Tender Mercy

While I was at the grocery store yesterday I got a text from my sweet Jennie... "Guess What?? One of my old Young Women and Friend Brynn Hewitt (who is living in Los Angeles) just sent me this picture and said she taught a lesson with Ben today!:)"  Oh.my.goodness!! Can you imagine me stopped in the middle of an aisle at Smiths squeeling??!! This was a picture of my boy right at that moment!! That doesn't happen every day ya know... or ever, really!!! Ben is serving in the singles ward... he said the members are amazing are always helping the missionaries with referrals and bringing friends to church.  I am assuming Brynn must be in that ward and invited Ben and his companion over to teach a friend.  What a Tender Mercy for us today!! Thanks Jen and Brynn!

ALSO... In Ben's email this week he gave us his release date... DECEMBER 18!!!

 One week before Christmas!  PERFECT Christmas present for this Missionary Mama! 

 

Labor Day...

 A picture Ben took outside the home of a member...

   I can't wait to see my new nephews! Man it's been a long time. Everyone in those pictures look so much older! Especially Ethan. I can't believe how big they're getting. Still hard to believe that Ethan is in Jr. High. I remember feeling so old when I went there. Weird. Sounds like you had a good labor day weekend though!

  This week has been fantastic. We're teaching a ton and finding a ton more. We've been focusing a lot the past couple weeks on becoming better planners. We finally realized why sometimes the work goes slow, it's because the Lord can't trust us with all his children if we don't know how to plan and prepare and be organized for them! If they're just going to fall through the cracks, he's not going to give them to us. So we've been really tested this week, we've been really trying to stay on top of things and be as organized as possible, and we've been given a lot of new people to teach. We're teaching a huge  guy named Clarence, he had football scholarships all over the place but was turned down once he tore his rotator cuff, so now he's just going to Pasadena city college, where we met him. He went to a camp last summer with a bunch of LDS kids preparing to go on missions, and he was touched and wanted to become a member. Now he's reading the Book of Mormon and a bunch of other church books and loves to learn. He's awesome. BUT yeah, things are going really great. We should have possibly 3 baptisms this month, and 4 in October as of right now, if things play out like they should.

  We went over to presidents house last night and watched the special on Mormons that NBC did the other night, it was really interesting. I didn't really realize how much the church is being put out in the media. I was definitely surprised on how positive it was though, seeing how liberal nbc is. They could have done a lot worse, right? President Becerra is so funny. He tries to avoid talking about politics, but he can't. He's a huge Romney supporter. HUGE. He's one of the funniest guys I know.

   Thanks for everything family! I love you guys. I'm sending a cool picture I took outside of one of our members houses. Los Angeles is a crazy city. Have a good week!

 

Love, Elder Dixon.

Great Sunday

Hey family!

  Thanks for those inspiring words dad, I loved reading that. I love hearing the stories of rescue, they help put in perspective that the Lord puts us in certain places at certain times for certain reasons. We were able to bring a less-active family to church yesterday. They just moved to East LA from New Mexico, and felt inspired to go down to the church and get their records moved over and start coming back to church. The father is covered in tattoos, but it's awesome to see whats on the inside of him. He wants to raise his family right and keep his kids out of the gang life they were bound to be in if they didn't go to church.

  We were able to have a baptize yesterday for Gloria, my first english baptism! It was an amazing baptismal service, she has studied and prepared for a long time. She was found by some Armenian speaking missionaries knocking around in Glendale last October, and has been learning off and on ever since. 2 of her children will be baptized in September, as well as some other people we have lined up. I feel now more than ever the desire to baptize. These last 2 weeks I've felt so enlightened. We've learned so much about how to become better missionaries. Is it weird that I only now feel like I know how to be a missionary? I think the Lord does it that way on purpose. He's the master teacher, after all.

  Well I love you all, we have to go work on transfers with President now. It'll be a good day! We're taking one of our investigators to Presidents house for a family home evening tonight, I'm super excited for that. Have a good week!

 

Elder Dixon