I am happy to report that I am home! Driving into the green mountain state of Vermont I quickly realized how much I have missed the beautiful place in which I started my mission. It was the place I was born! (in mission terminology). I am serving in Lamoille which borders the Newport area where I started my mission. It is actually pretty neat because I have actually been on exchange to Lamoille three times! I kind of had a little bit of a head start because I have been able to meet a few of the members. Luckily during that time I was very diligent at writing in my journal so I was able to look back and see all the people who I had met when I was here. I was very surprised to see that many of them recognized and remembered me because it had been a year ago that I had been on exchange here! Super exciting. Something else that is exciting is that we are 20 minutes away from the Ben and Jerry's Factory!!!!!!! Sister Demeritt made a stop on our way in from transfer meeting to the factory and treated us to ice cream. Perfect way to start the transfer :)
Not going to lie the week has all been a blur. I feel like this week was three weeks long! It didn't help that I didn't really sleep on Monday night. I learned that it probably isn't the best idea to start packing Monday night at 10pm. Yep I didn't finish packing till about 2am and then had to be up at 330am. Not a good idea!!!!!
My new companion is Sister Blume. She is from Clinton Utah and she is 19 years old. She's been on her mission a little over 4 months. She is a sweetheart!
Being in Lamoille has been great so far! I don't know why it's always referred to as Lamoille because Lamoille is the county. I actually live in Morrisville, but missionaries always refer to this area as Lamoille so that's what I'm used to. I've been able to meet so many great people this week and have already experienced some pretty incredible miracles too. There is one experience that I wanted to share a little more about. My first night in the area was Tuesday. We had just gotten home from visiting people for the night and we realized that we didn't have our phone. Sister Blume's bag had fallen on the floor when we were at the last place that we stopped by. We thought that maybe it had fallen out there. It was already after nine o'clock when we are supposed to be in, but we obviously needed to figure out where our phone was. We walked to the gas station down the road and used their phone to call the Elders. We let them know the situation and then we tried calling the people who's house we were just at. It was there!....But wait there's more! While at the gas station one of the workers asked us who we were and what made us different from other Christian faiths........oh man that is the type of question we love to answer. We were able to tell him a little more about what we believe. Come to find out that his coworker was also a member of the church. And then a man in the store came up and started talking to us and he too a member of the church who hasn't been active for years. Not only that, but I knew and met the less active members dad when I was serving in Newport! Whoah! There is even more to this story. Tuesday night we were a little bit frazzled by everything that was going on so we had failed to get Dustin's information(the one we talked about the church to). We had given him information about the church, but had never gotten his information to follow up with him. Yesterday as we were walking from an appointment to another appointment we had a prompting to knock on a door. No one answered.....we knocked on the neighbors door and they were busy, then we walked across the street to talk to some people who were outside. We started again to venture to our next location. Little did we know that those promptings came because God needed us to walk past the gas station at just the right moment. Right as we were walking past, Dustin was taking the garbage to the dumpster. We were able to talk to him again and get more information from him. He said he is looking for more in life! And boy do we have it! Holy MIRACLE!
I am so very excited to serve here in Lamoille! It was hard to leave Dover, but I know that I am exactly where I need to be.
I love you all and hope you have a very happy week!
New Address
Sister Allison Dixon
P.O. Box 83
Morrisville VT 05661
Love,
Sister Dixon
Alright I know that I say that just about every week is incredible and miraculous.....well this week was beyond incredible and miraculous!!!!! Most of the email will probably be about Sunday because Sunday was UNREAL!
Well I should probably start by letting you all know that I am being transferred. This is a very bitter sweet time. I have absolutely loved serving in Dover. The people I have met here will be eternal friends. I have so many incredible memories and growing experiences here in this area. I am excited for what's ahead and I'm grateful for all that I've learned from being here in this area.
So let me tell you a little bit of what went on on Sunday. I think I mentioned in my last email that President and Sister Stoker were going to be visiting the Dover Branch this Sunday. They came and spoke, first President Stoker did a training in Branch Council and then they both spoke in Sacrament Meeting. They both also taught the combined third hour class. It was incredible!
Another incredible part of church was the people who attended. Two of our investigators, Eddie and Susie came for the first time!!!!! I can't even begin to explain how much I love Eddie and Susie. They are incredible and having them at church made me so incredibly happy. During the second hour meeting, Sister Danner and I were teaching one of the primary classes when some members came and said they'd take our class because someone had just stopped in to visit our church. Much to our surprise, a younger girl named Christine was heading to her church in Charleston and was running late. She saw our church building which she had never noticed before and saw our sign that said Jesus Christ so she decided to see if she could make it to our services. One of the members was in the parking lot and was able to guide her to the Gospel Principles class. She stayed for that and for the third hour. She was very intrigued by our meetings and she wants to learn more! Can you say miracle???? After church we had a linger longer and had corn on the cob. It was such an incredible day!! It almost felt surreal.
