Happy St. Patrick's Day!

 

Well this week has been pretty exciting. This past weekend we had stake conference and it covered all of southern Maine so people drove 2-3 hours for this thing. There were 2 sessions. A Saturday night session and a Sunday session. I got to attend both and the Saturday session was held at the Topsham building which is our normal building we go to for church. It is a nice building except for the parking. There wasn't enough parking to fit the whole stake so they needed people to stand outside the building and direct the traffic to other parking lots. And guess who volunteered!! THE MISSIONARIES! I was outside the building telling people where to park and dealing with all the hooplah that goes on when people are confused.

Elders Dean & Dahlberg directing traffic for Stake Conference

     After arriving 30 minutes late to the meeting because we were helping with traffic we finally got to sit down and listen to the speakers. But we were in the way back and the microphone wasn't loud enough for us to hear it with out putting 100% of our attention to hearing. So to say the least we didn't hear a whole lot. But the Sunday session was much better. It was held in Westbrook which is near Portland (most populated city in Maine). It was held at a middle school.... I know what your thinking.. A middle school?? Well this wasn't your ordinary middle school, this thing was HUGE!! it was a performing arts school and it was like brand spanking new. Tile floors, flushless toilets, they even had enough money to build a fake tree out of wood! How cool is that! It was pretty pointless but hey when you have money and you want style why not do it? The middle school had a huge auditorium that seated about 1500 people and it was sooo nice.

    What also was nice was the conference itself and how good the speakers were. There was a member of the Boston Temple presidency and he spoke about the temple and that was powerful because he said that Jesus Christ himself has walked the halls of the Boston Temple with his resurrected body. I thought about that statement a lot and I believe that He really did. Than i went on to think about where else in the world Jesus has walked and that opened my imagination to a lot of different places. I started getting ridiculous and wondered if He went to six flags and rode a roller coaster and if He has ever been to Marine Street. Haha i know im pretty ridiculous aren't i?
     Anyways about our interviews with President Stoker, we were the last companionship to be scheduled and he ran out of time so we didn't get to be interviewed at our appointed time. Instead we did the interview after the Saturday session of stake conference and than the Stokers gave us door to door service and gave us a ride home! Not many missionaries can say they got brought home by the mission president haha. Also at the meeting i found out there are 210 missionaries currently serving in the New Hampshire Manchester Mission.

there is me and a cool elder named Elder Childers. he is from Idaho
 and he loves to go to la jolla to skimboard. He has family that lives there.

And a missionary that looks a lot like Devin haha!

     Also this week it snowed and that was a bit of a surprise because the weather has been nice lately. So we were out walking with our snow shovels looking for someone who needed some help and a guy stops us and asks us if we needed or knew anyone that needed a carseat. The Borges family just had a baby so we were like yeah! we need the carseat. So we got the car and picked up the carseat and brought it to the Borges's and they were super happy. For service on Tuesdays we volunteer at the United Church of Christ at their free meal called the Neighborhood Cafe. And they were having breakfast for dinner so i was in charge of making the waffles. I couldn't stop thinking about the movie Shrek and when Donkey said "IM MAKING WAFFLES!"

     After service at the cafe we went over to a families house for a lesson for their foster kid C*** E***** This families name is the Hubbards and they don't have any kids of their own but they are taking care of a 13 year old boy named Chris and a little 4-5 year old named Victoria that i think they are trying to adopt if they haven't already. Chris likes the missionaries and we talk with him about his life and what he likes to do. He is into video games and pretty much is a normal 13 year old boy. We talked with him about his beliefs and he likes the idea of Reincarnation and the idea that when you die you can become something greater. We talked to him about what we believe and set up another time to talk about it because we were running late already. So this upcoming week we will talk to him about the Plan of Salvation and what we believe happens to us when we die. Im excited for that but we will be going over on Tuesday and im going on an exchange to yarmouth today till Wednesday so i will miss it. Chris is considered a new investigator so this week we finally were able to say we got a new investigator even though we have been meeting with him for a little while. That's all i got for now! Till next week!!!!

we were driving along the road and saw some cool icicle caves. not big enough to walk inside but i tried to get a selfie

this is a service project we did at sister youlands. She will make lots of quilts out of all these scraps. You should talk to her about your quilting experiences. Sister youland reminds me a lot of you haha. You both like the same things. Except i love you way more than sister youland. (sorry sister youland)

Desert Auction... (He means Dessert Auction!) from March 10th

Hello!

