December 12, 2014 - One of the members from Dakota's mission called me to tell me Dakota was transferred to Fitzgerald Georgia.  He said they really love Dakota in Lanette, he is a great missionary, a lot of fun and they will miss him.  

We are looking forward to hearing about his new adventure and changes.

I am also adding a link to the movie he mentions in his letter below:

He is the Gift - With a great Intro from ThePianoGuys

Excerpts from Dakota's Letters for the last few weeks.  I am behind so pretty much cutting and pasting what he wrote to us in order to save time.  No filtering:

December 8, 2014 - The library closed early so just a brief note: I get transferred tomorrow.  I was assigned to be a district leader and am extremely excited to hear about where I get transferred. More next week.

December 1,2014
This week was really good. Fantasy in Lights was super cool last week. On wed we learned about the Chruch's cool new Christmas initiative called He is the Gift. It is a cool new video. I have never felt the spirit so strongly just from watching a video. I love it and I love getting to show it to people.

After we did that we headed down to Columbus to test my blood because I have been feeling so tired. My ferratin was a 60 which was good but my Vitamin D was still low "a little bit" at 27.6 and it is from 30-100 so the doctor doubled my vitamin D intake so now i take 1100% of the DV which is crazy. I think it is because when i got low iron i stopped drinking milk which was a big part of my Vitamin D but who knows. late that night we had our scrip study that we were supposed to teach but i felt exhausted. I finally prayed and Heavenly Father prompted me that I should just tough it out and He will give me the strength just like he has in the past. It was an awesome study even though we were late. it was on 1 Nephi 6 which was only 6 verses long so that will be the scrips of the week because of how much we were able to get out of them. Also I will add Helaman 5:12 because we played Jenga on Thanksgiving and I made the foundation really unstable and so it was super hard for everyone else. It was a really cool thanksgiving cause i even got to do my own turkey trot which was really slow. 19:35. I did it though. Thanksgiving was cool. The members live in a cabin in the middle of nowhere so it was really cool. it was a really good and fun week :) Love you tons

November 24, 2014

On Wednesday I was on an exchange in Lagrange GA but not really anything spectacular happened other than talking to people at an old folks home. It was really sad to see how much they had to suffer because they were all very miserable and couldn't really remember things. It made me extra thankful for the health I have. On Thursday a member from Elder B's last area came to visit us so that was really fun and then on Saturday we did a crazy day. We biked 17 miles down to this new area took a few pictures and then biked 4.5 miles back where we came from to a members house and we almost got eaten by a German shepherd that chased us for like 400 meters. then we biked 4.5 miles back to a different members house for dinner and they have a German shepherd that almost ate us too. after that they wouldn't let us bike home in the dark so they made us wait so we could get a truck to take our bikes but it was still a nice day and the bike ride was super nice. Other than the bike ride not really much else happened and it was a pretty good week.

November 17, 2014
The other day it did get down to 20 degrees but it warmed up a little bit in the day. That was just at night time. this morning it was pretty warm but it was pouring rain.

This week was a really fun week and good one. This weeks scrips are Alma 17:3, 26:12,29,37, 31:10, 29:4, and 2 Nephi 31:19&20. Oh and Alma 26:5&6 but i wanted to talk about that one so i didn't count it in the 7. A few weeks ago we had a member give a talk about temples. it was really cool. I just wanted to give you a heads up about it a little because the way he talked about it is cool. as missionaries our goal is not to get people baptized but to get them to the temple where we truly receive eternal life so in the scripture it talks about the Sheaves as everyone that has been baptized and the Garners are the temples so I thought i would just talk about that so you guys pick up on it. we taught a cool lesson about it last night that really touched the family to go to the Temple. The Temple is such a cool experience where you can feel the spirit so strongly. It is definitely one thing i miss most. 

On Saturday I cooked the chicken wrapped in bacon with rice thing and almost killed us because i tried to rush it and i didn't let the chicken defrost all the way so it didn't finish cooking.

Oh and one of our members here that is a way good singer made it onto the Glorious final cut. David Archuleta sang it for the Meet the Mormons video and then they had a contest. they submitted 420 videos and he was one of the few that got picked. if you go watch it he is like the 5th one and he is a big black dude wearing a yellow polo shirt. His family is the one we taught about the temple. On Friday the Elders from Lagrange thought they got locked out of their apt so they stayed with us...the dorks had a key to the top lock the whole time and they weren't really locked out...it was kinda funny. so i got in a pranking mood so if you can think of any good mild pranks to pull on E B they would be greatly appreciated. On Saturday I dumped a huge bucket of Ice water on him while he was showering and Last night while he was going to the bathroom I flipped the breaker to all of the lights in our apartment and convinced him that the power went out because it was raining. I was going to see if i could make it last a few days but it was too funny so i had to tell him...he even heard the breaker click when i turned it off but he still thought the power went out hahahaha.

Oh and the last cool experience of the week. On Thursday we had a zone training meeting. We were asked to get a scripture for every single principle we teach and memorize them a while back when Elder Kopishcke came to our mission. there are 42 total principles. we were told we were going to get tested at ztm. Later our ZL picked on us to show him our scripture...ya we haven't been able to memorize them because I am trying to read the whole BOM first. Anyway we got up there and he acted like an investigator that was struggling with the BOM. Elder B immediately threw me under the bus and expected me to find a specific scripture he was thinking of. Luckily I was able to find it. As soon as I started reading it the spirit hit us all like a train and it helped me find a new thing in the verse. It is Ezk 37:15 I believe and it talks about the stick of Judah and Ephraim and combining them together but out of the 100 times I have showed that scripture to people I had never picked up on it. At the very end it talks about how they will become one in thine hand and so I was able to relate it to him.

Needless to say we threw it in his face and walked away because the spirit was so strong. The meeting was super good and motivational. It was a super awesome week. 

November 10, 2014
I learned something really really cool!!!! Josh Snyder served in this exact same branch and all of the members especially Bennie told me a little about his mission here so that was cool.

Last Monday was kind of interesting. first. We had interviews on Tuesday and nobody to cut our hair except for the sister missionaries so they cut our hair but they aren't allowed to come in our apt so we had to do it on our back porch and the clippers didn't have a long enough cord so we had to use xmas lights as an extension cord so that was kinda funny.

Interviews were really good. It is so fun to be around other missionaries and to get to talk to President and Sister Cottle. The scriptures I picked for the week are all in Alma. 25:6, 26:12, 32:19, 37:13, 37:36&37, 39:11, 42:22.