August 30, 2010

This week was way good. We were able to teach a lot and find a lot of new people. But I can't remember last week at all so we are going to have to stay with only half of the letter. And oh my goodness that is crazy about Skylar. holy cow! That is a good motivation for me to start learning my spanish even more. I can't have him speaking better spanish than me now haha. That would be legit if I got to train him! Alena awesome job on your math test! Keep it up and work hard in school. And that is hilarious about Nate and the potty training as well as Mike and Kevin losing all that weight. I have actually lost seven pounds and just started gaining it back. That is only because I have no muscle and am just getting rechancho (chubby). Anyways this week was way good. We found a kid named Chris who is way golden except for the fact that he is leaving to college here pretty soon, and so he won't get baptized here but hopefully we can get him to start coming for church the next couple weeks before he leaves. We also found a girl named Syndi who is like fifteen but is way interested and so there is definately some potential there. Pero no se que es no correcto in mi mente porque mi habilidad para to differentiate between ages has gotten terrible. I could have sworn she was like 20 when we started teaching her. Then I asked my other companions and Elder Oliver was like ya I thought she was like 23 and Elder Pound was thinking she was 18 or so. So apparently it gets worse the longer you've been out. Pero Alena don't you dare talk to a guy that is above your grade, in fact just don't talk to any guys. We also taught a girl named Victoria who is also going off to college, but it is a local college so she'll still be living here. It was an awesome lesson though. We taught her the gospel (Lesson 3)( By the way I think that ya'll should start studying PMG like for FHE or something) and so we mentioned how the first step is to have faith, that leads to repentance, that leads next to baptism and as soon as we mentioned baptism she pretty much just freaked out and said that she was not interested in being baptized and that she had her own beliefs and stuff. So then we asked her what baptism was; and she told us how it is when someone wants to show their willingness to unite with a ceartain church. And so we explained to her why that was not necessarily correct, and kinda explained what it was to her. And then I just bore my testimony to her about how we weren't changing her beliefs at all, and how in fact that she already believed everything we believed it was just up to her to remember. And how I received my answer to my prayer about the Book of Mormon 2 weeks later after I had prayed and how the Spirit bore testimony to me that it was true and brought back to my remembrance of the time when I had gotten on my knees and asked. And the spirit was just so strong, and I just felt prompted to ask her is she would follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptized by someone holding the priesthood authority of God. And she just kinda looked at the ground for a while just thinking. And then she responded that she would think about it. We then extended a date to which she said no to. But the fact that she had gone from a definate no, to saying that she would think about it after taking some consideration; is truly a manifestation of the power of the Spirit. So please pray for her as well. I believe that she has a lot of potential and as she follows those feelings of the Spirit she will know that this is true. Also thank you so much for the prayers for Guadalupe and his wife. We went over to teach him this week, and he told us to wait outside while he got his Book of Mormon, pues su el libro de mormon. And while we were waiting for him to return, his wife opened the door and told us to come inside cause it was cold outside. May not sound big but it is. Last week according to Elder Oliver was the first time she had said hi to us. And this week was that and hopefully next week she might just sit down in the discussions. But that is all I have time for today. Keep praying. I love yall so much. I pray for yall every day, as well as Chach, Payden and Steve O. Now I will pray for Skylar, too. I love yalll so much and have a good week. Alena do good in school.

August 24, 2010

August 25, 2010

Dear Familia,

So there was quite a few good things that happened this week. We got a new elder and we had a visit from a 70, and we have a guy named Leonardo Davila on date to be baptized on Sept. 25th. The visit with the 70 happened on Monday of this week so that’s why I’m writing on Tuesday. It was so awesome. He mentioned that he believed that the thing that made the missionaries the weakest was their prayers and then he read all these scriptures about prophets and missionaries wrestling, laboring, struggling with all their heart in mighty prayer and such. I think that probably goes for every person in the church excluding the prophet, apostles, and Mom & Pops. He talked about how the Spirit should direct our prayers. In fact I think he used the scripture D7C 100:5-8 and said that as we pray by the Spirit that God should give us the words to pray. Then he read 3 Nephi 19:24 about how the people were given the words that they should pray. It was really interesting and it is something I never really thought about before. We also need to pray for specifics in order to get specific blessings. It was an awesome talk. I actually can’t finish this letter because I have to go, but I love y’all so much.

Love,
Elder Nelson

August 16, 2010

*sorry we just got this letter...it got lost in the mail for a second, but made its way to us

**Just got this today. It is not his email. I have not gotten one of those today. It is the letter he promised us from last week. It was unfortunately delivered to the wrong house and they just got their mail today and brought it over.
Here it is:
Hola!

