April 25 2016

I got transfered! I think this is going to be my last ward because I'll be leaving in 3 transfers. Wow saying goodbye to my old ward was seriously so hard. I never realize how much I fall in love with the Peruvian people here until I have to say goodbye to them and go to a new sector. The people here have grown to be like a family to me. I love them so much haha. They have changed me and made me such a better person. 

I am now in a zone called las flores or the flowers and there are absolutely no flowers here haha. We live in a huge mountain! Well not huge but there are probably like 4000 people that live in the mountain alone. And then below we have a big flat area too in our sector. All day long we are climbing up and down the stairs and it's kinda hard to get used to at first haha. All I know is that my legs are going to be in tip top shape in time to come home ;) haha I honesty to love this new sector though. My new companion is Elder Cea! He's from Chile! So far I have had companions from Bolivia, United States, Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina and now Chile. and I love them all haha. We had a reunion this week with all the mission and we could invite our investigators and the members to it. It was about family history and there I saw all of my companions that are still in the mission. Elder Christenses from the MTC, Elder Cabrera my son, Navarro, Trujillo, and Sea. These guys are all my best friends haha they're so awesome. I could just be with them for hours and not get tired. While we were there with them I realized how many amazing friends I have and especially how awesome my family is. I will never get sick of being with you haha. Good thing too cause we are going to be together for eternity haha  ;)

I had an awesome birthday! The members did a little party for me and they made me a cake and sang to me. It was such a simple but amazing birthday. One I will never forget that's for sure. That was before I got transferred, and I thought they were going to throw eggs all over me but they didnt! I thought I had escaped. but when we went to the district meeting on wednesday, april 20, they DESTROYED me with a ton of eggs. It was horrible cause after we had to take one of these little moto taxis back to our house and dried up egg doesn't smell very good let me tell ya haha. It was fun though. I will not forget that either. I put a video of them throwing eggs at me on dropbox. So mom and dad you guys can go on and see that. It was pretty great haha.

I put in some pictures of these things haha. of me carrying my suitcase up the mountain by stairs. We have to climb like 150 stairs to get to our room and carrying a suitcase that weighs more than me isn't the funnest thing in the world haha. I was dying. But I love it seriously.

So we are focusing a lot on faith as a companionship. We decided that we are just going to turn the day over to the Lord. Do all he wants us to do and then have faith in the blessings that we are promised as missionaries. We have been doing that and we have honestly seen miracles. We decided to just knock on a random door and this guy answered. His name is Jose. He's like 'you guys are the mormons right?' We started talking and he's like 'hold on a second.' He went into his house and grabbed a Book of Mormon and came back out and started to tell us that he listened to the missionaries before. We asked if we could go inside and share a message with him and he accepted. We didnt think he was going to accept the invitation to come to church but when we invited him he thought for like 10 seconds and then was like 'umm yeah I'll go!' and he went yesterday haha. Faith is so important in this work and we really can see miracles. Even if they are as small as having someone come to church with us just after one visit. 

I love the work that we are doing. I love the poeple here SO much. I love my companions and I love Elder Cea. This work is about love too haha and I realized that if I don't love what I am doing, I can't have success. Thanks for all your support and for all you do to help me you guys. You're all the best :)

Have a good week!

Love Elder Dahlin

April 18 2016

I'll start off by saying THANK YOU!! For all the birthday wishes haha. Even though it isn't my birthday yet I'm pretty sure the members are going to make me a cake and then destroy me with it tonight. Along with eggs and flour haha. I dont know why but when it's your birthday here they like to throw food on you and laugh haha. But eh I guess it's alright cause it's probably the only time it'll ever happen in my whole life. Here goes nothin :)

Also thanks for the package family :) You guys are lo maximo seriously. Thank you for all the letters and candy haha. I dont have all of the email addresses of our aunts and uncles, but thank you so much for brightening my day. haha it was so much fun to eat the chocolates that I miss so much and read all of your letters. Sometimes I dont understand how or why God blessed me so much to have such amazing friends and family. Thank you so much!

