Mother's Day

Hola mi familia!!!

It was so amazing to get to talk to you all this Sunday!! It felt short for sure, but I am so grateful for every minute we had! Some missions only get 20-30 minutes, so I felt spoiled to have a whole hour.

Sadie was really excited to show off her Chia Willie during our Skype call!

This week was so crazy!  I have really been focusing lately on following promptings of the Spirit immediately, and really going with my first gut feeling.  As Tirado and I really worked hard for that, we definitely saw benefits.  Heavenly Father had this perfect plan laid out for us this past week.  On Saturday and Friday especially, we were able to see just how it worked.  Everything kind of organized itself, and we ended up teaching 8 lessons on Saturday!! It was a crazy day.

Saturday morning we had a finding activity in downtown Stamford where we focused on family history and familysearch.org.  We are super blessed here to have a senior couple, the Drapers, who are Family Search specialists (they are from Carmel, IN, but they don't know the infamous Dodson fam over in Danville).  We contacted people on the street and then would invite them inside the library where other missionaries and the Drapers would help them get started!  We were able to talk to a lot of people about their families, and were able to testify of the strength that comes from knowing your ancestors and their stories, especially if they are members of the Church (read this talk from conference: https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2014/04/roots-and-branches?lang=eng&query=family+history).  It was a really fun activity.  Tons of people are interested in their families, which kind of surprised me.  But the Spirit of Elijah is real, and it touches everyone's hearts.

One of the biggest struggles this week has been the T family, since Wendi doesn't want to come to church (but hasn't told us that, and we haven't been able to meet with her), and Sandra got another job and she works basically all day.  It's been funny though, because these last two weeks it has been suuuuper rainy, and it is supposed to continue to be rainy this next week too.  Yesterday we went to go see Sandra, but she was headed to work so we couldn't come in.  She told us though that if it rains, she can't do her first job and she stays at home.  It hit me that as much as I don't like the rain, God is sending us the rain so that we can work with her!!  So sorry, to the rest of Norwalk/Stamford area, you are going to be getting a lot of rain these next few weeks!!! Haha.  The Lord works in mysterious ways, that is for sure.

"Tirado has this thing where she feels the need to pick up every cat in Norwalk….they may or may not like it!"

On a more funnier note, we are currently teaching Jorge, an 8-year-old member of our ward who is getting baptized at the end of the month. His parents are recently re-activated, and their family is AMAZING. Jorge is a typical 8-year-old: crazy, super smart, and hilarious.  I have learned so much about teaching kids through him... Haha.  Yesterday we taught him the Plan of Salvation using a picture diagram.  As part of the diagram, we use a little cut out picture of a boy.  We take the cut-out boy through the plan as part of the demonstration.  We asked Jorge to name the kid, and he decided on the name "Napkin".  Somehow, by the time Napkin made it through the plan, Jorge was convinced that we come down to the earth on jetpacks, his sister is going to go to the stars (if you know what that means...), and Jorge is going to go live on the sun.  But no worries, we cleared everything up--at least we hope so ; )  Also he has been reading every day at least one story from the Book of Mormon picture books and he loves it!  Even little kids can read and understand and feel joy that comes form learning about the Book of Mormon.  Parents shouldn't be nervous or afraid that they will not understand, because even if they don't understand, they will at least FEEL the power that comes from that book.

Love you tons!!

Sister Dodson