Week 22: Culture Shock!

This was a big week.

Monday was good. Getting to go to the temple was an awesome experience….going with the people I’ve been serving for 5 months was awesome! I had the opportunity to do 32 baptisms, 5 for my own family, all the confirmations and I was able to officiate or actually do the confirmations for some people. Then I was able to go through an endowment session with everyone. I was able to do all the work from start to finish for Samuel Moffet - born before 1678.  It was special, being able to do everything for him. When his parents’ work is done I will be able to seal him to his family!  It was an amazing day.

Tuesday was transfer day. I had to leave the awesome people of Cotton City and Lordsburg NM, but it was time to start a new adventure.  After saying goodbye and a couple of tears, I drove to Lordsburg and hopped on the transfer van. I finally got to Tucson around 3:30. When I got to Tucson I met my new companion, Elder Thompson. He’s so cool, he reminds me of Elder DeMille - almost the exact type of character (Elder DeMille you’re the man). Always, after meeting my companion we did service for a family that was moving out of the ward. It was the first and last time I’ll meet them, lol. After that we had dinner with the W___s. Sis W___ is Sis. B___’s (from Duncan) mom. So, that was pretty cool. Then we went to see some people.

Bye Elder R! 

Wednesday:  We had zone breakout and district meeting. It was pretty cool to see so many missionaries at district meetings - something like 30 of them. Coming to Tucson from Lordsburg was a culture shock for me.  Honestly, it was super shocking, for sure. 

After district meeting we all went to Raising Cain’s Chicken Fingers. It’s a chicken place like Zaxby’s and it was super good. After that we went out and worked on finding people to teach or working on contacting a list of less active or part member families. We didn’t find anyone, but we have a good list of pretty solid investigators, with 6 recent converts. So, this area is really awesome. It has mix of a lot of young families and older families. It covers the university medical center and some of the Catalina foot hills. It’s an awesome area with some awesome people. We had dinner with the C___’s. He served his mission in France. So, we talked about missions for a while. It was pretty awesome. Then we did some more visits.

University of Arizona - Tucson Stadium

Thursday: We woke up early and went to basketball. It was okay, but not great – kind of a waste of time. We went to do service at Beads of Courage. It’s for a great cause! You should Google it up because it takes way too long to explain it, lol (Found here http://www.beadsofcourage.org/). Not only is it pretty easy service (compared to digging pits by hand in Lordsburg).... it’s fun too, and they feed us well! After beads, we went back to the apartment and did companion study followed by lunch.  We then we started work for the day. We went by and visited a couple less actives today, and one really stuck out to me.  His name is D___ L___.  I love this guy so much. His story is so sad, but he’s now meeting with us and wants to comeback to church in the next couple weeks. I’m so happy for him. It was a super spiritual lesson.

The Tucson Temple in the distance (and in the windshield dash)!

Culture shock again – I’ve only been in Tucson for two days and I think I’ve taught more lessons than I did in Lordsburg in 5 months. It’s quite awesome actually.

Friday was awesome! We woke up at 5:40 and we played Zone Ultimate Frisbee. Following that we drove home and got ready for the day.  We went to Beads of Courage. Yes again lol. But it’s just what we do here and it is awesome. So, no complaints from me, lol. Following Beads of Courage we had lunch and then did weekly planning. Our weekly planning took a while, but luckily we found an awesome mothers room at the church that had amazingly comfortable padded rocking chairs. Then we want out to eat with Elders Sherwood and Lloyd, since neither companion set had a dinner appointment. We went to Sushi-Ten. It’s awesome sushi for cheap. We are going back today for happy hour where rolls are half priced. So, I’m pumped about that. After sushi, we had ward correlation meeting. It was pretty interesting. Not as fun as with Bro. Hill’s Lordsburg correlation meetings - that’s for sure.

SUSHI!!!! 

Saturday was another good day.  Other than the crime and threats, Tucson is a good place and missionary work is thriving. Especially with the temple open house. It’s such a good missionary tool and conversation starter.

We got to do a five minute teaching lesson during the Bishop’s son’s baptism. It was super cool. We showed the Mormon message called Our Happy Family Vacation and shared our testimonies on eternal families. There were a lot of non-members there. So it was a great experience. Then we filled the day by visiting various people. We had several visits. It was cool.

Sunday was interesting, to say the least.  Talk about culture shock - again. There were so many people at church, it was overwhelming. There were so many people compared to the branches I’ve been serving in Lordsburg, Animas and Rodeo. At the end of the meeting block some crazy people showed up and talked our ears off for 45 straight minutes. We were really luckily because we were able to do a ‘pass-off’ lesson because they didn’t live in our area.  We passed them onto the Elders who’s area they live in - thank goodness!  After that, we had a lesson, then drove to our dinner appointment and ate homemade spaghetti. Following that we had one lesson, but another two lessons we had planned fell through so we did our hour of family history.

We went all "Goodwill Hunting" for some P-day party clothes! :D

The top 5 BEST things I LOVE about my new area:

1.      More teaching

2.      My companion

3.      More members

4.      More missionaries

5.      LESS driving

That was my week.  It was pretty awesome.

Saguaro Cactus exclusive to the Sonoran Desert
These can get 70 feet tall AND live for up t0 200 years old!!!!

Love you guys so much. Cannot wait to talk to you today

Love you all,

Elder Dickinson