(Mountain) LIONS, TIGERS, NAZGUL, OH NO! Dallin 11/30/15

Good news is, no rats this week! 

We do have a couple larger, scarier pests near by though! The circus is in town about half a block from our house and they have a bengal tiger and some mountain lions! So awesome! I touched the tiger`s back when it was laying down through the cage and it didn't like it. BUT now I can say I touched a tiger! Pretty awesome animals! 

I`m healthy and well! Work went pretty well this week. None of our investigators are really progressing so we`re trying hard to stick with them and invite the spirit into their lives. We met a family that were super nice and wanted to hear our message. They loved it at first but got pretty hung up on joseph smith. They're evangelicals and pray and study daily. We invited them to pray about what we have been teaching them. I think they might come around! We have an appointment with them. 

I have found that my boy scout skills have come in handy. Every man needs a leatherman with them at all times. I used mine to prepare our thanksgiving meal of all things! I put together a small first aid/travel kit in my back pack and it comes in handy. The other elders had a baptism and the pants they had for the 9 year old boy were wayyy to big for him. Guess who had a sewing kit in their backpack? This guy! It's become a joke now because I tend to have whatever we need if something goes wrong. So grateful our mission president allows backpacks instead of shoulder bags. 

I'm really enjoying it out here. I am learning a lot every day. Not everything you learn as a missionary is about the gospel. I am learning what real needs are. I am learning how to spend minimal amounts of money too. Still trying not to spend so much on ice cream though. :D

The hardest thing for me is opening my mouth. Its scary! I set a personal goal to contact 1 person a day by myself, or at least initiate it. Guess who my victim usually is? usually old ladies haha. Theyre nice and/or crazy so its not as intimidating! 

Spiritual thought of the week is about prayer. Pray with a sincere heart. Kneel and talk with heavenly father, he wants to have a good relationship with you. Don't be afraid to ask for things. If you ask, with humility, sincerity, and most of all faith, you will get what you are asking for if it is just. 

Have an awesome week everyone!

Elder Dallin Poulson

Pictures! 
https://goo.gl/photos/Lb79RgpLNej9vmj6A

ps. I had  a little time so I made this with one of my pictures. 

Happy Thanksgiving!! GRATITUDE Weston 11/26/2015

First off, I hope everyone is having a Happy Thanksgiving! 

Second, I know this email seems long but its worth it!

This day is actually pretty awesome here at the MTC because they fed us AMERICAN FOOD! Full Thanksgiving works and it was awesome! Elder Kinikini almost cried hahaha.

Anyways this weeks email is on Gratitude! Big surprise, huh?;) Anyways we had a devotional on Sunday that is always awesome. But this last Sunday it was the fireside (movie night) that was awesome. The movie was the full length movie of the Restoration and it seemed fairly new if you guys want to watch it. I highly suggest that you do, especially it being Thanksgiving today. 

Anyways during the movie I just felt like my work isn't good enough. What the pioneers and early members of our church did for a religion that they had faith in was unbelievable. They had children wives and husbands shot and killed just because of their faith in the gospel. But they still pressed on knowing that if they held strong to their faith and followed Joseph Smith that all will work

out in the end.

Now I dont know about you guys at home but this movie and the whole entire story of the restoration made me a whole lot more thankful for what I have. I feel spoiled. In the first picture of me with 4 elders I'm going to explain why I feel this way. 

Going from left to right (looking at the picture) the Elder in the black suit is named Elder Dove. He has had Cerebral Palsy in his right hand. As a missionary you use your right hand more than any other thing daily to shake peoples hands.

The next one to the right, the tall guy is Elder Lake! he's just a positive guy-always and his personality cracks me up and he wanted to be in the picture with me! so I let him.. Moving on! hah;)

After me is Elder Langi, I'll talk more about him next but the guy on the far right, as you all know is Elder KiniKini. When he was 7 he was diagnosed with cancer in his right shoulder. They had to take out his complete shoulder and go through chemotherapy. They reconstructed his shoulder with what bone he had left and screws and plates. They took a bone out of his leg later on to put in his arm, because he broke it. I don´t know if you can tell in the picture but is right arm is about 10 inches shorter then his left. If he lifts it to high over his head the screws and plates will break.

Now for Elder Langi, the other Tongan standing next to me. This man can sing like I´ve never heard before. His dad taught him and all of his brothers when they were young how to sing. For devotionals he just tells everyone to close there eyes and seek the spirit. I'll tell you this now that I feel it as strong as ever when he sings. Here´s why: Think back a year from now and think about where you were and what you were doing. Not that long ago right? Well the day before we took this picture was the one year mark that his dad passed away. His dad battled cancer for 3 years and eventually couldn't beat it. So when he sings his songs its like he's singing with his dad up there and it all comes straight from his soul. 

