I GOT MY REASSIGNMENT!!!!!!!

I'll be sending out that big email later today, but I just wanted to let you all know where I am going... First I'll tell you where people in my district are going... Elder Hatch, Elder Brown, and Elder Clinger are all going to Albuquerque New Mexico. Sister Jackson is going to Reno Nevada. Elder Priest and Elder McEwan are going to Morriston New Jersey or something like that... Elder Bitnoff and Sister Spencer are going to Jacksonville Florida... Some Elders from the other district are going to Billings Montana, so that's nice that I'm not going there since I have a whopping -3% body fat... Actually, it's probably closer to 2% since being here at the MTC. :)

And then Sister Beus, Sister Perez, and I, Elder Matt Dalton got reassigned to........ INDEPENDANCE MISSOURI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Holla. DEUS E OTIMO. I am so excited!!!! How cool is that?? I am seriously so flippin' excited to go somewhere that has so much history! I have talked to a few missionaries who are from there and they say that it's a way sweet mission!!! I am so stoked! Just when I thought the mission couldn't get any better, it got 389498397x better!! Missionary work is totally rad and I can't think of any other thing I'd rather be doing! I report to the travel office at the MTC at 5am on Monday, and then my flight will be leaving at 815 or something... I'll let you know all of the details later, I just don't have my travel plans, I left them in my residence! I'll be arriving in Missouri at 255 or somewhere around there! I will be there for at least six weeks while I wait for my visa.. Chances are very good that I will be there longer than that, which I would be totally fine with because I know that the Lord is putting me where I need to be. I still remember going there for Emily's graduation trip, and it was so awesome! Now I get to experience it from a whole different perspective!! I am truly so excited! Dad I really wish that you could be there when I call mom from the airport, but I will definitely talk to you on mother's day.... Even though you're my father! :) Mom, I'll be calling you sometime on Monday morning from 6-8 or somewhere from there, SOOOO be ready! :) I love you all so much and I will be keeping you all updated! Thank you all so much for your prayers.. There are some nasty sicknesses going around, and I got sick again this week, which is TOTALLY fine because I always keep a positive attitude, but I am just getting over the sickness which is great because I want to be healthy for when I talk to my new mission president, President Donald J. Keyes. This church is true. It is the only way to true happiness. I love this gospel so so so so much, and I absolutely cannot wait to get to Missouri and be apart of this great work. Well, you guys will be hearing from me again today, but I gotta go finish my laundry.

Love you all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Elder Dalton 

HELLO FAMILIA E AMIGOS!!!

Oi Dalton Familia!!!

Eu amo voces!! i love you guys all so much and i am so so so happy that i have this opportunity to share the gospel!! i love the life that Heavenly Father has blessed me with!! this next week i will be getting my reassignment... it will either be on wednesday or thursday!! I am excited to find out where i am going since i have found out for myself that Heavenly Father puts me where i am needed!! the language is coming along smoothly because DEUS E OTIMO and he has been helping me out a ton!!! i know beyond a shadow of a doubt that i wouldn't be doing this well with the language if it wasn't for Him. in Luke 1:37 it says, "porque para Deus nada e impossivel" and i know that to be so true!! i truly am so grateful for all of the prayers that are said on my behalf, i can definitely feel the impact of them and i am so grateful for them!! this week has been an awesome one!! i love love love being a representative of my Savior, Jesus Christ!

so after i emailed and everything last friday, i got progressively worse and i wasn't able to go to class even though i really wanted to! later that night i asked elder hatch to give me a blessing and he did... he told me that by my faith i will get better. after the blessing i felt a little better! i went straight to bed!

