Christmas Week

This week went really great!!! it was good to hear from the Family and it was good to have a couple of days with a break! So fred Did not end up getting baptized we were able to teach him all of the lessons and have him interviewed but he smoked a cigar last week when he was feeling stressed out! so he has to wait a week to be baptized! but we lost contact with him after the interview and he wont call us back so please pray for him to be baptized! and that he will call us back. not a whole lot happened this week but two missionaries did get drunk last night from a members dinner!!! and i mean legit drunk! so these member made some soup. and both of these missionaries had two bowls of it and at the end they said that was great soup what was in it! and the members said beef broth and chicken and liquor! well when you have so much liquor and alcohol people think it cooks out and it doesn't! so the called us and told us what happened and we thought they might have been just exaggerating but these are the most innocent missionaries that they weren't on the phone talking to them their speech was off and it was so funny the said they had splitting headaches and that they could not stop peeing and that they had just spent 30 mins rolling around of the floor laughing at nothing!!!!!!!!!!! we called them this morning and they said they were sick to their stomaches and that the had cold sweats and that the could not sleep at all last night!!!!!! that was the highlight of my week!!! i love you all and i know that missions are hard but in the end they are worth it! i love you all!

and thank you all for your Christmas Presents!

Elder Dunn

 This flag is a tender mercy from a friend that we found outside the Dunn home on Christmas day.
The note read We wish you a Merry Christmas Thank you for sharing your Missionsary so that others can learn of our Heavenly Fathers Plan.

This is the text message picture we received on Christmas Day for Brother Banner in Michigan.
We are so grateful for him and all he does to take care of the Missionaries!

Merry Christmas from Grand Rapids

so everyone wants up? sorry i didn't get to finish my email. so back to the story. we asked mike again what he thought about god and he said you know what i had a really crazy experience in the woods one time! and all i could remember was a still small voice deep inside me telling me something and i knew it was God talking to me! it blew mine and Elder Elmer's minds! then Cathrine told us about a really cool experience that she had had that was very similar to mikes! then we shared Helman 5:30, and it says exactly what mike and said and it blew his mind!!!! he just sat there in unbelief!!! it was crazy to see how the spirit was so strong there and how you could see there attitudes change from the begin of the lesson to the end! Mike told us that he knew there was a God and that he knew things happened for a reason! and he knew that because of cathrine ordering the Book of Mormon he was able to talk to us!!! it was really cool! we were able to meet with them again! and it was awesome! then satan got in the way this week... cathrine called us and said that her and her husband did not want to meet and more. so we think that see got antied by her husband. but we are still going to go try to see mike this week!!! I am so excited! Fred is getting Baptized this week!!! he is so prepared by the Lord. it is going to be awesome! Elder Johnson is coming down from Houghton Lake he was one of my other really good buddys from the MTC. Everything is going great here in Michigan! i love serving the Lord and i know it will help me through out my whole life! Brother banner wants to talk to you all on Christmas with me haha. i love you all! Merry Christmas!!!!!

just an awesome week!

So this week has just been truly amazing!!! lets just start off With an Investigator we have is getting baptized on Dec 27 It is Fred KIng! he is truly prepared!!! we wanted to be baptized on Chirstmas cause he said what better day to remember Christ then on that day!!! Louie is doing ok he kinda got antied by his buddist friends but we talked him into coming to church with us again!!! so that was good! well there is so much i want to talk about but i have little time! but steve and sarah are doing truly amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!! they are still progressing and we had such a great lesson with them on why they need to read the Book of Mormon it was truly awesome!!!! i think they think of me and Elder Elmer as their kids! they made us cookies and treats to take home after the lesson it was awesome i will send a picture in a min. but this week we got a referral for a Cathrine Leaf! She wanted a Book of Mormon. so we tried to stop in and give it to her. We knocked and a guy answered the door. he looked like a really rough guy he is about mid 40's and just looked mean and nasty we asked for Catherine and he said so what not there and we said we would come back later. so we went back the next day and knocked again and we could her this guy yell cathrine the Mormons are her. but he opened the door and let us in. we started talking to them and the rough guys name is mike and Catherine and her husband im not sure what his name his. we talked for about 20 mins with mostley just her husbandand the lesson was going no where then he said he had to go so he could do homework! that's when the lesson got good. mike and just been goofing of and telling jokes and stuff. and cathrine had not been talking. we had asked mike if he thought there was a God when we first got there and he would just say there is something... but that is it...then him and cathrine started to open up to us!!! i am so sorry but this story will have to be continued next week!!! President Jacobsen has asked me to stick to and hour and a half of emails!!! and i want to be obedient. i love you all and i am truly doing great!!! when i finish this story next week it will blow your mind and we and meeting with them tonight so be praying for us i love you all and you are in my prayers!