I bring up Elder Langi's story because Elder Langi has the faith of a Pioneer like in the video we saw. Knowing how close he is to his dad still shows it very strong. The man is filled with Gratitude and its amazing to watch him. He's become a role model in my life just watching him every day here.

Okay sorry this email is so long but the word GRATITUDE has a whole different meaning for me now. I tell you there stories so that you guys can also be filled with gratitude for what you do have. Stop worrying about what you don't have, be grateful for what you do have because that's all that matters. These # guys I've talked about never care about what they don´t have, they are always grateful for what they do have.

So I challenge you all, whoever made it this far into my email to not only today but always to be thankful for what you have. My Teachers quorum leader in orem, his names Kyle Aldous, gave us a lesson on this specific topic once and he said basically the same thing. But he said "when you wake up every day, before you get out of bed think of something to be excited about for your day and something your grateful for" I challenge you all to do the same!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

AND here´s a cool Thanksgiving video for you guys to watch!

 https://www.lds.org/media-library/video?lang=eng

HONDURAN PEST CONTROL ACTION Dallin 11/23/2015

READY OR NOT

I honestly have the funniest video ever for you guys. There was a rat in our kitchen when we got home. It runs toward us and Elder Hadley kicks it out of instinct. The rat rolls across the floor and keeps running. It makes it into the bathroom where we closed the door. It's then when we arm ourselves for some Honduran pest control action. 

Naturally we get three cameras for this occasion. 

Here's the video, you have to listen with sound. I´m ashamed of how high our voices were during this encounter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI1DaAHE52Y

https://youtu.be/2xoQyB-5NQA (this may not work, the internet here is pretty bad.  Might work in 24 hours though)

No Parasites:
I have been feeling a TON better this week! No parasites, nothing! Thanks for your prayers, I'm positive that's what helped me get through that. Aside from the rat, we had a pretty chill week. No crazy house parties where we had to host 8 other missionaries for the night this week, so we were able to actually get some work done. Our investigators are progressing when they are actually there for visits! We might see a baptism or two by the end of the year! Not too bad for starting an area! 

One of my pens blew up in my shirt pocket so that one might be ruined. Then the next day Elder Purcell put the same pen in his shirt pocket for the day and it blew up again and ruined his shirt! Nice.  

I meet a lot of funny, crazy, interesting, and just plain weird people. Pretty sure a guy tried to curse us in gibberish one time. The other day we ended up ´´talking´´ to an old partially blind guy in the rain under our umbrellas in the street. When I say talking,  I mean we listened to him spout off every single thing he knows about Christ and his gospel for 30 minutes without taking a breath. One nice thing about Honduras is that everyone already believes in Jesus Christ, however, it is also a problem sometimes because there are so many pastors and preachers everywhere that people are really confused and think they're already saved. 

I love it out here. Every day is a blessing and I learn so much. Things are starting to click in my head, especially with Spanish.  We're making our own Thanksgiving lunch on Thursday and then a member offered to cook one for us on Friday! Booyah! 

Take care everybody!  Elder Poulson

Pictures!

https://goo.gl/photos/4W93HMBwH1Vfxc4EA

SEMANA BUENA! Weston 11/19/2015

Family pictures

HOLA!

It was a pretty good week! as usual Sundays are my favorite because all though everything you do is in Spanish, you don't sit and learn it all day, you put it into practice and use it, which I think is the most crucial part! So how it works is everyone goes to priesthood together (in zones) and the hermanas go to relief society or whatever they do I'm not entirely sure-hah-but then our zone President gives us a lesson! 

The zone presidents always give the lessons in English because they are working on their English, and that way we understand and feel the spirit a lot more. After that you go to sacrament meeting and everyone has to have a 5 min talk prepared in Spanish before hand and they just select 4 random people to give them. I've yet to be picked, and I'm okay with it;) Then you have a Devotional.  Typically its a recorded talk played in front of everyone at the MTC. These are AWESOME!