April 13th is the day that i will always remember. it was definitely a turning point for my mission. let me explain.. i woke up and i felt like crap, not gonna lie. i was not feeling well, and i wanted to just keep sleeping but i got up and went to class. irmao james was the teacher. we talked about the Book of Mormon. our group read Mosiah 2 and it was awesome. after i studied it on my own and i got so much stuff out of it because i actually feasted upon the words of Christ and i loved every minute of it. then we had lunch and i ate two hamburgers and lots of cookies! yum.. after lunch we had class with irmao rogers and this is where Heavenly Father started pouring out the blessings. We got to do a thing called Training Resource Center and it was the greatest thing of my life! Elder Hatch and I taught this member who is from... (drum roll please) West Jordan. the nerves and butterflies I had going into the lesson flew right out the window because i had something in common with her. keep in mind that we are doing this in Portuguese  we talked about the Book of Mormon then we asked her what her favorite scripture was. then she asked us and then we shared our testimonies. the Spirit was so strong. i know that the Spirit was helping me know what to say! it was rad. guess what?? we got to teach another person, and this time it was a real investigator!!!! she was in there with two members and then we got to teach her. she was speaking portuguese muito rapido and we were able to understand her. we only brought a Book of Mormon, the Bible, and a dictionary... we had no notes whatsoever. we stared with a prayer and it definitely brought the Spirit into the room! we taught her about the Book of Mormon. we had her read the last two paragraphs of the introduction. then i felt prompted to read her moroni 10:3-5... i read it, not perfectly of course. then i bore my testimony and i told her how i knew it was true and how much i loved it. i promised her that if she read it, that she would come to know of it's truthfulness by praying sincerely to Heavenly Father! she was understanding everything the Spirit was telling me to say. to top it off, elder hatch bore the most awesome testimony!!! we prayed with her and left.. she was so grateful for our message! i was so happy afterwards and it's because the Spirit was helping us every step of the way! "i know that i am nothin; as to my strength i am weak; therefore i will not boast of myself, but i will boast of my God, for in his strength i can do all things..." Alma 26:12.. DEUS E OTIMOOOO!!!! and i know we wouldn't have been that successful if it wasn't for Him. I will ALWAYS boast of my God and give thanks to him because i KNOW that i am nothing without Him! this whole experience makes me so excited to eventually get to Brasil so I can start preaching His gospel full time to real people! This church is so true and i seriously am so incredibly blessed to have this opportunity to serve Him. This past week i have grown to love this gospel so much! to make that day even better, that night my sinus infection was nonexistent!!! holla.

so sunday's in the mtc are awesome! we had tons of time to study. elder hatch and i had the awesome opportunity to pass the sacrament to our branch, it was soooo tight!!! we had a devotional and greg droubay was the speaker. he spoke about how rad the church is in new york and london! after the devotional, we watched the Joseph Smith movie and it was so amazing. he is such an inspiration to me. i aspire to be as spiritually strong as his someday, i know it won't happen but i sure hope i can be half the man he was!

monday was pretty normal... honestly nothing too exciting happened :)

on tuesday i memorized 111 verbs with the help of my incredible Father in Heaven.. we had a devotional and guess who was the speaker??? RICHARD G. SCOTT. how cool is that??? he talked about how to communicate with heavenly father! it definitely was a fantastic talk!

wednesday we got to host new missionaries and i hosted a missionary who is also going to brazil... i memorized how to invite someone to get baptized and i also memorized Romans 1:16 in portugues and luke 1:37 in portugues!! i spoke the last half of the day in portugues and it was extremely helpful! i love the portugues language!

thursday waas just a solid day, nothing spectacular happened!

 

so i read a quote by elder holland on wednesday, and i want to make his words mine...

"I want it absolutely clear when I stand before the judgement bar of God that I declared to the world... that the Book of Mormon is true."   I want to live my life in such a way that this quote can be true for my life. SO. I want to let you all know that I have a testimony of this great gospel! i have found out for myself that the book of mormon is true! I have never been so happy in my life! and i know that it is simply because i am serving my heavenly father! he has given me so much, and serving a mission for ONLY two years, is the least i could do for him! i know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true! Joseph Smith was the prophet of the restoration and i know that he saw heavenly father and Jesus Christ in the sacred grove! i am so excited to see where i get reassigned this week.. i know that where i am going to be called, is the right place for me. i know that heavenly father knows each of us individually and i know that he loves us all. this church is so true... it just makes sense. i am so grateful for the book of mormon. i cannot wait to leave the mtc so i can start preaching the good stuff! i love you all! i hope to hear from all of you this coming week since i will only have one more p-day in the mtc.. i love you all SOOOO much! thank you for all of your prayers! i know that they help me get through the day with a positive attitude. always remember to smile because i told you to! God loves us all and nothing is impossible if we put our trust in Him. Love you guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DEUS E OTIMO

Elder Matthew David Dalton

HELLO FAMILIA!!!