Love Elder Dunn

this is what steve and sarah gave us and our Christmas tree!

this is us with skip hyler he is one of the funniest people you will ever meet he has a come back joke for everything! o and Alyssa the little girl is doing great! we saw her again and she went home last Friday with her family!!!!!!

 

We had your sons ( Elder Elmer and Elder Dunn) over for dinner tonight.   They are a joy and a,delight to have in our home. You can be proud of them; they are serving the Lord faithfully.  That is Sis. Thaler, my wife, also in the picture on the far right.
Bro. Thaler

 

What's Going on

Hello every buddy whats goin on? this week have been really good! the weather has been great the snow has melted and the work is progressing!!! this week we had some good and some bads. this week. This week Brandon dropped us. he said that he had still was reading the book of Mormon and praying about it and he had got an answer yet and did not want to meet witth us any more he wanted to keep searching for other churches. I tried to tell he that we wanted to meet with him again and that we wanted to help him learn how he can receive answers for his prayers and to know that the book of Mormon is true! is was really hard cause he was such a good investigator is was hard to drop him but he said he was not interested in meeting any more. Steve and Sarah are still doing good! Steve has almost read the whole book for the our search for happiness! and has highlighted it up and everything! but he will not read the Book of Mormon! it is very frustrating but we keep praying for them if you could to that would be great!!! we also meet another really awesome potential investigator and it is kinda a funny story how we found him. so it all started earlier in the day when we were with brother banner driving around I saw an awesome truck! it was a 2003 dodge cummins it was whitle with sweet rims and tires and the bummer was black from rollin coal! I wanted a picture so bad but I didn't have my camera! but later that day we were going door knocking and I want to go look at that truck again but we decide not to  go but then we seen the truck drive by so we looped around the block and we saw the truck there are we decide to go and look at it then we thought that we would go and knock on the door of the house and go and talk to the guy. so we went and knocked on his door and his mom answered we ask whose truck that was and see said her sons I felt like I should asked for her son but I didn't. lucky he came out from the other room and me and him just started talking about his truck and really just hit it off. after about twenty mins of talking about his truck we started talkling about the gospel. he told us that he was a marine and had been deployed twice in afganistan. he had been injured and lost part of his hearing and something happened to his foot im not sure what. but he said that someone had given him a book about God and how he has a plan for all of us and he bore his testimony about how he know that to be true! we told him that that is exactly what we talk about and how him and his boy can be sealed for ever! we are meeting with him this week again so I am super stoked! it was just funny because how we found him was because I like his truck. Another awesome thing is that we got to give a blessing to a little girl who was diagnosed with lucemia! I was just one of the most spiritual things that I have done she is only ten years old it was just amazing!!!! I will send pictures! I love you all you guys are great!!! I love that I am serving in Michigan!