 On top of the "Thomas S Monson" Building this morning! still #ShiftTeam

In priesthood, they showed a really cool clip that I've seen before and I'm sure all of you have seen before but I want to share it with you anyways. Its called "Death Crawl Scene" on youtube from the movie "Facing the Giants" and its pretty cool! Its about giving your very best, no matter what you do, you always give your very best! This kid on the football team was basically counting his team out for a loss and the coach called him out and told him to do a "Death Crawl" with a player on his back. The kid said "to the 30 yard line?" coach said "no, 50." but then he made the kid promise to give his very best effort. So he gave him a blindfold and told him not to give up until his body could not do any more, until his body quit, not his head. This little video clip has a lot of meaning behind it. I'm not going to tell you how it ends, because I can't write it as well as the video portrays it so I challenge you to take 5 min out of your day and watch it!

Later that day in the devotional, we watched a talk by Neil L. Andersen that he gave to the Provo MTC about 3 weeks ago. I think Dallin barely missed him! anyways that guy is actually pretty humorous and I enjoyed it thoroughly! But what I took from this talk is that "There are always a million reasons why you CANT, whats your reason why you WILL". He never really said that during the talk  but after watching that clip they both tied together really well. So I challenge you guys to always give it your very best and to find your reason why you are doing what your doing. If not, why do it. 

Anyways I've had a blast here but I'm really eager to get out! I've just realized that in two days I will have been out a month! so that's pretty exciting! 

Thanks for writing me those who are, it means a lot! Love and miss you all! 

~ Elder Poulson

 Cheesin cause we were bored!

Me being the turtle off of the show "Franklin" from forever ago! (district made me send this)

FROM HONDURAS WITH LOVE Dallin 11/16/2015

Celebrating 1 Month

I'll be honest, we didn't get too much teaching in this week. Lots of people ´´forgot´´ about their appointments with us or weren't home. We had to travel to San Pedro Sula for a multi-zone conference with a doctor. Pretty much learned how to not get sick and the basics of nutrition out here. 

I had a mini appointment with the doctor because I have had about 30 different sicknesses since I´ve arrived here and guess what?  He wants to test me for a parasite... I promise mom and dad I tried super hard to avoid it! I hardly ever feel good, but I've been told that's just how the first month or so is in the mission. 
Last night was the worst by far, I´ll spare the details but I´ll just say I was up all night running to the restroom for multiple reasons. 
Not fun. I'm pretty exhausted today. 

We had divisions with the AP´s this week. The one we went with used to be in our area so he showed us around and we met some more members and less active members. I was forced against my will to do a door contact with random people and it was kind of funny looking back at it. I tried so hard, but I still need A LOT of practice. 

On Saturday and Sunday we went on an hour long bus ride to have a District Conference. It's like a stake conference but for a District with branches. President Dester was there and gave some good talks! We had a priesthood session and a general session on Saturday. Then we had a two hour meeting on Sunday. I enjoyed it! 

I completed my one month as a 

missionary on Saturday! In honor of such a feat, I burned a 1 lempira bill. (worth about 4.5 cents). 

It's cooling down pretty nicely here, thank goodness! 

Saw a monkey this week!

Love Dallin

More Pictures: https://goo.gl/photos/t4tfarKdRHN5gdDx6

ANOTHER GREAT WEEK! Weston 11/12/2015

Moroni Ch. 9: 1 "...I write unto you again that ye may know I am alive; but I write somewhat of what is grievous."

First of all, my mom is AMAZING!! Everyone go check out the blog she's made for me and my brother at http://tracking2brothers.blogspot.mx/  ~it has the video of Jeffery R Holland´s talk I was talking about last week! It is 53 minutes long but I promise you it won't feel long enough!! 

Okay so this week was another great week! I've been picking up and learning the Spanish really well. So well that a thirty minute lesson in Spanish has become fairly easy! Me and Elder Wirthlin had a cool experience this week with our investigator. So our teachers act as though they are the investigators they had from their missions that they really enjoyed teaching. And in this case, it was my night teacher named Hermana Ruiz but her investigator's name is "Marlen". Anyway, so we were going into the lesson with a written plan for him on the atonement. Elder Wirthlin still needs to write every word out and read off his paper but he is getting so much better. 

After he shared, I had the impression to share a couple scriptures with her about the spirit. Because, like in that talk last week, we are not the teachers or converters, the spirit is! In my personal study one morning I found two very cool scriptures in D&C chapter 130:22
... The Father and the Son have tangible bodies of flesh and bones, and the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit ...
and then in 131:7-8.
...looking for what spirits are composed of. ... of matter, but spirit matter “is more fine or pure” 

 After having her read those scriptures, I asked her if she could pray for us on her knees to find the spirit with a sincere heart. She said that there was no way because it's too scary and that her sins are too bad. I waited for about a min on my knees staying "PERSISTANT BUT KIND" (Holland's talk last week, again;) and eventually I got her to get down on her knees and listen to my prayer for her, as long as she promised to pray for herself to find the spirit right after my prayer. And I told her she had to wait 10 to 15 seconds after her prayer and seek the spirit. She hesitantly agreed. After my prayer for her to feel God's love and his Holy Spirit she said hers. Little did I know that at this point she was in full tears.

