Sitting by Sister Smith and below Sister Richardson

September 9, 2013

Oi family!

I hope the funeral goes well today.  Thank you for sending me the excerpts from the board and from the program.  I was touched!  That picture really is so special.

We had a great week here!  I was sad to hear the news about grandpa’s death, but I was comforted by reading D&C 138.  I know that grandma and grandpa are together now and that they are powerful missionaries in the spirit world.  It's cool to think they are doing the same work as I am up there--I can feel them rooting me on!

It's times like these that make me REALLY grateful for the gospel message.  I know death and sadness are still hard, but they would be so much harder if we didn't have the gospel and Christ in our lives.  And also, “Each Life That Touches Ours for Good” has become one of my favorite songs on my mission so I would love to hear your rendition when I get home!

Here were some highlights from this week:

-We had an amazing zone training!  We talked about becoming a consecrated missionary.  To consecrate means to devote yourself to a sacred purpose and I just love that we can fully commit ourselves to the work.  It's hard--giving up your time, thoughts, habits, and wants to missionary work is not the easiest thing to accomplish but it is amazing!  And I would also recommend reading the talk called "The Fourth Missionary" by Elder Corbridge.  Ah I love it so much!  Missionary work is about becoming someone and not doing something.  So great.  We also talked about a new key indicator we will use called ITBs.  It stands for Invitations to Baptize and we are trying to get at least 3 every week.  We are really stoked about this new standard and we think it will be a powerful tool to help others understand our purpose!  We set a goal to have 6 baptisms by the end of the year in our area and we feel like miracles will happen!

-We have a new investigator named Hu Wen Qi (pronounces Hoo When Chee) from China.  We have met with him a few times and this week we committed him to baptism at the end of September.  He came to church on Sunday too and absolutely loved it so we are really happy about that!  He is so hilarious.  Our stake president came to our ward on Sunday and when he got up to talk he said "good afternoon" and then paused for a while as he was getting his stuff all arranged and then Hu Wen Qi was like "awkward" in a Chinese accent.  Ah it was too good.  

-Our members are back and have been helping us out so much--they are amazing!  We have had dinner appointments every night this week and we have one every night next week too.  We feel so blessed for all they do for us.  It's fun to get to know them better as well.  I am attaching a picture from a dinner appointment we had this week with some cute girls in our ward!  Sister Smith is sitting next to me and Sister Richardson is above me.  They are both amazing!  This is not the best picture of all of us but hopefully we will get a new one soon.  We were going to take one this morning but we got drenched by rain on our way home from the bus stop with all our groceries!  The weather has been cooling down lots here.  I am loving it!  It's fall time and it's beautiful.  I love seeing all of the trees change colors.  Hopefully it doesn't start getting too cold though because I am not prepared for that at all!  

-The Gills sent me a package this week which was so nice!  It even had some Y-mountain honey in it.  Delicious!  I am going to write them a thank you note but it just made my day when I got that from them.

-We had exchanges this past week with the Lansing sisters.  I stayed in MSU with Sister Smith and Sister Webster came.  Sister Webster is also a visa waiter for Brazil.  She is going to the Sao Paulo Interlagos mission so it was fun to do language study together!  We had an awesome time.  Going on exchanges is so fun.  We have some lined up this week as well!  On Tuesday I'll be going to the Portland area and then on Wednesday we will have a different companion with us at MSU.  It should be exciting!  All of the sisters in our mission are amazing--it's so great to be able to work with them!

-We sang a song in sacrament meeting this past week.  It was called "This Is My Beloved Son" and I think it went pretty well.  Yifan recorded it again haha so look for it on YouTube.  He always calls himself "The Sister Missionary Choir's Number One Fan."  

-Jon Rose got his mission call this week to Nampa, Idaho!  He leaves in December and we are so excited for him!

-We have stake conference this next Sunday and the whole thing is focused on missionary work.  There will be a recent convert (Bruce) speaking, recently returned missionaries, and all of the missionaries in the stake are singing “Called to Serve.” I am so excited for it!  

-I saw Sister Hunter!  I don't know if you remember the Hunters when they lived in Highlands Ranch but I saw them at the church building on Sunday.  They just barely moved to the area because Brother Hunter got a job at MSU.  They were my Primary teachers when I was 10 so it was really cool to see her and both of us were shocked at what a small world it is!

We had such an amazing week!  I love working with these 2 sisters so much and we feel blessed to be in this area.

Sister Dixon