Today things have begun to sink in a little more knowing that I will be leaving the people and the place that I love. We were able to say goodbye....well, see you later to Mike and Michele. We also had a lunch out on Sebec Lake with the Dows.
They cooked us up some real Maine lobster! It was so fun!
More goodbyes tonight, and we get to leave bright and early tomorrow morning to head to transfer meeting in Manchester. 4:30am! Wohoo! I do have a strong testimony on transfers being inspired. I know for a fact that every area that God has sent me to has been for a reason. I have seen God's hands in so many ways serving here in Dover. I can't even begin to describe the transformation that has taken place here.
I want you all to know how much this gospel means to me. It has helped me in more ways than I can even begin to acknowledge. I love our Savior Jesus Christ and I know that this is His Gospel again restored to the earth. I know that this is His work, and I am so happy that I have the privilege of being a part of it.
I hope you all have an awesome week!
Peace and Blessings
Sister Dixon
Week six already! Another transfer has flown by. I only have three transfers left! GROSS!
We had a great week this last week!
Tuesday we had an awesome lesson with Eddie and Susie. We taught about prophets and at the end of the lesson we asked if one of them would conclude our discussion with prayer. Susie prayed! This was the first time that either of them agreed to pray vocally at the end of the lesson. The Spirit was SO strong as Susie prayed. It was amazing! We have dinner with them tonight which I am super excited about. I love them so much!
Wednesday we had an awesome district meeting. It was one of my favorite district meetings that I've ever been to. After district meeting we had an incredible lesson with Raychel. It was one of the best lessons Sister Danner and I have ever had. The Spirit was super strong and it was so evident that the Spirit was guiding not only our words but our entire conversation. We decided to spoil ourselves for dinner that night and went to a little joint that I've been wanting to go to ever since I got to Dover.....Pictures will follow.
Thursday we experienced a few more miracles. The first one was with being inspired to see some former investigators. We only had a few more minutes until we went in for the night and we stopped at their home. They were very excited to see us. They said that they had been having a bit of a hard time the past few weeks and really felt like people don't care about them, and then we showed up! So they felt that God had sent us there that night. The next miracle of that day was with our miles. Thursday was the last day of the month and we were super short on miles. We pulled into home and we had 2 miles to spare!
Friday we had an awesome weekly planning session. Normally we never get it finished in time and we end up having to finish it on Saturday or Sunday. We were able to finish it all on Friday and we planned for a stellar week! It will be exciting to see what comes from the plans we made for this week.
Saturday was an interesting day. All our plans were falling through. We felt like we needed to head over to Dover, but nothing super miraculous happened while we were there. That night we had a pretty intense lesson with some of our new investigators. We walked in and they had a friend there too. At first I was thinking "oh sweet! we can teach them too" but then I realized he wanted to teach us. It actually ended up being a great opportunity for me and Sister Danner to bear our testimonies and how we gained them. Although they had a lot of objections it was awesome for us. This moves us nicely into Sunday. They came to church! As you know this Sunday was the first Sunday of the month which means fast and testimony meeting. Yup two of our visitors got up and bore their testimonies. We missionaries and Pres. Clukey were praying so hard the entire time hoping that they wouldn't say anything too crazy. Ha ha ha it was probably the craziest Sacrament Meeting I've ever attended. It made the journal, that's for sure! After Sacrament meeting the branch swarmed our visitors and made them feel super welcomed to the branch. They were short on primary teachers so they asked if Sister Danner and I could teach. Sacrament Meeting went super over time so by the time all the kids got in the class there was only about 15 minutes left. They didn't give us anything specific to teach, so we tried to relate a game to the gospel. We played one of Sister Danner's childhood favorites, Doggie Doggie Who's Got Your Bone? Ya, we couldn't quite find a link to how it applied to the gospel so we just sang a primary song before we sent them to sharing time. It was quite funny.
I've got some super exciting news for this week. President and Sister Stoker are coming to the Dover Branch this Sunday! I AM SO EXCITED! I have never had President Stoker visit the branch that I've been serving in so I am beyond excited. We are having a linger longer after church and are having a corn roast. It's going to be GREAT!
It's week six so transfer calls come on Saturday night. I have no idea if I'm leaving Dover. Many people believe that I will be because I've been here since the end of February, but I could easily see myself staying one more transfer. Only time will tell though! I'll let you know next Monday what is happening!
Thank you all for you love and support! I hope you all have an incredible week! Happy August!
