this week felt like 27 super fast days in a long week. 

On Tuesday, we had another Spanish District Meeting followed by a spanish language study that kinda hurt my brain (but was interesting!) and then went on exchanges with them afterward. I stayed in Benton this time, with Elder Ramirez, who is a recent convert of 3-4 years from Mexico City. He's super cool, and his English is way better than my Spanish is haha.

We spent a lot of time finding, and then had dinner at a member's house. I couldn't put my hands under the table cause one of their 4 dogs would lick my fingers for me haha. But they live on kind of a farm type thing? And brought in a baby duck and have some goats and geese and stuff. They sent us home with homemade jerky and candy. 

On Wednesday, we had our district's District Meeting, which we had planned for on an all of 15 minute long conversation over the phone the day before haha. It ended up being pretty good.

We made some cookies for one of our investigators we haven't been able to get in touch with in a while, and she was home! We haven't caught her again since, though... :(

That night we had our missionary correlation meeting, and gave Sister Shumway a blessing afterward. Then we worked on some reports for the Stake President until the assistants to the president came and we went on exchanges with them!

Elder Smalling and I went all over the place in downtown Little Rock. Met some characters. We were talking with one lady for a while, and asked her about blessings she has seen in her lire from prayer. She told us that her son had been sentenced to 5 years in prison after shooting somebody, and she prayed and he only had to serve 4! #blessed?


The sisters over there had an investigator in the hospital, and asked if we could give her a blessing, so we did that. She seemed like a really special lady.

Headed back to Benton for a meeting with the Stake President, and our interviews with the Mission President! Both went well and were awesome. We're getting excited for Tad R. Callister to come this Saturday and talk about the Book of Mormon in Little Rock in anticipation for the musical coming to town haha.

With exchanges done for the week, we spent our Friday weekly planning and then going on a road trip with a member of the ward to some of the outlying members in the area. Pretty much nobody was home, so that's the usual.

Saturday was a weird day. 

We had a cool lesson with a less active member and his roommate outside of their rehab facility on a picnic bench. They're both pretty cool and have been through a lot.

And then later, the first door we knocked on ended up being a Baptist preacher. Usually, they just say so and go back inside. Sometimes, they'll throw scriptures at us that we've heard before and we'll give some back. But this guy... idk. He didn't do that, he just went straight to discrediting our testimonies. After a lot of post-experience analysis, we noticed so much contradiction and fallacy in what he said. We left not just not feeling the Spirit, but feeling a bad spirit off of him. I haven't met many evil people in my life, but he'd be on my list. Not just because he thinks differently or was mean, but it was like psychological, spiritual warfare. People who know me wouldn't peg me as the type to storm off someone's porch, but when you discount my testimony and ask me if I'm really worshipping the same Savior... yeah.

So anyway. That was no fun. But church was good, even though people flaked and none of the people we are teaching came. We spent some time trying to find new people in that same neighborhood as the Baptist preacher and ended up totally changing a few people's perspectives on the Book of Mormon, so that success outweighed the bleh from the day before!

So it was a packed week! Now we are waiting outside the Jacksonville, AR church building (back in the Searcy Zone boundaries!) Waiting for our mission p day to begin! The whole Arkansas side is getting together today, so it should be fun!

Love y'all! Chase everything good, peaceful, loving, and joyful in the world!
Elder Dahl

oliver.dahl@myldsmail.net

1916 Brandon Rd, Apt. A2
Bryant, AR 72022