I know that she's my teacher and everything but that experience was very real! When I said a couple weeks ago that being able to make somebody laugh in their native language was one of the best feeling ever, that has officially been topped. I can't wait to have these experiences in my mission with real investigators and change their lives. I challenge you all, just as my brother did, to go somewhere reverent and special to you and say a specific prayer to feel God's love for you and his Holy Spirit. And also challenge you to listen to that talk on my last week's blog.

Moroni Ch 8:30 "Farewell, until I shall write unto you, or shall meet you again, Amen"
Anyways! Love and miss you all! Keep sending pictures, I love them!  Weston

Found a little forest. Miss the mountains:(

Basically, they give one haircut all day to all missionaries lol

Chair races

ROCKY ROADDOG Dallin 11/9/2015

Since most of you aren't Honduran, the common greeting here is Buenas! Short for buenas noches, dias, or tardes. We're lazy here, haha. 

I have a couple stories this week, both funny and spiritual! 

On Saturday the other elders had a baptism so we attended. That morning I was getting ready to go and I saw my first-aid kit sitting by my bed. I had the impression to take it, then fought it, then thought´´maybe I should just take it because apparently I´m putting too much energy into this decision.´´. Fast forward to the baptism. We have an awesome guy named Juan Carlos in our ward who has special needs. He is a hard worker and so cool. I noticed he was bleeding by his ear and he said he fell down or something. Then I remembered I actually had my first-aid kit! I helped him clean it up and gave him a band-aid. Only time I've carried my first-aid kit so far. Listen to your promptings! If it's good, it's from God. :D

So I have become incredibly clumsy since arriving in Honduras. After bouncing around for a few days before arriving in my permanent house, I kind of left my stuff everywhere. I forgot my pants at one house, my journal in another, and left one of my bags on a bus. Luckily I have received all of it back! I´m a real winner, I know!

     Speaking of clumsy, I accidentally dragged my backpack strap across my companions doughnut. Don't ask. Anyway, I forgot and put the backpack on and had an armpit that looked like I used a chocolate doughnut as deodorant for the baptism! Nice! 

There's a dog that always lays in the same spot on one of the roads we walk. I´ve named  him Rocky Roaddog. Anyways, I decided to see if he would move if I were to almost step on him. He got a little mad and tried to bite me. I'm so smart, yeah? 

This week´s been great! It went by really fast! We may have a baptism coming up so that's awesome! Two other investigators are progressing too. One wants to get baptized but needs to marry the lady who he lives with so that might not happen anytime soon.

We through a fun Fellowship night and it went great! Lots of fun and games and got a good lesson in. Unfortunately, I'm getting good at falling asleep sitting up, so I usually draw to keep focused if necessary! My Spanish is slowly getting better, too. 

Anyways, have a great week everyone! I know I will.  Dallin

More pics 

https://goo.gl/photos/SjeqLKx5JKyuCHuAA

Dallin Poulson
Buenas!

SECOND WEEK Weston 11/5/2015

Fun Week! 

This week was the first time we had a consistent missionary schedule and we weren't running around to meetings and orientations on "How to live without Mom and Dad" basically. Anyways, I'm glad that's over with! But Friday and Saturday were pretty basic! We did "dress up" for Halloween! Well.. the best we could but I'll send a pic of my district!

              ~Dressed up like Halloween Pumpkins for Halloween~

And we didn't know for fast Sunday that they shut down the cafeteria for dinner on Saturday night to start everyone's fast! So I was all ready to eat and was promptly told that it was fast Sunday! Wasn't a problem though! like I said in my farewell talk, when you fast with a purpose, you do not get hungry!         

On Sundays we have devotionals as the entire CCM (mtc) gathers in the auditorium. This past Sunday we listened to a talk given by Jefferey R. Holland and let me just say that I've never had a talk impact me like this one has. It was a video recording of him speaking several years back at the Provo MTC to all the missionaries there! He spoke about missionary work and an experience that happened in his mission.