(I kept some of the spelling intact so you could laugh a 
little...)

Obviously not many people know the trick about dessert having two s's cuz you always want more!!

Okay so this week was the big Free Annual Spaggetti Dinner and Desert Auction for the ward activity. it was actually the YM/YW fundraiser. Kind of like how we did the yard sale. they do this. So it was really fun because everyone was invited and we got served spaggetti and ceasar salad so i cant complain about that! Than the auctioning started where they would hold up a desert item like a chocolate cake for example and than people would start bidding for it. Elder Dean and I made peanut butter Fudge while we were at the Youland's and we submitted it and it got sold for $35! The item that got sold for the most was a mint brownie fudge cake. it sold for $105! That was a pretty crazy bidding war. People get competative and they really want it. Members of our ward gave us money and we totaled up to 60$ to spend for an item. We started bidding for a Lemon Marang pie. We got up to 60$ and than someone said 65 and we were like dangit! than i remembered i had a 10 dollar bill in my wallet and we yelled 70! and everyones eyes turned to us like "WHAT THE? WHERE DO THE ELDERS GET ALL THIS MONEY!" we won and got the lemon marang pie. We bought it for the sisters because they wanted it and we wanted to be nice. We sent out 10+ invitations to this activity and none of them showed up.. It was a real bummer but we had fun and got to talk to some people who aren't members of the church.

     Also this week we on Saturday while we were tracting some houses a car pulled up full of kids my age and they asked "are you handing out bibles?" and we walked over to them and said "pretty much yeah." and they had the window already rolled down and we handed in a Book of Mormon. they looked at it and asked if we had seen the play? we said no but we also said "no but i heard the book is even better" they laugh and start to drive away. While driving away i guess they opened up the book to see picture of Nephi and Lehi and Joseph Smith and they yell "Its a picture book! Its a picture book! Pictures! Pictures!" They were probably making fun of us but hey, they now have a copy of Another Testament of Jesus Christ in their hands! Lucky them!
     This Sunday i hit my 5 month mark of being a servant of the Lord and I feel like a semi seasoned missionary. I still make little mistakes here and there but i pretty much have it all down. While sitting in Sacramant meeting this past sunday the bishop got up after the youth speaker and since it was day light savings he said "well seems like our scheduled speaker forgot to turn her clock forward so........... (glancing around the congregation) Elder Dahlberg, would you speak about the first principles of the gospel?" All eyes turned to me and I stood up and straighten my suit coat and headed on my way to the podium. haha I was so nervous/ shocked. I had NO time to prepare anything but it wasn't all that bad because I had to talk about Faith and I related it the scriptures and the scripture Ether 12:27. I talked for 16 minutes about Faith. I was surprised at how fast the time went. I was pretty much winging it but apparently it was a good job of winging it because 20+ people came up to me after the meeting and thanked me for my talk and that it was very powerful. So YAY ELDER DAHLBERG.
     This Sunday we also received word that our Assistant ward mission leader who is currently fulfilling the WML's job because he moved, is now moving. Brother Rainey is moving to Oregon starting in May. So that made things interesting. He is also the Gospel Principles teacher.  Anyways. the weather has been doing great here! its been feeling like Spring and the sun is actually starting to provide heat. The trees still look dead and there are no buds on them but I've been told they will start to bud this week or the next so I'll keep my eyes open. Thanks for being an awesome mom! I love you and I know you will be a great Gospel Principles Teacher! Visuals are key. they keep people interested. I know that because I'm one of those people ;)

Bath Iron Works

Kennebec River leading to ocean

 This company employs 8,000 people. Only 10,000 people live in Bath. Imagine if this shut down..