love Elder Dunn

 Alyssa after we gave her a blessing

 this is another church and in grand rapids there is graffiti everywhere but it is kinda cool

 these are the couple of the different churches in grand rapids

 this is the hospital 

Tis the Season

well hello everyone it sounds like you all have had a great week! its so good to hear from everyone! today has been a great day so far! dad that buck is flippin huge!!!!!!!!!!!!! I got so pumped seeing that buck!!! Elder Elmer was wondering what was wrong with me! haha that is a good elk that kade hit to bad he didn't kill it! looks like all of the Christmas decorations are going good haha! I am excited for Christmas this year for some reason! we have a tiny little Christmas tree in the apartment is has lights and everything! we are singing Christmas songs in the apartment and during the day I have no clue where I got this Christmas spirit from but o well. this week was a great week thanksgiving was good! we got a flat tire on our car, within the past two weeks our bathroom has flooded 3 times from the toilet of filling!!!! but it was just an awesome week!!!! so everything is the same with Brandon we are going to meet with him this week so keep praying for him! steve and sarah we meet with them on Tuesday and we were only suppose to be there for 15 mins so elder summsion could say good by but we ended up being there for an hour and 15 mins! and taught a lot of restored truths to steve! he knows so much about the church he just doesn't know that he does but we are making progress with him! Louie is as good as every he is so funny! Ethan is another progressing investigator we have he is 18 going to calvin college. he is from ohio. he moved here a while before I got he and started meeting with Elder Elmer and Elder Ereckson. Ethan had met with Missionaries before in ohio and want to learn more here! well he knows the Book of Mormon is true! he knows that the Church is true and wants to be baptized but there is one problem. His parents... his parents said that if he gets baptized they will stop paying for his college! which for calvin college is about $40,000 a year!!! so he is in a really hard spot! so please pray for him that he will have strength to keep pressing on and that his parents will soften their hearts so he can be baptized and they will still pay for school. next progressing investigator ( a progressing investigator is someone who we have meet with atleast twice and is keeping the commitments that we extend to them) is Fred!!!!!!!! he is awesome so Elder Elmer and his last companion have meet with him a lot before but when I got here he had a lot of trouble with things going on and we were never able to meet with him. well we finial meet with him this week!!! he is so awesome his story is that about 15 years ago he met with the missionsaries and had a lesson with them and at the end of the lesson they prayed and he felt the Holy Ghost telling him it was true! well for some reason the missionaries stop coming over and they stopped meeting. well 15 years later he still remember the name of the church and got on line and requested a bible from our church because he knew if he did that the missionaries would come over well they did!!! and started meeting with him again. that was at the first of the year! well now I finially got to meet with him and he is awesome! he has go through so much and is going through so much right now but through it all he knows that the book of Mormon is true!!! every day he wakes up at like 10 reads his scriptures tell he goes to work around 2 works til around 11 or 12 at night and reads during his breaks. then when he gets home he reads again. then goes to sleep and wakes up and does the same thing all over again! he went and bought a tablet so he could be like all the people at church he went and bought new slacks and white shirt and ties and sport jackets just for church! he really wants to be baptized but wants to make sure he is ready! he really wants to be baptized on Christmas because he said there is no better way to remember Jesus Christ on that day then to be baptized! that probably wont happen but we are going to try to talk him into the 27 of December! so hopefully that works! everything is going great here in Grand Rapids the ward in great and the work is really picking up! we are meeting awesome people! and it is just great! im so glad to be out here serving and I know its the right thing to be doing! I found out today that Elder Rugg went home............ it really hit hard for me. he had a hard time in the MTC but he said that me and Elder Johnson were the some of the reasons that he didn't go home... he really struggles being away from his family. if you all could please please please pray for him I would really appreciate that!!!! Well I hope you all have a wonderful week!!!!!!!!! I am so greatful for this gospel and all that it has brought to my life! we will always have trials and tribulations but the Lord will always strengthen us enough to overcome those things! a really awesome scripture that the Holy Spirit directed me to this week was Mosiah 24 verses 10-16 I think I might be off on the verses. but it is when Amulon told Alma and his people that they could not pray! and if they were found doing that they would be kill. look for what happened and how they over come this trial! This is how we all can overcome our trials by doing the things that Alma and His People Did! there are 3 things they did look for them as you read those scriptures and tell me in your emails what you all found I love you so much all of you thank you for being the people that you are I love you all