Sister Dixon
We have had another incredible week.
It started off great on Monday when we had a church tour with Susie and Eddie. Eddie used to always tell us that the walls would cave in if he ever came into the church. Well I am happy to report that the walls are still standing and Eddie and his wife Susie came to a church tour!!! It was marvelous. The Spirit was so strong and they feel that they will be attending church soon! WOW!
We had Zone Conference on Tuesday which is an all day event! We got up around 4:30 a.m. and we got back to Dover at 8 p.m. I love living in the sticks! Zone Conference was incredible though. We got such incredible training on so many wonderful things! Our leaders are inspired.
The rest of the week was filled with many tender mercies and a lot of great experiences, too numerous to mention them all. I know this email is even shorter than last weeks, but I simply want to share how much I love doing this work. It is so incredibly hard, but absolutely miraculous every single day! I love you all so so much and hope you have a fantastic week!
I'm going to start off by apologizing for the shorter email this week. We have district pday today in Newport so I don't have much time to email. I do have an awesome miracle to share though. It happened this past Thursday. Well actually it goes back to a little over a week ago to the previous Friday during weekly planning where we plan where we are going to be for the upcoming week. A prompting came subtly that we should go to Corinth in the upcoming week. We have a limited number of miles that we are allotted to drive each month and at that moment our miles weren't looking to good. Corinth is one of our outlying areas which require quite a few miles to get there. Although it didn't make the most sense to venture out that direction we planned it into our schedule. Our Branch President lives out there so we called to see if we could set up doing some service for him. Everything was arranged for us to go to Corinth on the upcoming Thursday. Wednesday night as we planned for the upcoming day we filled our day with contacting potentials and former investigators in the Corinth area. We had a good, full day ahead of us and we were excited! Thursday came and the day started off well. We made it out to Corinth and began fulfilling our plans. Many of the people we stopped by were not home. We were able to see a less active member shortly before dinner which was great. We had dinner with the Clukey family and then we needed to determine what we were going to do for the rest of the evening. We had a few different options of people to stop by and see. One of our investigators in Milo was available to meet with us that night, but we felt that our work wasn't quite finished in Corinth. We plugged a few addresses into the GPS and headed out again to contact people. The first one we stopped by was not home. The next two were in the direction of home. I had glanced at the potentials list and saw that there were 2 potentials on Exeter St. which is where President Clukey lives. I wondered why we didn't try them earlier when we were just right there. The records weren't all that great either. One had a name and no house number and the other was just an address with no name. So as we left the first house we tried contacting after dinner the prompting came to try the potentials on Exeter St. I tried to brush it aside because I thought that if we were supposed to go there I would have noticed the names earlier. I drove about a block past Exeter St. when the words came to my mind in a voice that was not my own "are you going to be obedient, or not?" I pulled to the side of the road, turned around and headed back to Exeter St. positive that Sis. Danner was thinking I was crazy. We knocked on the potentials door that we had the address for and no one was home. Sister Danner said, "well, lets box out", so we did! We knocked on the next door and no one was home. We went one more house over and it didn't look likely that anyone was home, but we knocked anyways. A girl answered the door and we introduced ourselves. She then told us that her mom is a member of the church, and she too was baptized when she was younger. In my mind I was thinking "ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?!" Our focus in our branch council meetings the past few weeks has been to find those who are not on the church records who are members of the church. God directed us to this home and to this sweet lady who wants to come back to church. WHAT A MIRACLE!
That's what I wanted to share this week! I hope you all have an incredible week! I LOVE being a missionary! There is no better work :)
Love Sister Dixon
I don't even know how to explain the events that occurred this week.
After pday last monday we started off the week with a bang! We were blessed with being able to find two new investigators! After our meeting them, we tried stopping by Mike and Michele's because we hadn't been able to get in touch with them for a few weeks. We got to their home and we received a very warm greeting. Come to find out that they had gotten new phones so we didn't have the correct phone number for them. We had an incredible conversation with them and it just was such a great way to start off the week. Michele fried up some dandelion greens and milkweed for us to try, it was surprisingly delicious! That was the first of the interesting things I've eaten this week.
Tuesday was another incredible day. We were able to help a family in the branch with some service in their home. We have been trying for weeks to be able to arrange a time to help this family, but for one reason or another it would fall through. This was not the case on Tuesday, we were able to do service and it was awesome!
Wednesday was just an overall good day.
A miracle from Thursday was in a lesson with a less active girl that we meet with weekly. In our lesson she said that she is in 1 Nephi 14! This may seem simple, but I'll tell you that this is nothing short of miraculous. Sister Danner and I were beaming!
