Sunday, July 8, 2012

6/11/12 Email from Elder Devin Dillard

Dear Familia!

What an amazing past week!

Had the opportunity to head back down to Alexandria, Minnesota this past Tuesday to attend a District Meeting. It went well and afterwards all of the missionaries went to Pizza Ranch! All you can eat buffet pizza and chicken. Yummo! While we were there the power went out and we had to eat in the dark. Told some funny stories and all of us just had a good time laughing. It was needed for some missionaries I suppose.

Afterwards we headed up to Wadena, MN where Elder Filby served for 4 months. They lost the area book when Wadena took missionaries out, so we went around contacting old investigators of his so that we could help the Senior Missionaries, who are now there, have more people to teach! We left them with about 20 new names for them to work with. Hehe, that will keep them busy.

We then spent that night and Wednesday day in Brainerd, Minnesota! It was fun to be around Elder Collier who I served with for 3 months in New Prague. We were fortunate to attend a baptism for an 8 year old girl in the Ward. She was baptized in a lake. Super cool!

I caught this awesome Turtle and named it Empathy, hehe.  I'll give you the Story behind the name:

Empathy; By Sister Clements (My Mission President's Wife)When Sister Clements was young about 8 or 9, her older brother was serving a mission somewhere in the USA in one of the southern states. He now and then would send them a package.  When they would receive package they could her the sound of scraping or clawing inside the box and would now and then find inside the box a turtle! On one such occasion Clements' brother who was still at home, reached in to grab the turtle and it grabbed hold of his finger and wouldn't let go! He was sitting there shaking this turtle and could not for the life of him get this amphibian to let go! Sister Clements then realized that she was screaming and crying! When her mom came out to help with the situation, she asked, "Why are you crying? It's not biting you!"  Sister Clements then tells us that was her first experience at recognizing "Empathy."  We sometimes can put ourselves in others shoes and not be personally experiencing the pain, but try to feel along with them. She explained further that this is what we must do with others. We need to try and understand where they are coming from so that we can help them.

So...sed Turtle, "Empathy," was going to go into a box and be delivered to Sister Clements tomorrow at Zone Conference, but I though twice and released it, figuring it might be a finger hazard, haha. 

Life out here is amazing! I feel that I don't deserve the blessings I am getting, but if you look at Alma 7:24, and recognize that if you are doing these things, the blessings are definitely deserved. Good times.

Hope you have an amazing week! I love you all!


-Elder Devin Dillard

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