Elder Dallin Lambertsen

Monday, December 22, 2014 10:33 AM

Merry Christmas!

These weeks are Flying by! Wasn't I just dropped off yesterday? Didn't we just eat at Sizzlers? I have already been out 4 months. It is December! Christmas is Thursday! The past 4 months have gone by in a blur. Still have not yet received a letter from my sister Jenny..... or my Cousin Elder Larson. Those buggers.

Last Monday we went to Hmong Village as a District. One of the coolest most ghetto places I've been to.  Probably will go back and visit after my Mission is over. It is basically an indoor Asian Flea Market. I picked up a pretty cool belt. They had some weird food there as well.

Speaking of food, we visited Lawrence last week and he fed us some African food! They are called Potato Greens and you put it on rice. It is full of bones and meat and who knows what. While you eat it you just spit out the bones on a plate. It looks a lot worse than it tastes. Lawrence is really awesome, he is getting baptized on Jan 10. He loves meeting with us. He told us he is already calling himself a Mormon. He is telling all of his African friends to just try it out. Go to one 3 hour service and just try it out. He is so missionary oriented and ready to share what he is learning. He is working on getting his work visa so he can bring his family over from Africa. Things are really sketchy with Ebola over there.  

The Past 4 weeks have been full of miracles. We have picked up so many solid Investigators. I have seen such a change in our Investigators that are progressing. Growing up in the church, especially in Utah you are sheltered from a lot of the struggles people have in their lives. From smoking to marriage problems. When you start pouring the concrete foundation of the gospel of Jesus Christ you can see people change. I read the bible Dictionary the definition of Conversion, it mentioned becoming a new creature in Christ Jesus. It is important to remember that Repentance and Conversion is a continuous process. We need to be consistently checking ourselves and improving ourselves. We always need to be progressing and learning in the gospel.

Excited to talk to you all on Thursday! MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Elder Lambertsen

Elder Dallin Lambertsen

December 8, 2014

The morning started off as usual, Bishop’s meeting, Ward Correlation, and Ward Council. After Bishop’s meeting we received a phone call from Brother Coleman. He said he had a referral for us and that they will be at church today and he wants to introduce them to us. So we said that that would be totally awesome and we are excited for it. About 20 minutes before church started someone walked in who we didn't recognize so we rushed over to talk to him. He said his name was Lawrence that he was from Sierra Leon. He has been in Oakdale for 3 weeks. He had talked to missionaries back home and attended a church service. He sought this church out and brought his two nieces. Then after Lawrence, we had a part member family come who brought some friends and they attended the entire 3 hours as well. This story is slowly getting better. Elder McConnell sat with Lawrence and I sat with the Sandgrens (Ward Missionaries). The Dunns came over and started talking to the Sandgrens about FHE (which will be today) The Dunns, a less active, and a part member family will be hosting it and Lawrence will be coming. Then, in Priesthood, Brother Sandgren invited Lawrence over to watch the Christmas Devotional as well.  After Church we went Immediately over to the Daums, who took us to the Ipsens for dinner, then after that we had dinner with the Agwatu Family (yes 2 Dinners).  The Agwatus are a part member family who we want to start teaching. She has a son who will be coming to play basketball with us today. After dinner with them, we went to the Sandgrens for the Christmas Devotional; Lawrence was there, a part member and a less active. It was amazing. Then Immediately after we went to a recent converts home and she expressed interest in doing family history work and taking names to the temple. Which is awesome because earlier in the week we had dinner with the Temple President and his wife. They gave us an open invitation to bring recent converts and investigators to their home to teach them how to use familysearch.org which we are going to try and line up this week if possible.

After the Christmas Devotional Lawrence expressed to us that he was very thankful for helping him feel at home. All his family is still in Sierra Leon and he is working on getting them over here.

Crazy miracles all around. This is the Lord’s Work and it is Hastening. Are you keeping up with the Hastening?

What is up with the weather? no white Christmas in Utah? Having lived this long in Minnesota I now have a new perspective of cold. I shout for joy when it is in the 20's even more when it is in the 30's. I almost consider breaking out the short sleeve shirts :)

As for Christmas day, we will be skyping from Bishop Seilbachs.  We will be able to Skype for about 45 Minutes. We should be at bishops from 12:00 to 2:00 maybe 3.  So any time between there is when I should be calling.  I will figure out how to set up my skype and make an account.  Maybe you can make one for me and send me the login info. Yeah let’s do that.   

I got the Christmas package and the LDS store one . I opened the store one and man are those books big! Thank you!

Hope you all have a good week!

Elder Lambertsen

Elder Dallin Lambertsen

Monday, December 01, 2014 10:15 AM

Thanksgiving!

#SHARETHEGIFT

Thanksgiving was awesome!

We started off the day playing in the Ward Turkey Bowl. It is important to mention that it was -2 when we started playing. It was only two hand touch, but man the muscles were sore until about Sunday.

We then had dinner with the Bishop. I don’t know if I have mentioned this in the past but he is the CFO and Co-Founder of Zeffer Hats. His house is very nice and state of the art. He is also an amazing cook. I don't think I have had a more tender piece of meat in my entire life. He had a turkey, a goose, and a duck. After having dinner with them we crashed at the apartment and took an hour and a half nap (food coma). Then later in the evening, we went to a recent convert family for another Thanksgiving dinner. It was much more meager. We had a small chicken, stuffing, potatoes, and banana bread. That is kind of why I love the area of Oakdale. It has every walk of life from rich to poor, from Hmong to Spanish, from white to black and I can verify that Minnesota is a Gigantic Melting Pot. There is a good mix of everyone and everything in this ward.