Friday was probably one of the best days I've had on my mission. It started off with our studies that morning. I had a really good personal study, and then it just got better from there. We started our companionship study and we were stuck with what to share with a less active couple we would be seeing later in the day. We knelt down and said another prayer specifically asking what they needed to hear today. The thing that came to my mind was a movie called Together Forever. I didn't even know what this movie was about. I went and grabbed it off the shelf and we started to watch it. Any of you who are familiar with this particular movie are probably getting quite the kick of this idea right now. This movie is easily one of the cheesiest church videos ever created. As we watched it I sat there wondering "Why in the world did this come to my mind?!" It wasn't long before Sister Danner popped up with the idea to talk about the Plan of Salvation. It all flowed from there. The video starts off by asking what was the happiest moment you've ever experienced. We too felt that this is how we should start our discussion with the family we would be seeing later that day. I have never felt the Spirit guide a lesson plan as I did during this time. It was unreal. We called the couple and arranged to see them later in the afternoon. Both Sister Danner and I were greatly anticipating this lesson. We got to their home and the experience we had with them was one that I will never forget. The Spirit was so incredibly strong and we were guided in everything that we shared. It confirmed so strongly to me that God is a God of miracles and that this is His work. What an incredible manifestation of God's power and love for His children. I have had a few very precious and rare experiences on my mission where God has allowed me to feel and recognize just a portion of the love He has for His children. That particular day was definitely one of those experiences. What a great blessing it is to be a representative of Jesus Christ.
Saturday one of the Elders investigators was baptized. It was a very neat experience witnessing this life changing event take place.
Sunday was great. The highlight was probably our dinner with the Atwater family. We played restoration jeopardy with them and the Spirit was so strong in their home.
The experiences I've shared in this email are only a portion of what happened this week. It was completely FILLED with so many wonderful growing experiences that I don't have time or the ability to explain fully. My testimony has been strengthened a great deal this week and my conversion deepened. I absolutely love this gospel and I know that God is working right along side us in this incredible work.
I'm going to extend to all of you reading this email the same invitation that our branch council is working on this week. That is to go about doing good. In chapter 9 of Preach My Gospel there is a section on going about doing good. We are all going to be praying for opportunities to find ways we can do service and good to those around us. A quote from President Hinckley says it best. “Do you want to be happy? Forget yourself and get lost in this great cause. Lend your efforts to helping people. … Stand higher, lift those with feeble knees, hold up the arms of those that hang down. Live the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
I love you all and hope that you have an incredible week!
Sister Dixon
What a wonderful week we had here in Maine!
We found a new investigator this past week......well, actually she found us! She had been taught in the past and she wanted to be taught again. She got in touch with one of the members and we are now teaching her! It is wonderful!
We did service Wednesday at the Bissells farm and I got to bottle feed baby cows! It was so fun!.....but Mama cow was NOT happy that I was doing her job. She did all she could to get between me and this baby cow. It was too funny.
We had a fun little experience on Thursday too. We were at the church having a lesson with one of the less active sisters that we see weekly. Our branch president, President Clukey was there with his daughter setting up for the 4th of July breakfast which was the next day. We hadn't been in our lesson for more than 5 minutes when President Clukey came and knocked on the door and asked if we wanted to take part in a miracle. Puzzled at his statement we said SURE! He told us that a man had just showed up who needed something to drink. He asked us to go out and invite him inside to rest and get some fluid inside him. We went outside to find a man named Jason with his shopping cart. We invited him in and got him some orange juice. We talked with Jason as he enjoyed his orange juice, but unfortunately due to the lifestyle and life circumstances he has been in, to say it how my mom would say it...."he was a few fries short of a happy meal". He said he was heading to Alaska! He has quite the journey ahead of him. Brother Topping went and got him a nice big meal from McDonalds to make sure he had a full stomach for the night. We invited him to come to our 4th of July breakfast the next morning and that made him pretty excited.
Now to the very excited part of the week, the 4th of July! We had an awesome day. We had a flag raising ceremony at the church and then had a pancake breakfast. It was a lot of fun! I absolutely love the Dover Branch. We did our weekly planning session after the breakfast, but we still wanted to make it a special day so we made some oreo milkshakes to celebrate our freedom :). Quite the exciting day right?!
Sunday was an awesome day too. We had one of the best branch councils I have ever been to. It was so fun and lighthearted. It was exciting to talk about the goals that we are working towards in the branch. There is a lot of missionary fire here and the work is really moving forward! Our friend Jason that we met on Thursday also came to church! He didn't stay through the whole meeting, but we were excited that he came for part of it.
That's all I have to report for this week! I hope that everyone had an incredible 4th of July! How grateful I am to be in a country where we can worship as we please! It is such an incredible blessing. I love you all and hope you have a great week!
Sister Dixon
