May 2 2016

Amigos y familia,

A veces hay un monton de cosas que pasan durante la semana pero no siempre tengo tanto tiempo para contarles todo. Lo que si se es que cada dia vemos milagros y sentimos el espiritu, y a veces ni siquiera nos daos cuenta.

This week has been awesome! There are so many people here that are teaching me so much and that are progressing too. It's going to be a few weeks before we have baptisms because they have to prepare more. But I'm confident that there will be baptisms soon. 

My companion and I are getting along too. He's awesome haha I realize I didnt really tell you guys anything about him so here goes nothin.

He's 18 years old and he's from South Chile. He is the oldest of 3 children and he has 3 months in the mission. He's the most sensitive guy I've ever met haha besides Caleb Clement. But that's good because he is so receptive to the spirit and helps me to recognize the spirit everyday too. 

Can I just say how grateful I am for all the mission has taught me so far? While explaining to people I see so many promises fulfilled. Mainly the promises that say that as missionaries we just have to study, be obedient, pray, and love God. And then when we do those things we can open our mouth and we will be full of the spirit and the words that Christ would have us say. A part of our missionary commission says my voice is his voice, my actions are his actions, my words are his words, and my doctrine is his doctrine. I have literally seen how the spirit confuses the `wise and learned`. and how we really truly are the weak of the world thrashing the nations by the power of his spirit. I have seen miracles. I have seen the sick be healed. And the unbelievers open their hearts and see the light of hope that our message carries. I have seen directly and firsthand how the Atonement of Jesus Christ will heal us if we let it. And more than anything I have seen the effects of that in my own life. I love the mission haha. And more importantly I love God and the once in a lifetime chance that he has given me to be here and experience all of this so that maybe someone can learn of him through me and be saved. The mission has helped me to realize what really is true happiness :) And let me tell you, it isn't money, cars, nice houses, cool clothes or watches, cool longboards (sadly haha) or anything of that type. It's our Heavenly Father, His son and our savior Jesucristo, and family. And when we can exercise faith and focus on these things we will find out why they are so important. The prophets help us to focus on these things and thanks to modern day prophets we aren't in darkness. The heavens are opened and I know that for a fact :) I love it here haha.

These hills in my new sector are so awesome haha. It's hard to climb up and down them. Sometimes at 9:15 when we are getting back to the room after a hard day, 200 stairs aren't the prettiest sight. But I love it anyway and I know that one day I will miss sweating my brains out climbing up thousands of stairs everyday just so that someone can know what I know and feel what I feel:the love of Christ.

I'm grateful especially in this time of year for my momma :) and also my papa! And I'm so stoked to be able to talk to my family this Sunday. Les amo bastante. Ustedes son la bendicion mas grande que tengo. Gracias por amarme tanto y por ayudarme a enfocarme en las cosas mas importantes para que podamos estar juntos para siempre.

Happy Mothers Day to all the awesome mothers that have helped me to be where I am right now and for all the mothers that have helped me and supported me. You truly make the world a better place. But most of all happy mothers day to my own mom. I will never be able to express my gratitude for all you have done to help me. But let me just say that I agree with my boy Elder Holland when he says that the only love on earth that can compare to the love of Christ is the love of a mother. And I think the love of a father is right there too. Thank you both :)

Tembien feliz dia de la madre para todas las hermanas que me han tratado como un hijo aqui en la mision. No siempre es tan facil estar tan lejos de la familia especialmente durante dias ferriados, pero son personas como ustedes que hacen que la mision sea tan chevera y que la desfrutemos tanto. Gracias por ser como nuestras madres aqui y por amarnos tanto. Gracias por toda la comida que nos ha compartido tan amorosamente. Se que dios les va a bendecir y se los prometo porque has servido tanto a los siervos suyos. Gracias y que lo pasen bien!

See you on Sunday on skype! :D

Elder Dahlin, Over and out.

Fresh air, blue skys, and Inka Cola for breakfast! (not really mom haha dont worry).

They don't call me chocolate man Dan for nothing! We learned how to make chocolates today haha.

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

March 28 2016

Hola! I'm going to keep this short but I got a good story and some cool pics.

