Zone Conference

Hola mi familia!

This past week was awesome! We had a ton of awesome miracles, super good lessons, and some really fun experiences. 

Last Thursday we had zone conference in the Bronx with President Morgan. He decided to mix things up a bit, (some missionaries complained about never having fun...??) So we had a movie making competition! We had tons of fun getting into groups and then making a video on our iPads about Why We Believe in Christ. My group decided to go out to the Bronx and ask people why they believed in Christ. Their answers were amazing! I will send home a couple : ) I love seeing why people believe in a Savior. Especially in a place like the Bronx, it is incredible to hear how He lifts them up, and they can't deny His existence because of that. Zone conference was really inspiring and definitely fun. We talked a lot about how if we want to receive inspiration like adults, we have to act like adults. We're trying to take that to heart and make better decisions.

Westchester Zone

On Friday, we planned to go see a potential investigator that was found about 5 months ago originally.  We had stopped by to try to see her on various occasions, but she has always been busy.  She told us to come back Friday in the morning, so of course we went! We knocked twice, no answer.  But the door was slightly open, which was evidence that someone was most likely inside.  We decided to knock one more time, and Maria came to the door! She let us in, brought in her adorable one-month-old baby and we began to talk.  Maria is awesome.  She is from Mexico, says she is catholic, but is not really practicing.  We had a good discussion about our purpose as missionaries and the hope that our message can bring into her life.  At the end, Sister Brower beautifully and powerfully invited her to be baptized. BUT, literally immediately after Sister Brower finished saying, "Seguiria el ejemplo de Jesucristo a ser bautizado?" BOOM BOOM BOOM.  There was a knock at the door.  Maria excused herself from the table to go answer the door.  Sister Brower and I waited anxiously to see what would happen, and to see what her answer would be to the million dollar question, while Maria attended to the visitors at the door (who had such impeccable timing).  We couldn't see them, but my first impression was a business person, since they asked for her husband, then started asking questions about if she was his wife, their address.  Next thing we know, we see two hands shoving a Bible through the door- JDUBBS. Dang those Jehovahs's Witnesses!  Our perfect Spirit guided baptismal invitation was interrupted by stinking JDubbs.  They taught her a whole lesson at the door, unbeknownst that we were waiting on the other side.  A few minutes later, when Maria returned to the table, she said, "It's been pretty cold outside, right?" Right, Maria.  It's been pretty cold outside... With our bap invite down the drain, we decided to pull out the big guns and show her Gracias A El.  The Spirit once again flooded the room, and we testified of the power to seal families for all eternity.  The good news is that we scheduled a return appointment! The bad news is, so did the JDubbs.   But in this battle, truth  will always prevail. We are pumped to see Maria progress and choose the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Monday night we were almost killed by a bulldog. Probably not really, but it kind of seemed like it a little bit. We went to go see a new investigator, Rosa, and had an awesome lesson about the Restoration and the Book of Mormon with her.  She took us into a back sitting room in her house and shut the door so that we could have a more reverent environment. As Rosa is saying the closing prayer, we hear her 10 year old son screaming behind the door, "Brewster! Brewster! Brewster's oooouttt!" Rosa keeps praying through the screams, which were then closely followed by the most terrifying bark I've ever heard. Forget your cute little "Griffi-hi-lets-be-friends-bark", this was more of a hi-I'm-hungry-and-I-like-to-eat-people-bark. After saying amen, Rosa got up and opened the door a peak to see what was going on. Next thing you know, she was fighting against the door trying to keep it closed while Brewster the bulldog is lunging at it trying to get into the room.  It kind of felt like a movie scene where a monster is trying to break through the door (couldn't tell you which one, the veil is too thick...) Rosa looked at us and with a smile said, "Un momento", then with one last kick, she sneaked through the door to take care of the Brewster problem. Right after the door closed, Sister Brower and I just started laughing. Five minutes later, Rosa returned to let us out. We must have looked pretty tasty to the bulldog. 

We also had a huge miracle with a less active family. The three youngest boys of this family are AWESOME and come to church even though their mom wanted nothing to do with it. Last week, the  youngest, who is 12, asked his mom why she expects them to do good things if she doesn't even do them herself. (Go Pedro!) That snarky comment changed her whole point of view, and Hermana Marian had her heart softened. She came to church on Sunday and plans on coming back in full force. She wants all her boys to serve missions and is going to do everything in her power to get them there! I love Hermana Marian and am so excited for her to make this change! She has been so prepared by the Lord.