View of the Kennebec River 

This is the view of the back yard.  Then him sitting on the patio enjoying the sun.

the roof looked like it need some company :)

Land's End and the Atlantic Ocean

     So this week was a bitter sweet week. We had to bid farewell to our only investigator Alex because he moved to Lewiston. We had to take his teaching record and send it in the mail to the Elders in that area so i hope they take care of him for us.

Good-bye Alex.  We'll miss you!

     This week Elder Dean and I went on home teaching splits with members of our ward and it went really good. I was surprised at how easy home teaching is compared to teaching missionary lessons. HOME TEACHING IS A PIECE OF CAKE haha. I enjoyed doing that with Brother Smith. He is a Mainer (only people born and raised in Maine are allowed to be called that) He is a snow plow driver for the town of Harpswell, which is where Baileys Island is.
     Last P-day we went to Popham beach and hiked around Fort Popham. I like doing physical activities for P-day. It beats sitting inside playing monopoly any day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Popham

Old building at Fort Popham

Old prison at Fort Popham

Yes, it is!!

Sunset at Fort Popham

 

  This week I also got a package from the Relief society of MM2 Ward and I really enjoyed it so thank you to everyone who played a part in that.

Thank you Mira Mesa 2nd Ward Relief Society!

Thanks for the blanket! I have used it every single night since i got it. Funny thing is that I brought the big bag (of Snickers) to a mutual activity for the youth and i was left with 5. So i thought of you 5 times in one night if that's okay?


     Also this week we had a lot of miles left on the car so we decided to go out and try and contact Less-Actives and potentials in the island areas. (we rarely go there because they are summer homes...) Our efforts came up empty but... we enjoyed being in the island area and stopped at Bailey's island during our lunch hour and ate lunch while looking at the beach. That was really cool to see. I noticed that the rocks beside the water are petrified wood and i was very dumbfounded by that because i was expecting rock, not petrified wood.

View of Atlantic from Bailey's Island

Don't be fooled. It may look like its sunny and warm. WARNING ITS NOT! 19 degrees outside not including the bitter freezing wind.


     Anyways as for our teaching this week, J**** W**** is smoking again.... Every time we go into the house it kind of smells like a motel in Las Vegas. Not a little bit a smoke, a lot! So much that when you look at the light its a little foggy.. That was a real bummer because she told us last week she was going to stop. We offered to help her stop by taking her cigarettes but she jokingly threatened us that if we did we would be dead before we got out the front door. I doubt that because we can run pretty quick, we know where she is hiding her cigarettes. We should just take em and run huh!? Just kidding... but i want to.    
     On Saturday we got invited to a Catholic Mass. We went and i can say that it was much better than the Pentecostal service i attended. Wow, Catholics are not holy rollers i can tell you that much. This week we are trying to focus our efforts on finding someone solid to teach. This week we haven't gotten any new investigators but we have people that are semi interested so that is a huge plus!!!   I know we cant just make the perfect investigator pop up out of thin air but we will try to find someone at least interested in learning more about the Church or God for that matter.
     A funny thing happened at church. It was testimony meeting and bishop was up bearing his testimony and right when he started to get to the meat and potatoes of it a little kid sitting behind us stands up and yells "Ill be back in a minute, I have to go pee in the tulet" Everyone in the back couldn't help but laugh at the kid because it was so uncalled for but so funny at the same time. The mother had a face of pure embarrassment but she couldn't help but laugh.
     This upcoming week on Saturday there is a ward activity called the Annual free spaghetti dinner and dessert auction. Apparently up here its a huge deal and people wait all year for it so we are excited for that. We have invited almost every single person we know or acquaint with so i hope its a much better show up than the ward Christmas party...  Also on the 15th we are going to have Interview with the Mission President so i am also really excited for that. Than the 16th is Stake Conference.