Wednesday was Transfers! I dropped off Elder Thacker in Bloomington, and he is heading to St. Cloud. Then I picked up Elder McConnell! Elder McConnell was serving in the Medicine Lake Ward and has been a Zone Leader for the past 10 Months, but now we are just serving as a normal companionship. In Missionary Genealogy, he would be considered my Mom (companion after Training is complete).  He is from Mountain Green, Utah (Weber Canyon). He is also da bomb.

I did get the package! Thanks for the music! I had a member switch it all over to my Ipod. I was excited to get the advent Calendar but unfortunately it did not survive the shipping process, all the chocolate is at the bottom of the calendar.

Last week we did not have to many lessons scheduled, but on Sunday we really buckled down and set up 8 appointments for the next week.

It has been freezing up here. I believe the high for this week is around 7 degrees. It hit like 35 and I felt like wearing my short sleeve shirts. It was awesome. I did see grass in that video!  You need to send a few of those degrees up this way.

Have you guys seen the Christmas video? christmas.mormon.org? Watch it, share it. You got the pass along cards with the Ensign. Use the hashtag #sharethegift. This video is a big push by the church. Us as missionaries are supposed to take numbers on referrals, investigators, and baptisms we get from this initiative and report them every week to church headquarters.

Merry Christmas #sharethegift

Elder Lambertsen

Elder Dallin Lambertsen

Monday, October 06, 2014 10:09 AM

Conference Week

This week has seemed to fly by. Hopefully I can remember all the things that happened.

Last week on Exchanges with Elder Meyer (who is a Hmong Missionary) we went tracting in East St. Paul, we ran into Hmong lady. Elder Meyer asked her to give me a Hmong name which ended up being Vaam Cawn Seej which means "Protector of the Savior". Which was pretty awesome.

Last week we got a Mormon.org referral. This one was unusual because it was saying that someone needed help moving. When they usually say that, they say so and so requested a Book of Mormon or a Bible. We called her to come and help her move. We showed up and about 5 minutes later with 8 missionaries from the North St Paul zone which was pretty shocking. We ended up moving her in in about 50 minutes. Hopefully we will be able to get her to FHE tonight at a member’s home.

As for conference, President Uchtdorf, Saturday morning was probably my favorite. If there was any theme that I picked up on, it was that we all need to have our own testimony and know for ourselves the truthfulness of this restored gospel. We cannot rely on what other people know. We need to do as Richard G Scott said 1. Pray 2. Read Scriptures (Book of Mormon) 3. Have Family Home evening 4. Attend the Temple. Helaman 5:12 came to mind also. Some other things that really interested me where the two talks on the Law of the Fast. It had never appeared to me that the blessings of fasting also came from paying Fast Offerings and how we should contribute heavily to fast offerings and reach out to the poor. That wasn't a MTC choir that was a Viewmont High Choir spotting the people I knew. I’m sure Ryan Tracy was instrumental in getting Dallin that much air time.

To answer your Questions

I still have a few winter things to get. Boots, Scarf, Beanie, Etc.. Winter is Definitely coming. This week has been bitter cold.

My Companion is a District Trainer ( District Leader and Trainer)

We did not have a Conference dinner. We were taken to Mongolian Buffet By bishop and John Quinn (Running for state Rep look him up) that place was amazing. I ate there on Saturday and am still full.

Things are going well here. Have a Great Week!

Elder Lambertsen

                                                     Elder Lambertsen and his district

Elder Dallin Lambertsen

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

One month down!

Family and Friends,

This week was pretty usual. We had Zone Conference on Tuesday. President Forbes' main focus was on how we can work with the members on missionary work and how we can work with less actives. Which is something our area really needs.

After Zone Conference I went on an exchange with Elder (KC) Roose who was working as a cashier at Target last September and says he knew Joe and saw him all the time. Anyway, the exchange was in Hudson, Wisconsin. We mainly went tracting and met some interesting people. We met a man named Mike who was a member of the church growing up and to quote Elder Roose, he "drank like a fish, and smoked like a train". He was pretty willing to talk and we probably talked for about an hour. His wife came home while we were talking and took a pass along card and told us she wanted us to come back and straighten her husband out. :)

As for my area. We are slowly getting the pendulum moving. We met with a couple families this week and there is definitely potential with them, but I don't want to get too excited. A lot of this past week was dedicated to finding. We did a lot of tracting. We met a guy in Woodbury who thought we were Jehovah's but we quickly clarified. He told us that he was looking to go back to church. He just didn't know which one was the one that was recently built down the street form his place (talk about the Great and Abominable church. I'll send a picture of it soon) but we quickly gave him a restoration lesson and a pass along card with the address of the church. Sadly, he didn't show up. Speaking of church, they did finally hunt me down on Tuesday and I spoke in Sacrament meeting yesterday. In the middle of my talk the high councilman that was there got up and walked out and I had no idea what to do, but as I finally started concluding, he walked back up on the stand. Also, there wasn't any bread so we had an extra-long sacrament hymn while we waited for it.

Not too much happened this week but we are picking up on what this area needs. Hopefully I will have some good stories for next week!

Oh, and my mailbox has been extremely empty, what's up with that?

Elder Lambertsen