Hello everyone!!! Can I just say that I am such a blessed young man! I have the gnarliest sinus infection right now, but I don't even care because I'M ON A MISSION and I'm keeping a positive attitude! Having a positive attitude helps every aspect of life! I love being on a mission and being in the MTC. I know that I am in the place that I am supposed to be!

SO. Let me update all of you and tell you what has happened this week...

On Saturday and Sunday, we watched a broadcast of this thing called, General Conference. It was phenomenal. I LOVE being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! This gospel is so true and last weekend definitely was one of the best I have ever had! It is so fun watching it with a ton of missionaries! I had lots of favorite talks, and I felt like a majority of them were directed right towards me! Sunday night we had a devotional and the singing group, Vocal Point, was the guest. They sang a couple of songs and a couple of the singers bore their testimonies, it was a night to remember for sure! On Monday, during personal study, I was reading in Alma 54 and 55! It was starting to talk about the Stripling Warriors and it was making me so pumped! They had so much courage to go into that battle! I hope someday I can be like one of those studs! Later, after dinner, I only spoke Portuguese and it was so neat because I was speaking pretty good and I was starting to think in Portuguese! I feel like Monday was a huge step in the right direction, language-wise and spiritually. During personal time on tuesday, I read more about the Stripling Warriors. I seriously love the Book of Mormon SO much. I read Alma 56:48 and I instantly thought of you mom, thank you so much for your incredible example! We had a devotional on Tuesday night and Gerald Lund was the speaker.. He talked about revelation and I learned a ton! The gospel seriously makes so much sense! I truly do have a testimony of it's truthfulness. On Wednesday, I read more about the Stripling Warriors and it was so awesome! We also watched new missionaries come in! It definitely did not make me when I got dropped off. I can't believe that that was almost a month ago! Speaking of which, next Wednesday we get to host the new missionaries so that will be totally RADICAL. I'm stoked to give some missionaries a good first impression of being a missionary! I wanna be the type of host that mine was. I felt so welcomed to the MTC and I wanna be that type of missionary host! Yesterday, during language study, I memorized 66 verbs in Portuguese!!!! How about that? I give all the credit to my Heavenly Father and the Spirit for helping me out with learning the language so well! Irmao Rogers and another teacher did a teaching demonstration. I loved how they were smiling the whole time! I wanna be the type of missionary that is always smiling, regardless of how hard the mission gets! I love learning the Portuguese language, and I know that if I keep doing my best, I will eventually be fluent sometime down the road! I love this great gospel! I know that it is the only way to eternal happiness! I know that the Church of Jesus Christ is true. I also know for myself that the Book of Mormon is true. This week really helped strengthen my testimony of the Book of Mormon. I love all of you guys so much! I know that families can be together forever and I am so excited to spend eternity with all of you! Thank you so much for all of your examples! I love getting letters and emails from all of you! Oh and mom and dad, YOU TWO ARE THE BEST PARENTS IN THE WORLD. You are all in my prayers. Mom, anybody can email me, so you can let people know that! I love you all. Until we meet again, God be with you. Oh and remember that DEUS E OTIMO. Oh and I will probably get my reassignment in two weeks! I love you guys! I look forward to hearing from all of you this week! Thank you for all of your prayers! I can definitely feel them throughout the day! Eu te amo.

Elder Matt Dalton

My boi, Elder Heward and I

Elder Heward and I

Elder Bitnoff

  

Elder Bitnoff and Elder Hatch

Elder Priest and I, he gave me plastic sheets

My plastic sheets

Picture Time

Group Picture...me, Hatch, Heward and Bitnoff

Me and Elder Hatch

Me and Elder Bitnoff

Selfie in the bathroom :)

Elder Bitnoff trying to have fun with the wheelchair