Love Elder Braxtyn Dunn 

everyone if you have not seen it yet the church came out with a new Christmas video it is called he is the gift!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it is amazing go watch it!!!!!!!

so this is the last picture of our district together! we are all from Utah except elder Anderson who is from Idaho falls( far right) Names from left to right Elder Brown (Springville), Elder Weyland (logan area) me, Elder Elmer, ELder Sumsion, Elder Newman (Ogden) and Elder Anderson. and this is a black santa that we found at a store!

I am Still thinking about awesome trucks out here in Michigan he is a sweet one I found the other day!and this is elder elmer after a long day!

Happy Thanksgiving

well hello everyone! how are you all doing I am doing pretty good the weather here is good and bad it is kinda like cedar! is snowed like 9 inches last week, then it was supper sunny and like 40's now it is pouring rain for the past like 3 days! last week was kinda a different week Monday we had zone conference then we had p day on Tuesday then on Wednesday elder summsion had to go to the dentist so those days we were not able to get a hole lot done. on thurday we weren't able to get a hole lot done either if was weekly planning that takes like three hours long it is were we plan for the whole next week! we were suppose to meet with steve and sarah but steve has back problems and was not feeling up to it. so that was a real bummer. he has been reading a lot of anti Mormon stuff so that is not good. he is reading the book of Mormon so that is good!!! he seems to be in 2nd Nephi cause he asked a lot about Isaiah and so that is good that he is reading it! it is very hard some times because they wont read the other things which we give them. they go online and look up stuff and all they find is anti stuff so that is hard we always joke about how some times we wish we could take away our investigators agency but we cant do that haha. Friday was trade offs I was with elder weyland. he has been out for 13 months and is really struggling with getting up in the mornings and having pupose for his studies. there are times when he will sleep in til 10 or 11. so he told the whole district that when trades off come we can do anything to get him up! so when he was on trade offs with me he wouldn't get up in the morning to I grad he sheets and pulled them off of him. he pulled them back on so I started to pull them again and he started pulling back and fighting me for the sheets so I said if you can fight ;me for the sheets you can get your self out of bed. so I grabbed his sheets and pulled him to the end of his bed til he almost fell off then he kicked me. it is a good thing that I am on my mission cause if I wasn't I would have pulled him all the way off his bed on to the floor and probably would have socked him cause I am not going to take his crap after that he went back to bed he rolled out of bed at like 9;30 any way on Friday me and elder weyland had a lot of appointments set up with Brandon and dave and Charles and martin and they all fell through. Brandons mom had went to the hospital and so he couldn't meet with us he said he had been reading the book of Mormon but didn't know if it was true yet. so the rest of the day we tried to meet with potential investigators. as we were in the hood checking on some investigators. we met two guys who were shoveling snow. we asked if we could help and started talking to them about the gospel. ones name was kevin he said he met with missionaries a long time ago but he said he would love to met with us again. the other guy his name was will he is homeless but it was so cool he here about his faith in Jesus Christ and how he knew everything happened for a reason! we taught kevin the whole restoration right there as we shoveled snow and he agreed to meet with us again it was awesome!!! we met with rich another investigator we had and taught him the whole plan of salvations and invited him to be baptized and he said he would but he didn't want to set a date just yet. he is 77 and a vet, and is also legally blind so he cant read the book of Mormon so we are trying to get it on cd for him. louie is awesome as ever!!! he comes to church every week and is learning the gospel and is reading the book of Mormon! it is so cool! he teaches us about the things we teach him it is awesome! he finially prayed with us with out chanting it was so cool! yesterday at church elder summsion asked if louie wanted a mint and he said sure. I also forgot to tell you that louie is a little slow not much but a little. anyway we gave him a mint and he asked if it was going to get him high and if it was like lsd. and we told him no but he put it is his mouth and started acting like he was high it was so funny I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. glen we have stopped seeing Elder Elmer was told by the spirit that we should stop seeing him. Danes dad told us to go away last time we tried to meet with him. for thanksgiving we are going to the competors who are members! anyway I got you package thank you so m,uch the rolls had exploded the soup jar broke open and the cheese went bad but everything else was good! im so glad to be serving the lord it is hard sometimes but it is the right thing to do I love you all and I hope you have great turkey day!!! o and we called Brandon yesterday and his mom is out of the hosptital and we ask how his reading is doing and he is in Jacob!!! we met with him 9 days ago and he is already in Jacob he just hasn't prayed about the book of Mormon! so pray that he will pray about it!!!