One of our investigators, Modesta, is progressing so much!! Last week we went and after teaching the Restoration, she kindly told us she was Catholic, but still wanted us to come teach her. Upon visiting her yesterday, she told us that she feels something so different when we pray. She had a hard moment during the week, and tried to look online to find our prayers (Catholic tradition is memorized prayers for certain situations, so Modesta looked to find "Mormon prayers").  She said she was so happy to see us so that we could pray for her and bring her the peace she needed. We taught her how to pray and that it comes from the heart, and also about the power of the Holy Ghost. We then invited her to pray to know if our message was true. She responded saying that, of course, it was true. We were definitely freaking out a little inside. After asking her why she thought that, she said that she feels it when we teach and when we're there. THE SPIRIT IS WORKING IN HER!!! Modesta is definitely going to look good in white! : )

I know that this is the Church that contains all the truth. The truths I teach come from a loving Heavenly Father and Savior, Jesus Christ.  They have the power to make us into people that we could not naturally be on our own. 

Love you all,

Hermana Dodson

P.s. Transfers is next week! No idea what is going to happen...haha. 

Hanging out in the Bronx

Hola Mi familia!

This week was one of the fastest weeks in my whole mission! I am amazed at how time is still flying. This was made even more obvious to me on Monday when I found out my home girl Madi goes home next week. WHAAAAT.

This weekend was stake conference and it was held in the BRONX! I got to go back to my baby area and see all my friends Saturday AND Sunday! In addition to seeing all my favorite members from the Concourse Ward, I also got to see my missionary friends (who are almost all serving in the Bronx... Haha.) Highlights included: seeing Diosfer, the Perez family (a family of four little sassy girls, whose mom got baptized the same day as Luis), Neisy, Alicia (an INCREDIBLE young woman who used to go out with us), Elder Shurtleff, Elder Hunt, Sister Vicino, Sister Maw, Sister Amorim, and a few other members I love. Sadly I didn't get a chance to see tons of members because I didn't have much time to chat, but it made me feel like a million bucks to give big hugs and besos to those who became my family at the beginning of my mission (except no big hugs and besos to the elders ;)).

We were goofing off with the kids before a lesson

Conference was really incredible and the Spirit was strong as our members testified about the power of family history work and missionary work! President Morgan spoke on Sunday and passed on some advice Elder Perry gave him when they had a recent training: after every Church meeting we go to, we can never be the same.  We are receiving revelation every time we meet with the missionaries, we go to church, or feel the Spirit in general. We must always continue progressing with the sacred instruction we receive every week. I LOVE this point. I feel influence of the Spirit In my life every single day, and I know that I have to keep going. I can never be the same as I was the day before.

Yesterday I went on a split to the English Ward with Sister Randell. It was my first time in an English area, and it felt really strange. We had tons of fun and were able to be used as God's instruments to be part of a HUGE miracle. Sister Randell and I went to go help an elderly member move furniture in her apartment so it could be painted. Upon arriving, I discovered she was a bit of a hoarder, and it took us a lot longer than expected to move things around. This made us about 45 minutes late to our next appointment with an amazing active sister. Upon arriving, the sister was being a little slow, but she has type I diabetes and told us her blood sugar had been a little low that day. We asked if she wanted any food or anything, but she said she was fine. Within the next ten minutes, she started acting really strange and was not in an okay state of mind. She said she needed to rest, and not really knowing what to do, we sent her to bed.  Sister Randell then called a member who is really close with the sister, who told us we had done the complete opposite of what she needed, and that we needed to get her out of bed immediately and get sugar in her system. With a jar of jelly, lots of prayers, and help from her friend, we were able to get her sugar levels regular and she snapped back into her normal self. It was a testimony to me of God's timing. Had we been on time to the appointment, we would have left before she started having this diabetic episode.  In addition, the member we called just so happened to be in Grand Central Station, waiting for his train to arrive. If we had waited a few minutes to call him, he would have been uncontactable. God has perfect timing and knows exactly what we need when we need it. He is conscience of all of His children and I am so grateful to get to be His servant and be His hands here on earth.

The work is being hastened and it is progressing every day. I am grateful for all your prayers and support and I definitely feel them.

Love you lots,

Hermana Dodson

P.s. Please keep in your prayers Dorivee, who is having some more cancer complications.

Sleepy Hollow

Hola mi familia!

This week was definitely different but awesome! We had a lot of fun adventures and fabulous lessons. 

Halloween was definitely a highlight day of the week! We had to be home by six, so we took advantage of our break time and had girls night! We did nails, ate brownies, and just sat on the couch. Holy cow, it felt so good to sit down for a few hours and not feel any guilt ; ) This break time was a big tender mercy. 

Girl's night!!

