August 31, 2015

This week has been good because I had an ice cream birthday cake from one of my investigators! Also my zone had a sleep over at the zone leader's apartment. Each week it gets a little harder to write about my experience for a certain week because the longer I've been out the more everything blends together. But I'll do my best.

The week started off well because we started talking to a less active member. In the past she treated the missionarys less then well and stopped coming to church. So the missionaries stopped trying to contact her. As I was doing my daily planning Sunday night,  I was looking for people who I should call. And her named jumped out at me. I told my companion I was going to call her and he warned me against it because how rude she has been in the past. I felt that I should still call her. So I called her and my companion was super surprised when she was super exited to set up an appointment with us and to have us teach her family. When we went over to her house we found out why she became less active. Her oldest daughter had died, which lead her to become depressed which lead her to alcohol and smoking. So the day that I called her she knelt down and prayed in the morning asking for God to help her. Later that day she recieved a call from the missionaries. So now we are working with her and she is trying to give up smoking and is starting to come back to church.

One of my investigators, Alex (the one who keeps sending my mom pictures of me and my companion) found out it was my birthday and bought me a cake. He is also insisting that on our P day he will take us to Niagra Falls. So I'm not going to argue with him. We have been teaching him a lot. He's been going to church with us and reading the Book of Mormon. He was converted Catholic when he was 19 and has been super devout to his faith. But he has had a lot of experiences recently with Mormons that he believes it isn't a coincidence. Which is why he is meeting up with us.

Last night we had the sleep over with the other Elders. It was super fun and we did the cinnamon challenge and other fun stuff. We stayed up till 2 am talking. Which I am now feeling the effects of.

Look forward to sharing next week's experience with all of you!

Elder Ditty

August 28, 2015

Elder Ditty's investigator, Alex, sent this text:

Guess who's celebrating birthday today?  :)

As my lesson coincided with Elder Ditty's birthday, I ordered a nice ice cream cake (cookies and cream flavor) as a surprise.  

When one slice is not enough . . .
It was so delicious that even the Book of Mormon had to wait for a bit.   :)
Your son, in particular, was very happy.  It is important for him to feel acknowledged now that he is far away from his family, serving God in a most genuine way.
Greetings from Toronto!

August 24, 2015

So this last week has been very successful. Me and my companion were fortunate to teach a ton of lessons to investigators and less active members. It was great to see a lot of them attend church with us. One of my favorite things about my mission so far is meeting so many different people from so many different cultural backgrounds. It's a great experience. It's also awesome trying out all the different food that is here.

The weather is starting to get colder here! And all the locals are starting to freak out.  Apparently they're not big fans of the winter here. But I'm looking forward to the colder weather because the last month has been hot and humid.

It's fun doing street contacting because you get to talk to all sorts of UNIQUE people. One person said that he believed that heaven was on Jupiter. Often times imams from the Muslim faith will come up to me and try and convert me to become a Muslim. But most of the time they are friendly people.

Each week I am out here I like being a missionary more and more. I'm learning so much and meeting so many great people.

Thanks so much for all your support and prayers!
Elder Ditty

August 23, 2015

Text from Alex:

Dear Mrs. Ditty,

I am forwarding you another picture of your son, taken a couple of hours ago as he taught Sunday School after worship.  This is him with Elder Moffat.  The funniest thing was when Elder Ditty was talking about Jesus' obedience to his father and he mentioned his own experience from the time "he was a child" in relation to his obedience to you, his parents (assuming that at age 18 he is now an adult).  :)

This statement coming from an 18-year old put a loving smile on the face of all class participants.  :)

You should be proud of your son.

Greetings from Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Alex

August 17, 2015

I can see the cn tower from my apartment.