 The Beatles

 I'll briefly summarize the story for you but I highly suggest you to look it up and watch it for yourself! There were two missionaries who knocked on an older woman´s door and she immediately slammed the door in their face. This is where Jefferey R. Holland says to stay persistent, and to get a foot in the door. They knocked again and she said, "You're ministers of God right?" they said "yes" and she said "well then, I don't want anything to do with you" as she went to slam the door the young missionary who could barely speak the language got a foot in the door and he said " why not?". She then said "if god truly loves us all then how come he took my daughter?" that young missionary with hardly any knowledge of the language asked, "do you want to know where your daughter is?" she promptly said, "I'd give anything to know where my daughter is". And that young missionary read out of Moroni ch. 8... At this time Jefferey R Holland didn't recite any scriptures out of that chapter and neither will I but I will say this, that is now one of my favorite chapters in The Book of Mormon. I have found answers in that chapter to most of my investigators questions and worries. Later in his talk he tells the story of when Jesus appeared to peter and the other apostles and says, "forget your nets, forget your boats, and feed my sheep!" Basically saying forget everything you "miss" back home and GET TO WORK!

(Found a copy of the video)_____________________________________________
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRCYJF9mrD0

____________________________________________________________________

Its really hard to explain the power of this talk with the amount of time I have. You seriously need to find time to watch this talk for yourself. I couldn't tell you how long it is but I can tell you that it is worth it! Some of the teachers here at the CCM (mtc) told me that they are all accessible on a website somewhere.

Anyways that kicked off my week really well and my Spanish has just kept on improving! We play "Cage Soccer" with the Latinos here. Its a basketball court with a fence around it with two small goals at each end of the court. They are so good and I'm just the gringo who has a weirdly good Mexican accent. That´s the best place to practice your Spanish. That being said there are few better feelings then making people laugh in Spanish! I've also picked up ultimate Frisbee fairly quick, I think all that time in disc golf my senior year is starting to pay off!

Please send pictures! I love seeing what's going on back home! I love and miss you all so much! But I've gotta go feed some sheep!!:)

"Encarnacioooooooo!" ~Nacho Libre

BUENAS! First Week in Honduras Dallin 11/2/2015

Buenas! 

My first week in Honduras has been successful for sure. I honestly can´t believe its only been a week though, feels like a month. I feel like I just barely started to learn Spanish, I have zero confidence in my language abilities but people tell me I´m doing well. I went to church with our branch yesterday and bore my testimony. I may suck at Spanish most of the time, but when I´m speaking from my heart and with the spirit I barely ever mess up. Its pretty awesome. Our branch is in rough shape. Everyone knows it kind of stinks and none of the leaders want to try to fix it. We asked a member what he thinks we should do to get people excited to get the branch moving and he said ´´honestly, re-baptize everyone!´´ ha-ha. The branch president and his assistant showed up to ward council without ties and their shirts undone and we didn't even talk about the members in the ward. The missionaries aren´t going to give up though. We plan on ´machete-ing ´(chewing them out with love) people in the branch. Its all about attitude.

We got gym memberships today so that´s gnarly. The gym owner opens up the gym for us to use because we are some of the very few that actually use it. They blast crazy techno Spanish music, I dig it. 

We´re lucky to have a gym nearby because the members seriously feed us too much. Portion sizes in Honduras are ridiculous! It´s pretty rude not to finish your plate and its pretty hard to do sometimes. All of the food is great though!

There is an AWESOME restaurant here that has AC and a pool table. 

They have the best chicken fingers ever and the dipping sauce is amazing. 

My first week in Honduras has been successful for sure. I honestly can´t believe its only been a week though, feels like a month. I feel like I just barely started to learn Spanish, I have zero confidence in my language abilities but people tell me I´m doing well. I went to church with our branch yesterday and bore my testimony. I may suck at Spanish most of the time, but when I´m speaking from my heart and with the spirit I barely ever mess up. Its pretty awesome.

The city I am serving in is called La Entrada. The weather isn't as bad as San Pedro Sula, it actually cools down at night so that's nice. It gets dark at 6 every day and that throws me off big time. 

My companions and I saw a mototaxi for sale today and are seriously considering buying it ha-ha I wish. 

I live with my companion and another two missionaries. The other two are zone leaders and are super awesome. One is from Utah and he´s Samoan. The other one is from Ecuador but speaks pretty good English. He has the nickname FEZ because he is just like the character from That 70´s show.

God bless America and it´s reliable plumbing, electricity, washers, pavement, nice grass, building codes, and generally functioning government! ha-ha-ha You really learn to appreciate what you had once you get down here.

I love you mom! keep me updated with what is going on at home!  I want to hear it all. Thanks for being the best mom ever!