Earlier in the day we had a lesson with our investigator, Paula.  She is INCREDIBLE. She is probably around the same age as us, but she has two kids, the oldest of which has Autism. In Preach my Gospel, it talks about how the Book of Mormon has the power to answer the questions of the soul. I have been waiting for about 2 months to be able to do a lesson where we use the Book to answer our investigators/member/whoever's questions of the soul. The idea is this: You explain that the Book of Mormon has the power to answer the questions of the soul because it is a book that comes directly from God.  Then you give your investigator/member a notecard and invite them to write down a few questions they may have about who God is, or what is their purpose in life, or how they can be a better parent.  Then, guided by inspiration of the Holy Ghost, we use the Book of Mormon to answer their question!  We decided to use this game plan with Paula.  After praying, we invited her to write down a question.  She doesn't have tons of knowledge about God, so I expected it to be something along the lines of "How do I know God exists?" or something like that. Paula sits and thinks for a little bit, then writes down her question and slides her notecard over to us.  Sister Brower and I glance at it: "Will there ever be a cure for autism?" We both have looks on our face that say, "What the heck have we gotten ourselves into?!?"  This was a little far from what we expected and really specific! We weren't dealing with finding a scripture about God's love or finding joy through repentance, we were dealing with a very serious question where the answer wasn't specifically written out as "the cure for autism is blankkity blank blank blank."

We decide to have Paula pray and ask God her question directly and ask for her (and us!!) to be guided through the Book of Mormon to an answer.  She prayed a sweet humble prayer, asking her question, and then we sat there just kind of waiting a bit for revelation.  Sister Brower tells Paula that sometimes when she wants an answer she just flips open the book and sometimes it is there.  So Paula flips open the book and starts reading.  Just our luck, Paula had found the chapter where the Lamanites swear vengeance on the Nephites and say they are going to spill their blood.  Loooovelyyy.  The Spirit takes over and the incredible Sister Brower explains how we can relate the war chapters to our lives and how we sometimes have hard challenges, but the Lord always provides.  The Spirit then brought to our minds Alma 11:40-45, which we had just read the week previous.  These verses talk about the power of the Resurrection, that it is a free gift to everyone, and that through the Resurrection we will have perfect bodies, without even a hair of our heads missing.  We read and testified to Paula that while her son may or may not have a perfect body here, in the life to come and for eternity after, he will be perfect, free from illness or disabilities.  The Spirit was soo powerful  as we expounded upon the scriptures.  WE JUST FREAKING FOUND THE CURE FOR AUTSIM IN THE BOOK OF MORMON!!! What the heck is that??!?!!  The Spirit was definitely our teacher and guide through God's words.  Paula said she felt "at peace" with the answer we had found.  I felt my testimony of revelation, and especially of the Book of Mormon strengthened.  It HAS to be a book from God, and it definitely has the power  to answer the questions of the soul. 

Later that day we went to Sleepy Hollow to do some Halloween APFs! (finding activity)  Sleepy Hollow is the home of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow/ The Headless Horseman, and the town goes all out for Halloween.  Just on normal days all their street signs and fire trucks are painted orange and black!  During October everything is amplified. We decided to do face painting and it was such a big success. We painted tons of faces and talked to tons of people from all over the Tri-state area who were all coming to town to see the Halloween Parade. (Which started right after our curfew :(     As it got later and later people started to dress up. I seriously felt like I was doing missionary work in the Disney Channel movie "Halloween Town". Hahaha. It was a really successful happy day. 

Sleepy Hollow

We have seen lots of miracles this week, including on Monday we had an FHE with Sandra and her husband and kids! Sandra and Leon had told us that their kids are really not interested and don't care for church or God, but as we taught them they really opened up and had tons and tons of questions for us.   We hope they will keep progressing and learning. 

I know this Gospel is a family based Gospel!  We have testified time and time again of the power that Jesus Christ and His teachings have to strengthen the family. I know that as we LIVE what we are taught, that He will amplify our abilities to love one another and have peace in our homes. 

Love you all,

Sister Dodson 

Weekly! This Week and Last...Oops!

Hola mi familia!

Lo siento for being such a slacker last week! In my mind I had written a weekly email, but all your emails were a good reminder that I hadn't... oops!  I will attempt to create a two week wrap-up : )

Saturday night, Oct 18, was our Branch Noche de Talentos (Talent Night), and it was incredible. Our branch may be few, but they are definitely few and talented. We already knew that though, since are always fed such fabulous food. We had a lot perform dances- the relief society did an Èl Salvadorian dance, the primary kids danced to the Happy song, invitees from the New Rochelle Ward did a Mexican dance, one of my favorite members Ludvin did a dance, and we did a dance! We probably could have just called it Noche de Bailes... Haha. But let's be honest, Hispanics are incredible dancers (Random side note, the other morning Sister Ramirez taught us how to dance typical Latin dances like Salsa, barchata, and merengue!! Best ever. (Random cultural note, Latinos are basically famous for dancing. When you go to parties and dances, unlike American dancing where we just do whatever unchoreographed move we feel like, typical Latin songs have a beat that match a certain dance, so people at parties dance that dance. It's legit.))

