Elder & Sister Dattage: Great things happening in Zuni

June 12, 2016

Hi All,

Hope you have a great start to your Summer. We have received such great pictures from everyone and love all of them. We have a new Elder. He is Elder Daniels from Cody , Wyoming. We just finished dinner and we are getting to know him. Seems like a great Elder and willing to work very hard. Zuni is still dusty , dirty and we still love it.

Wednesday was so amazing. Sister Hattie – some of our family met her while you were here) was a less active member fro 14 years but is now such a good active member. The Elders and Elder Dattage and I visit her every week and give her the lessons and now the follow up lessons. She is so obedient and Spiritual. She always greats us with water and some treats at 10:00 a.m. each morning. Well last week, Nicole her granddaughter, sat in. She has sat in several times but usually at the end of the discussion. The discussion was on Temple and Family History. At the end of the lesson Nicole was ask if she would take the discussion lessons and she said yes she was ready. We were all so happy that she had made that decision. She is 19 and spends most of her time at her grandmas. She works some also. She has been taught by her grandma to pray, read her scriptures and had already accepted a Book of Mormon from the Elders and has been reading it. What a strong Spirit we all felt as she accepted the opportunity to have the lessons. We are happy for her and hope that she will also want to be baptized and come to Church with her grandma. Lots of prayers for sure.

Also another family has been active, less active and now wants their entire family to take the lessons together again. 5 of the 6 are baptized but feel they all need the lessons. That begins tomorrow. The Elders are so hopeful for this family. They work hard and are doing an outstanding job in Zuni. Not a lot of baptisms because so many of the people went on the Placement program. If you are old like we are I am sure you knew some Indians that came on the Placement Program. What happened to many of them is that they lived with active families and went to church. They had to be baptized in order to go on placement and go to school. When they came back to the reservation, most of their parents were not baptized and so were not members of the Church so they did not go to Church at all. Some of them come back when Missionaries work with them. Very few of them stay active on their own. So when the Elders go to find new members they find out they are already baptized but never attend. Some can’t quite remember their baptism. This Mission has the attitude that it is as important to bring an inactive person to activity as it is to baptize. So true and so wonderful. That is what most people are working on. It is a blessing to be a small part of all of this. They are humble and love the Lord and the idea of the blessings of Eternal Families. We all need to remind ourselves what an amazing blessing this is. Most of us have lost people we love so much and we cling to this beautiful blessing from our Father in Heaven.

We have told you so many Marie stories. Elder Dattage has been working on Marie’s old car. I truly think it is glued together totally by now. We sure do love this little lady. What a strong member she is. She is alone with no brothers and sisters and no children. We have her wood box outside as full of wood as we can and know others will step in and help her .

On Friday we did our second District Meeting. We are extremely glad it is over and done. We have a really great district and each meeting we learn more about them and the trials and the wonderful experiences they share. This week was so spiritual as well as so fun. We talked about “To the Rescue, We Can Do it.” We tried to tell each of us that we can continue to serve hard and be examples to those around us. Love these people.

So glad that our part of the Zone Meeting is almost ready. We have been working very hard on it and feel very inadequate to do this. This Project ends up with President Adams and they will use what the 4 Districts do to train new Senior Missionaries. Our part was to: Use Principles and things that are said by our General Authorizes to tell them things we should do to Strengthen Senior Couples by Giving them Substance to their mission call. Each District takes 10 minutes on their subject. We have been working with E/S Boyter to do the Power Point because we are not set up for that at this time. We supplies lots of pictures and put them with the words we felt we should use. It was a mess but as I said last week I sent it to Kim and she did a lot of punctuation changes. I sure do not want a bunch of my goofs going to President Adams. Yikes a Mission is a time to stretch especially for our young Elders but also for us Seniors. Glad that is almost done until the Presentation part.

What a busy week this has been for us and for our family. Some of you are enjoying vacations and we love seeing the picture of Jodi and Jeff and Alicia and Ryan’s kids. Love these cuties. . Others and going to Bear Lake but not to just play – Jill cleaned the house up there so our Ward could go there to camp. Three little kids and one mama. Thanks Jill so much. Emmis little video about everyone being gone is so true to her right now. She probably misses some of her cousins. Shea has been out of town but loved seeing the Watrins enjoying Cache Valley and doing good things here. Lance gets his weekly call from Dad asking him something. Hayden has been at Youth Conference and hope it was wonderful for him. Thanks all of you. Enjoy Summer. It goes so fast and then back to cold and snow.

Brother and Sister Solomon are in the Zuni mission presidency. They were in Logan for a niece's wedding and stopped by the shop! They sent this picture to my parents! So Fun!!!