I am trying to thinkg what to write about the good old Warden (the city where he is at). I guess the 75% Hispanic is pretty accurate. Did it also say on the web page that on different sides of it, it has a potato factory, a cow stockyard, a pig farm, and something else? Haha! It stinks really bad if it ever gets above 85 degrees, but it makes you wanna work even harder to get into the door. Holy Cow I saw Kylee's pics and she has changed soooooooo much! She kinda looks like Angela; which is too bad. haha! Just kidding sis. Seriously, it is all good, she is cuter by far. Anyways back to Warden. It is way small, but as far as the English Ward goes the LDS population is pretty big. Spanish not so much, though. So we definately need some prayers there. We already have met a lot of new Spanish people here that are looking pretty good. One named Guadalupe is going really well, and is on date to be baptized on Sept. 18th. The only problem with him is that his wife wants nothing to do with the church and so he does not want to get baptized until his wife softens her heart and is willing to come to the baptism. So pray that his wife will softer her heart. There is alos a really awesome guy named Carlos who is really golden. We taught him and his girlfriend Perla. Perla lost all her faith in God and stuff a while back. So we talked to them about the loe of God and prayer. She started opening up and she told us how when her partents got divorced when she was 8 and so slowly by slowly she just started losing all her faith. Then we started taling more about prayer and everyday miracles. Then Carlos jumped in and pretty much bore his testimony on prayer...so bomb! And my companion asked her to name all the miracles she had seen in just the past two months. She just started listing them off and afterwards he was just like "wow, I've just never thought of anything like this before." It was awesome. The only problem there is both soccer and work on Sundays. So if y'all could pray for them that would be awesome. There are more awesome people as well as crazy people (one guy tried to tell us that the popes were before Christ, had written the Bible and that they even started the Mormon Church. But it is definitely a good area.

Love y'all so much!!

Love,

Elder Nelson

August 9, 2010

Hey Familia! ya sorry yall might not of gotten the letter because I just got it back in the mail on Thursday. Apparently i forgot the stamp. haha. sorry. But you should be getting it either today or tomorrow. But wow there has been some miracles and challenges this week. We were doing awesome in the beginning of the week. We found a lot of good people and were able to teach a lot of lessons. But then the challenges hit on thursday, as absolutley nothing happened. We didn't find anybody or teach anybody. But we kept our heads up and we knew that Friday was going to be awesome! We had four lessons set up with our four most solid investigators. Dustin, Missy, Jazmin, Jesus. All have been progressing so much and doing so good. So we went over to Jesus house to teach him at 4:30 and we find out from a neighbor that he had gone down to Wenatchee to drink! he has a terrible drinking problem, and always is telling us how he just wants to be clean. And that he just wished that he could go to sleep at night with no bad things going through his head. And he is pretty sincere about it because everytime we have had gone over there he is ready to go. So i was pretty mad when i heard the news. But i kept my head up and said, just gotta go to the next lesson. Well a 5:30 we go to teach Jazmin and it turns out she had an emergency call to california. And so I was like well this is lame. And so 6:30 rolls around and we get a call from Missy who tells us how her sister just came in town and so she is not goiong to be able to do it a afterall. I was getting irate by then. But I knew we had Dustin at 8 so i kept my head up. But to no avail we got a call around 7 from his wife( who i don't know if it told you, but she is a member and really cool) and she tells us that they kinda got in a little fight and so he left to go fix his motorcycle or something and so we went 0 for 4 and it was pretty depressing. But that night i just prayed really hard, and the next morning I studied Moroni 7: 27-33 i believe and it just really hit home to me. And then the next couple of days miracles started happening again. We were able to meet wi th Jazmin on Sunday. And she related to us how she was really depressed and having a rough day, and how she had gone into the juerta and had read the one section of the pamphlet we had given her about how to know these things are true. And she prayed about it ! and she just told us about the immense peace she felt. And to make a long story short she is on date to be baptized Aug . 28th! But transfer calls came and so I am moving to Warden with Elder Oliver! so i will do work over there! Love yall.

Letter dated Aug. 2, 2010

*we just got this letter this week because Elder Nelson forgot to put the stamp on it (some things never change) and it came back to him and he had to send it again...it was worth the wait, though.