Anyways, we sort of did a dance with the elders. It was so fun and hilarious. We definitely got a little bit close with each other during this dance… ; ) (They performed a dance while doing the “dwarf skit—where one person is the head and legs and a 2nd person behind the curtain is the arms.  Sadie & Hermana Brower created 1 person, the Elders, another….)   The best part about the Noche de Talentos was that Daniel and Maria showed up!  She has been so sick and it has been a big struggle for her to get outside unless she is going to the doctors. But she is a woman of her word! Anytime she promises to do something, she does it right away, and she promised us that she would come.  The next hope is that we can get her to promise to come to church (and to be baptized.. ; D

Last Thursday, so almost two weeks ago, we met with a less active, Isabel.  She is the sister of Miracle Miguel and she is so fantastic.  She just wants to come back and receive all the blessings she has been missing.  We decided to show her Elder Scott's talk from conference that emphasizes the importance of getting up and exercising faith.  I LOVE this talk because he says that NOTHING is more important than your prayers and scripture study- not school, work, sleep, etc.  (Random side note, many hispanics LOVE IT when Elder Scott speaks because he translates talks into Spanish himself! So when you hear a talk by him in Spanish, you hear his sweet soothing voice.) We were planning on showing Isabel the full talk, but after Elder Scott spoke about prayer we felt like we needed to stop and talk about it.  We asked Isabel how her prayers were going.  She said she hasn't been praying because in the past when she has prayed she always had nightmares of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary.  We taught and testified of the importance of prayer, reminded her HOW to pray, and then invited her to try again.  Isabel is so incredible and accepted with a willing heart.  Even though this is something really difficult for her, she knows that if God commands her to do it, she should probably do it.  She is a fabulous example.

As far as this past week goes, it was awesome.  We had interviews with President (don't worry, I passed.. phew!), a Halloween Party, and super great lessons.  The Halloween Party was definitely a highlight.  It was geared towards the Primary, and I can't even express to you how stinking cute everybody looked in their costumes.  Heavenly Father blessed us a lot, and we had two less active families and three investigator families show up!  We were definitely freaking out a little.  The party ended with a trunk-or-treat and so we popped open our trunk and joined in! When the older kids came around, we made them do a trick to get their candy.  One of my favorites included a 10 year old singing (more like screaming) the National Anthem at the top of his lungs.  

Saturday we had a pretty eventful night! At 8 o clock we went to go check one last investigator before heading to the Yonker's ward Talent Show.  As we pulled up to the curb, we heard a big giant thud. I have hit curbs before, but this one just sounded bad. We decided to pull up a little farther, and all of a sudden the flat tire alarm started yelling at us in the car... Whoops! But honestly, a flat tire is better that anything else that could have happened. Upon further inspection we noticed that the curb had a corner edge that stuck out about 4 inches farther than the rest due to a tree.  Lame. We couldn't remember how to change it ourselves, so we called the elders to come help us! They are lifesavers! They came and changed out the tire in like 20 minutes. We felt like such girls!  But hey, what would we do without the Elders??

Sunday was the baptism of Sheyla, the daughter of Fila, one of our incredible members. Sheyla is 8 years old and is sassy as all get out. I love her. Fila is best friends with one of our etern-igators, Oriana. Oriana and her whole family came to the baptism, including her less active sister-in-law, and her husband. Yay for miracles! 

Lastly, on Monday we had our usual FHE with Daisy and Estiben.  The last time we set a baptism date for Estiben who is 8-year- old, hoping that his baptism will give her and her family the drive to reactivate. When we came on Monday, Daisy told us she wanted to change the date because she wants to make sure Estiben really understands what is going on. She told us that she has thought and felt a lot this week about how he needs to be more prepared and how it is HER responsibility as his mom to get him ready.  She said she is going to start reading the Book of Mormon with Estiben every day for 15 minutes and focus more on family prayer! I was jumping out of my seat!! I was so excited!!! I know the Holy Ghost was speaking to her and prompting her to do more. We are so excited to see their whole family progressing! Side note, we introduced the Book of Mormon to Estiben and he said, "I am very intrigued by this book..."   Kids say the funniest things. 

Love you all, have a safe and happy Halloween!

Hermana Dodson