The One with Cold Rain & February Miracles

Hello! Here's your weekly highlights from Elder Dahl's time in Arkansas!

We started the week off with a day exchange with the assistants. Elder Turner and I had a good day despite the freezing rain. Had a really powerful lesson with a guy that they'd dropped a while ago. You could see gears turning in his head and that's always cool. We said a kneeling prayer with him on his tile floor, and this guy really wants to know what's true, and what God wants him to do!

Later, we gave a blessing to a guy in a big Baptist Health Hospital. It was raining when we went in, and pouring when we came out. That made running to the car fun. But really, trying to get to the car without getting as wet is like thinking that if you fan yourself as you jump into a pool, you'll come up dry.

Everything else pretty much fell through that day. During our planning session that morning, I'd gotten to pick out a street to do some knocking on if nothing else worked out. Well. Nothing else worked out, so here we were with an open hour and a half, a street picked out, and a lot of rain. We tried thinking of something else we might be able to do, but ultimately decided that we felt good about the street that morning, so we'd stick with the plan. So we did, and almost as soon as we pulled up onto the street, it stopped raining. Whoa.

And we actually got to have several really good conversations with people there. Nobody told us to go away, or that they weren't interested. Anytime we were on someone's porch, the rain would pick back up. But any time we needed to cross the street or walk to the next house, it slowed down again. So I mean... that's a miracle.


On Wednesday, we had our zone conference, which was pretty good. We had calzones with some members that recently got home from their missions. They showed us a video of babies swimming and having the time of their life and we were all dying. Idk what was so funny about it, but it was one of those "what the heck is my life right now? I'm in an apartment in Arkansas watching a video of babies swimming"


Come Thursday, we had a video lesson over Facebook that went really well! And we'd planned to go on exchanges with Elder Bingham and Elder Hughes that day, but then we got a call from the Pinnacle Mountain Elders saying that one of the people that they're teaching asked if he could move his baptism up a week... to Saturday.

Our goal as a zone was to help 2 people be baptized in the month of February, and it was looking like [up until that phone call] we'd only get one. But we had felt really good about 2, so in the back of our minds, we'd kinda been wondering where we went wrong. But! I was already packed for an exchange, and after some shuffling around, I was in that guy's living room giving him a baptismal interview and making sure he was ready to go! He's super cool! He actually grew up Jewish, and back in high school, some missionaries had given a spiel about the Book of Mormon in his homeroom class and had copies if anybody wanted one. He ended up with a copy, and now like forty years later, he's a member of the church!

We started off the next morning playing chair soccer in the downtown little rock building with the assistants, and then exchanged back. We had to take our mini van, Daphne, into Firestone to get an oil change, and that was fun. We had to wait for a while, mainly cause our vehicle coordinator in the mission office had to run some errands and wasn't able to get them the payment number they needed until like an hour after they were done haha. The TV they had on in the lobby played a unique sequence of Ancient Aliens, some old western, and a wacky game show. So that was distracting, and didn't at all make me miss TV. (Except for maybe the Ancient Aliens stuff... cause like... I've met people who really believe that stuff. And at least the TV show makes it sound cool.)

We had interviews with President Hansen that afternoon, and weekly planned after that.

The weekend was kinda rough. We keep on trying to visit people who have said they're interested, but it just seems like they're never home. The lady we helped take stuff to the scrap yard and clean her truck out ended up living a little letter addressed to us on her door. Missionaries will know what kinda letter. :) (She dropped us, but I think she'll come around!)

One of the less-promising people was home, though, and he was cool. Unfortunately, his drunk friend wasn't as cool, but had a surprising ability to recall and interpret bible scriptures. So yeah, bible-bashing with a drunk guy rapping about "living water" was an adventure. (I'm really wishing I'd asked him to rap it again so I could get it on video. I hope we see him again!)

The lady we raked leaves for that ended up being a member had us over again Saturday night! And then came to church for the first time in like 30 or 40 years. She seemed to really like it and everyone was so nice to her! Another one of the sisters' investigators came, too. He's been struggling with some health stuff lately, so it was really good he could come.

After church, we had kinda the same problem as Saturday. Trying lots of people, almost none of them being home. :/ We ended up going to that Bible study again. Everyone, including the pastor, was like 20 minutes late haha. But it was good. The Book of Mormon would just clarify so many of their questions and vague definitions. I love that book!


And that about catches us up to now! We tried a new mexican restaurant for lunch this morning. We walked in in-between two big construction crews... so I guess that's how you know if it's gonna be good out here. (It was!)

So there you have it! Every week is an adventure. There's ups and downs and miracles and exhaustion and everything in-between! But life is good!

Love y'all!
Elder Dahl

oliver.dahl@missionary.org

1916 Brandon Rd., apt. A2
Bryant, AR 72022
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