this is a street we were going to knock on last week and this is just outside of our apartment so that I don't have a lot of pictures for this week I will try to get more this week!!!

 

 

Today I had to get some information to Braxtyn so he asked me to call Brother Banner, He is a member that helps drive the missionaries around. He is a wonderful person he told me how much he loved Braxtyn and that he was so delightful. He said that he was very well prepared in teaching the gospel to all those whom he comes in contact with. Brother Banner said that he will cry when Braxtyn gets transferred because he loves him so much. I sure loved hearing this as a Mom. It is amazing how good it was to talk to someone who has contact with Braxtyn everyday. It was a tender mercy. Heidi

love ya!

well hello everyone sorry that i didnt email yesterday we had our first bad winter storm!!! we got about 10 inches of snow!!! so all the libraries were closed and all the other missionaries were using the computers at the church so we didnt get to email!!! but anyway this week has been great! we were able to put an investigator on a baptisimal date for january 3!!! it was our first lesson with him! we were able to invite him to be baptized and he said yes! we asked him how he felt about it and he said that he just had the chills during the whole lesson and i ezplained to him that that was the spirit telling him that what we were teaching him was true!!!! it was awesome! his name is brandon he is around 24 he is black and going to college. we met again with steve and sarah this week and it was sweet! that morning in our studies we really studied hard about the priesthood and got really in depth about it and studied where it came from and even talked about the levitical priesthood!!! it was crazy how in depth we got but with thought it was cool. but later that day we went to steve and sarahs and we talked about exactly want we studied that morning!!!!! we went over the priesthood and got way in depth about it! it was awesome because that was exactly what we had studied!!! he did read the restoration pamphelt and thought it was great! we aree meeting with him again on thursday! well sorry that this email is so short we have an appointment that we need to get to i will try to send pictures later today!!!! i love you guys so much! i am doing great so dont worry about me thank you for your prayers!!! i am so greatful to be out here serving a mission!!!! i know that it is the right thing to do i love you all you are amazing!!!!!!!!!

love Elder Dunn

 

everyone i also forgot to tell you that we saw three drug deals go down in 15 mins so that was cool haha and i found out that i can go shed hunting on p days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so sweet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

love elder dunn

 it snowed about 9 inches in one day and is stilll snowing!

 this are my zone leaders the white one is from nevada and is my twin he loves to wakeboard surf hunt fish and shed hunt he is awesome his name is elder williams. the other one is elder de la paz he is from chihuahua mexico he is a professional soccer player he played for real salt lake from his sophmore year in high school til he left on his mission and he gave up a million contract to play soccer so he could come on his mission!!! they are awesome!!!

 we have had two firetrucks come to our appartment in two days but this one was awesome it had a neon ladder!!!

 this is louie our buddist investigator!!! today he was so funny he told me that he thought i was a comedian!!!! and he said that he was going to build a snowman with me inside of it!!! he is one of the funniest people alive!!! those are fake dreads from his hat!

 this is brother banner he is amazing and drives us around every where!! he is a doomsday guy and always tells us we are going to get kidnapped by ISIS o and here are some crazy icicles at the church from just three days of snow!!!!!!!!!!