Monday, October 19, 2015

Pumpkin Chunkin' Fun



This photo was sent in a surprise text on Friday night from a member.
Hi Mom!

So the picture you got over the weekend was taken by a member here, Scott Boswell, and he's amazing! He just got home from serving in the Fresno California Mission about 3 weeks ago. If you remember me mentioning the Boswell family in Naperville, Scott's dad is the stake president, and their family is one of my very favorites from my mission! For the stake YSA family home evening tonight, we're playing dodgeball with the Boswell family after a devotional, so that will be a ton of fun!

This week was pretty incredible for us, we had a lot of miracles happen: First, we had a lesson with Jose this week, and Scott and another member came out to that lesson with us and really helped us teach simply and clearly. We taught the Plan of Salvation, and the Spirit was so strong the whole time. Jose kept asking questions that are like straight out of Preach My Gospel, such as, "What happens to people who die without learning about the gospel?" After we had finished teaching the lesson, we asked if he had any questions, and he said no. We talked for a minute, and then he gave us this funny look and asked, "Why is baptism so important in your church?" We explained why, and you could tell the Holy Ghost was definitely working on him, because he said, "Oh, that makes sense! I see why it's so important now!" It was truly amazing, we're looking forward to helping him learn more as time goes on. He has a baptismal date set for November 28.

We had the opportunity to contact a media referral named Rosine this week, who is awesome! She comes from very difficult circumstances, and actually moved to the U.S. from Rowanda. She is a single mom, but has a very positive outlook on life and wants to know more about the gospel. In fact, she drives about an hour each week to go to church with a friend who is a member, even though there is a church about 5-10 minutes from her house. We got in contact with the friend, and he is going to take her to her home ward one week so that she can meet the members in her area. Even though she is YSA age, the family ward missionaries will teach her from now on because the family ward will be able to better meet her needs.

Elder Campbell and I tracted into a woman named Venita this week and had an awesome time teaching her about the Restoration! She also is living in some difficult circumstances, and wants to help her kids find the right path in life. Venita says that religion is a big part of her life, but that she doesn't go to church or read the Bible as much as she probably should. During the lesson, she was moved to tears at points, and she even told us at the end that she thought God was trying to teach her something and that we were sent to her. It was a really cool lesson, and the Sisters in the area should be able to help her a lot, because she's really prepared!

We actually had the opportunity to set up a booth on the College of Dupage this week! It went okay, we talked to a few people and got contact information for a couple of them. But we learned a few things that we can do better, and we have a chance to go back on Tuesday, so we're excited to make changes and hopefully see more success.

Our fun note for the week is that the YSA ward had an activity on Saturday that was awesome! Family wards have the standard "trunk or treat" night for Halloween, but that just doesn't cut it here in the YSA. We did something called "Pumpkin Chunkin'," and it was LEGIT! For those who are not familiar with pumpkin chunkin', go look it up on YouTube--two of the members in the ward build a giant slingshot, and we launched pumpkins from the slingshot across the field at the church building, it was a lot of fun!

But the fun doesn't stop there, not in the YSA Ward! We have a dodgeball activity tonight, and there is a regional YSA activity Saturday (there will be YSAs from the Milwaukee, Chicago, Naperville, Joliet, Schaumburg, Rockford, and Peoria Stakes), so we're looking forward to meeting a bunch of people there! We don't think we'll be able to do that activity (they're going to a corn maze), but we'll probably join them for lunch.

Anyways, that was our week, it was pretty crazy, but a lot of really neat things happened! I hope that everything is going well for everyone back home! Let me know if there is anything that I can do for any of you, I appreciate all of your thoughts and prayers, and I love hearing from you all!

Love,
Elder Dallas Anderson
#StayUp




P.S. This is a picture of our ceiling fan--we taped glow sticks to the edge of it after the pumpkin chunkin' activity and watched it spin 'round and 'round. LOL, it's about the most fun you can have as a missionary.

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