So this last week we were helping this pregnant lady sand this wall because her baby is going to be born and she wants the room to be a different color. We had been sanding it by hand for hours and the paint just didn't seem to come off. haha they even gave us a knife and like a spatula type thing to scrape the paint off which surprisingly worked pretty well. About 3 hours into the service the sisters face lights up and she says oh yeah! I have an electric sander! haha me and my companion just looked at each other and laughed. She got out the electric sander and it's helping a lot. It made me think of the gifts that God gives us here on earth. He gives us things that will help us to over come life trials and to be better people. But when we can't recognize these gifts it's so much harder to understand life I think. And it's harder to see what God has in store for us and what he wants us to learn.

Well I'm kinda out of time haha. I'll be sending some fun pictures next week of my birthday. 

Thank you all for your support and for all your letters. Sometimes it's hard to reply for how much time we have on the internet but I read every letter and each one brightens my day haha. 

Love Elder Dahlin

April 11 2016

Hola amigos!

I'm including a few pictures that I've taken in the last few weeks. We have had some cool activities in the chapel and we have gone to the temple too. 

Wow!! The conference was amazing. It was my favortite conference yet. I feel like every time we have conference it becomes more and more important to me and I pay attention more. I loved President Monson's talk during the priesthood session. It was so short but I loved the story that he shared. Basically he testified that through the priesthood we can command the elements and other things depending on the Lord's will. It only makes sense that this would be the case because God is constant. The Book of Mormon teaches us that if God was changeable or if we was inconsistant he would cease to be God and the whole plan would fall apart. But knowing that he is the same yesterday today and forever, I know that he blesses us with the priesthood so that we can recieve blessings and be happy too. Just as Moses parted the Red Sea by the authority of the priesthood, today miracles happen too through the same authority. Miracles like healings and ordinances that we do in the temples. Anyway, I loved that talk. It seems like President Monson is a little sick. We should all pray for him. I loved the talk that President Eyring gave too! In the saturday morning session he spoke so clearly and I think it gave the perfect opening to the general conference. But my favorite part was when they announced the new temple :)

I was watching the conference in English with like 8 other American missionaries and when they announced the new temple we all jumped up and were freaking out haha. We couldnt believe it! Just like another one of the speakers says, we were pretty much jumping up and down like little kids. Once everything calmed down in the room and we continued to listen to the conference I began to reflect on my mission and what I have done up to this point. The new temple is a direct fruit of the things that we do here in the mission. Even if the temple isn't in the sector or area where we serve, the people that we teach are going to be able to go there and recieve the blessings and power that God has prepared for us there. As we sat and began to listen to the conference I was overcome and couldn't control my lagrimas. I am so grateful that the beautiful people of Peru are going to be able to enjoy the blessings of another temple here in Lima. We are all thinking that it will be closer to our mission because the other temple is like on the other side of Lima. Either way we are all very excited. I definitely shed some tears of joy for sure. 

well I dont have a whole lot of time. I'm grateful for prophets and I never realized the importance of them until I really paid attention to why their messages are important and why we need them. By their fruits we know them. And I know with all my heart that God speaks to them today to guide us. I'm grateful for the gospel :)

Thank you all for your emails and for your support! I think next Tuesday April 19 I'm going to be transfered, so I will be updating you all on how that goes :)

Love Elder Dahlin

A cool ward activity that we did. There were more people but they left before we could take pictures

So I'm pretty sure there were bed bugs in my mattress. So I sprayed it with some chemicals, left it in the sun all day and then beat it to a pulp with a bread roller haha

These are the ice cream men here! They get on the buses and sell ice cream haha. It'll be weird to see an actual truck full of ice cream again.

These are two of the most amazing people I have ever met. They care for and love us so much. I'm grateful there are members like them.

Me and Elder Trujillo at the temple!

We watched our first and last General Conferences here in the mission together. This guy is awesome. I feel like me and Elder Christenson were brothers in the pre existence :)

Lima is getting a bit crazy.. haha trade a gun for a tablet! :D Good thing God protects us like crazy

They don't call me french toast freddy for nothing!

So there has been an outbreak of tuburculosis here in Lima and we had to go take a saliva test! haha