Kyle's Email to Mom

Alex is a great guy.  He came to church with us for the first hour yesterday. He's super intelligent and a devout Catholic.  He attends mass in Latin.  He was approached by the Catholics a few years ago to go train in Italy to become a high position in their faith but he didn't because he has a good job he didn't want to give up.  So it might take time for him to accept everything we believe, but I have a good feeling about it.  He regards the Book of Mormon as holy scripture.  He has been losing sleep, waking up at all hours of the night and when he wakes up he reads the Book of Mormon. He made a joke saying that Mormon missionaries have been disturbing his very comfortable life.  He wants us to teach him about genealogy tomorrow, so I'm going to bring the laminated papers you gave to me of our ancestry.  The most interesting thing I've eaten so far is cow liver ha ha. Hey,  I'm also learning how to cut my own hair.

Kyle's Email to Dad
The days are starting to blur together.  I'm starting to be able to navigate my way around town -- a little.  The mission strategy has changed.  Before we were just trying to find investigators, but now we are trying to strengthen inactives.  The activity rate in Toronto is 25% so we're trying to bring it up, and through bringing it up we hope that we will get referrals for new people to teach. Nothing really new this week though.

August 12, 2015

I received this photo and text message from Elder Ditty's investigator, Alex.

Dear Mrs Ditty,
My name is Alex, from Toronto, Canada. Your son, Elder Ditty, asked me to forward this picture to you. This is him and Elder Moffat from Utah, at my home in Toronto a couple of days ago giving me my first lesson on LDS Church and The Book of Mormon. You should be very proud of your son, who at such young age, is a great testimony of God's grace. Thank you.

August 10, 2015

Kyle's Email to Mom
I have an awesome investigator named Alex. He's the nicest guy and has the coolest story. Alex was 14 in Croatia during the Balkan wars in the 1990s. His parents were high up in the government. During the course of the war he lost a lot of family. During the war the town he was in was under siege.  The only relief the town got was from the LDS church.  He said our church had saved him and thousands of people in the town.  He came into Canada during the war as a refugee and hadn't had an encounter with the church since. But then one day he got a cd about a Mormon who converted to Catholicism. The cd just made him super curious, so he studied more about Mormons.  He thought everything about us was bizarre. Then one day while driving he said Joseph Smith and his history all of a sudden made sense to him.  Then 3 days latter he runs into missionaries (me and my companion). We taught him a lesson and he took a picture of us and said that if he does convert that he will show the picture of us to people and say that we were the missionaries that taught him.  He thinks that running into us is more than a coincidence and that he has a deep respect for us and that we are truly representatives of Jesus. He is astonished that the church has kids go out all over the world and preach. Alex is a great guy and offered to buy us dinner and take us to the cn tower.  He is super wealthy by the way.  He loves just about everything towards the church. There are a few things that he has doubts about, but we'll teach him the best that we can. Love ya.

Note:  I was so excited when Kyle finally sent photos using the camera I bought him.  Being the outdoorsman that he is, I shouldn't be that surprised that the photos were of a beaver and pigeons.

"We found a lake close by and we saw a beaver."

"We have two baby pigeons out side our balcony door. Each day they keep getting bigger."

 

Kyle's Email to Dad
Hey dad hows it going? It's crazy that I've already been gone a month. 23 more to go. I've had some crazy experiences. I've had some pretty crazy encounters with people haha.  One person thought Ozzy Osborne was a prophet of God. I had a Muslim get on the ground and tried to have me pray like him in front of a crowd of people.  I said no,  and then he called me an Atheist and said I thought I was better then Jesus.   One other time I was at an apartment and a guy pulled the fire alarm because someone had stolen his stolen beer and he wanted the cops to show up.  The poorer people here are crazy.  But I found out that within 5 minutes in a car from my apartment are multi million dollar homes. It's crazy how segregated things are here. In the million dollar homes everyone is white while in my apartment area everyone is black.  One of my investigators is in the area with the millions of dollars and he is in a super nice apartment building that he has to pay almost 2000 bucks a month for and it only has one room. He is the nicest guy. Ask mom for the story when you get home.  Love ya.