So the other day me and my companion were in a lesson with a less active member and we had to go to a different appointment with a progressing family thats planning on being baptized on April 16. So we were there and it was like 5:50 and we had to be at the other appointment at 6 so we were getting ready to finish up the lesson and leave and the guys brother shows up and needed the brother to go downstairs into the other part of the house and fix up some things. He asked us to wait for him for like 10 minutes and we told him that we had to go but he decided to just go and do it anyway.. so yeah it turns out we were late to the other appointment but it happened for a reason. Me and my companion were sitting there talking waiting for him to come back and at about 6:02 we hear BANG BANG BANG!!! Right outside there had been a shooting and if we had finished up the appointment and left we probably would have been pretty dang close to all the action. It just goes to show that God protected us yet again and doesn't ever fail to do so as long as we are where we are suposed to be and doing what we are supposed to be doing. I pretty much have learned to trust in the mission rules because I know that if I dont obey, I'll be subject to more danger haha. But down worry because I can seriously feel a shield of protection here. 

Well the work is great and I'm happy haha. I'm excited for conference. Sorry this is so short but I will write more next week! I love you all!!

Love Elder Dahlin

Microwave brownies!

After the incident haha

March 14 2016

Well I turned a year and a half old this week in the mission. It's seriously so weird to think that 18 months has gone so fast. I am happy with the work that I have done here but seeing how fast the time has gone, I push myself to work harder everyday and to experience every last miracle that God wants me to experience while I'm still here.

So this week we had a cool reunion with Elder Lynn G Robbins from the Presidency of the 70. He talked a lot about obedience and how important it is. He told a cool story about a plane crash. The pilot of a plane got on the loud speaker and told all the passengers that they were going to have to land in the ocean and they should put on their life jackets but NOT inflate them. People panicked and started to inflate them. A lot of the people did inflate them even though the capitan had said not to. And a few people didn't inflate them and obeyed the order from the guy that knew best. When the plane crashed in the ocean, it broke into 3 parts and water immediately entered into the plane and the plane began to sink. The poeple that had inflated their life jackets immediately floated up to the ceiling of the plane and couldnt exit through the holes in the plane because they couldn't maneuver. The people that had listened and hadn't inflated their life jackets were able to swim around underwater and get out and survive.

I liked this story because it reminded me of the importance of the commandments that we have and the loving prophets. Sometimes we recieve a commandment that we dont understand, like the people that didnt understand why they shouldn't inflate their life jackets and did it even though the capitan had said not to. Sometimes we recieve commandments or suggestions from the prophets and we dont really pay much attention and it seems like not a big deal. But the prophets protect us and the commandments too. I'm so excited for the conference thats coming up! General Conference in the mission is like the best seriously haha. I know that we have a living prophet that guides us today and helps us to be happy :)

CALEB AND MATT ENTERED THE MISISON THIS WEEK! haha I'm excited for them. I dont have Caleb's email address. Can someone send it to me please? I'm happy for them because I kind of have an idea of what they're going to learn on the mission. I love those guys so much.

Well at the reunion with Elder Robbins there were like 800 missionaries there. Me and 4 other elders sang and we couldn't record because it was in the chapel but I got a picture of the group. Well there are some pictures that I'm going to send home this week. One of them is an 18 month selfie haha. I figured I would take a picture of me because I did the same when I completed a year and also 6 months. The time flies and I'm loving the mission. I still wouldn't rather be anywhere else :)

Thank you all for your love and your support. Always remember that to be Mormon is to be happy :) 

Love Elder Dahlin

Burning pants for my 18 months!

Our musical group :)

March 7 2016

Hey guys!

So there isn’t much time, but this week Jake and his brothers came to church! They’re awesome and I’m excited to see their progress. Tomorrow there is a possibilidad that I will get transferred. But whatever happens the people from the Bellavists ward will always be a part of me. I have grown to love the people here like I never imagined. 

So a few weeks ago me and 4 other elders sang at a reunion with like half of the mission. I guess the president’s wife liked it because she sent our names to the area and this Wednesday there is going to be reunion with our mission and 3 others. There will be like 600 to 800 missionaries there. And the 5 of us are going to be singing again. The song that we are singing is called acompañame. And we are singing acapella with different parts haha. It sounds really good. So yeah that’s going to be happening on Wednesday. 

Well there isn’t like any time haha. But I have been studying a lot from Doctrine and Covenants and the more I read, the more I realize than no man could ever write such a book. The words aren’t normal, and I notice everyday that they are words from a celestial glorified, perfect being. They are the words that Christ spoke to the prophet Joseph Smith. And the more I know that the doctrine and covenants is true, the more I know that the Book of Mormon is true. I have said this before and I would go to my grave saying it, I know that the Book of Mormon is true. Because I read it, pondered it, and asked God. And he has let me know in his own way and according to his will. And I love it :)

Well have a good week and thanks for all the prayers and support! You guys are the best. 

I can’t believe I’m going to complete 18 months this week!!!

Elder Dahlin