Hola Familia,

So this week was a little different because my companion left down t o a meeting for the leaders for the 1st part of the week. He is not a leader right now, but the actual district leader, Elder Sessions, is going home this transfer and asked President not to go to the meeting. (Mostly because he had 8 people of date to be baptized and had a bunch of appointments set up with them that he did not want to miss) So my companion went down there and I went up to Brewster with Elder Sessions and Elder Hash (I love them both). So I was with them from Tuesday afternoon through Thursday night. Monday night was ridiculous though because from 6-9 we were supposed to be out working on p-days, but my companion had not yet called anybody for a ride and as you can guess nobody was answering or just couldn’t go and so finally we figured something out about 7:15 that night, except our ride is like 30 minutes drive to their house and we would have to spend the night. So we get all packed and I get done packing about 7:45 and he is still packing. So I am thinking, “well at least I will try to set up an appointment for when we get there so today hasn’t been a total waste”. As I am making the call, he asks what I am doing and just gets mad claiming that we won’t have time to do that. I am like “why not?” He tells me how we have to drive in the total opposite direction to get a signature from the Bishop. (a paper that was supposed to be signed the week that I had first arrived in the area) It is a good think that I am a pretty mellow guy because I was able to hold in my frustration without complaining, but man was I irate. So around 8:45 we got to the town where the people lived and he is just driving to their house like he was perfectly fine with not doing anything that day. So I just told him that we should go do some tracting for the last 15 minutes and so he agrees and we go out and tract for the remaining time. Well, nothing happened. The moral I learned is that procrastinating is NO BUENO. I would rather work way hard and be rejected at every door than only work for 15 min and have something good happen, because it doesn’t matter who rejects me because I refuse to reject the Lord and by procrastinating that is exactly what we are doing. We are rejecting the Lord’s time. On a new subject, he left at like 5:30 am on Tuesday and my companion for the afternoon was the people who we stayed with 16 yr. old son. It is so crazy to see how much I have changed from the time I was 16. Alena don’t ever say no or complain about doing something mom or dad ask. (at least not when people are around) It looks SO BAD! So I got a ride up to Brewster with him to join Elder Sessions and Hash and it was so fun. We were getting in everyone’s door and were just doing a triple testimony threat. I loved how Elder Sessions would switch over the lesson to Elder Hash and I; even though our Spanish is terrible. It made the lessons a lot more unified and powerful. We ended up getting a lot of NI’s and having 3 more on date for baptism. I just love bearing testimony so much. I think the difference in all my companions has been this. With Elder Jacobsen we basically had a routine going on so I always knew when I was going to speak and every so often bear my testimony, so I was fine with that. With Elder Acosta it doesn’t matter if it is English or Spanish I don’t get the chance to speak or bear testimony very much. Mostly that is because we don’t have very many people we are teaching, so that is hard sometimes. I think he thinks when I pause that I am at a loss for works, but in reality I am just trying to allow the Spirit to tell me what I need to say. So every time I pause, he just gets on his horse and never dismounts. With the Brewster Elders, we were all three just testifying all the time and is was cool because we just knew not to step in when the other person was trying to receive the promptings of the Spirit. Then Thursday rolled around and I came back into Chelan and I was pumped to get things rolling. The cool thing was that I could see a change in Elder Acosta. We went out Friday morning and started doing our thing. From then on everything went pretty well. So as a summary of the big couple of things that we had happen in just the past couple days: we had an amazing lesson with Dustin, the finding of a truly prepared woman named Missy and some finding of some less active members that could help the work out. The thing with Dustin is that he has been taught for years and all the missionary reports say that he is very nice and says yes, but just can’t keep commitments and never talks or opens up. So we went over there just hoping that he had read; but he had not. It was frustrating. We skipped our plans and decided to just read from the chapters he was supposed to read from. After we had done all that, I was just quiet the whole time just waiting for God to tell me what to say and then I simply asked him what he wanted most in his life. To which he responded, “happiness”. So I bore my testimony how the Book of Mormon could do just that. My companion then told him that he was not just a baptismal statistic. I then bore my testimony about how much I love him and as my eyes filled with tears and as the Spirit bore witness of everything we said, he opened up. He muttered with his voice cracking that he wanted to know the truth and just how hard it was. It was just this one sentence that he said, but it was a sentence of hope and desire that caused him to shake when he said it. He then said the closing prayer something that he had said he didn’t want to do the past couple of times. It was so awesome. As far as Missy, she has a 2 yr. old and a 5 yr. old. Her husband is in jail for the abuse of her kids and we found her tracting. She just kept on saying how she wanted to see us and how much they needed us in their lives right now. So we should be teaching her this Friday. She has met with missionaries once before, outside her door and mentioned that there was just a different feeling when she was talking with them. So cool and totally prepared. I think this is all I have time for and I love y’all so much!

Elder Nelson

Ty's Letter

So this week went pretty good. We have a guy named Dustin Elis on date to be baptized for August 15th and I am excited for him. He is actually the husband of the bishop's daughter. Me and Elder Hash just tracted into them and taught him, and had no idea that he had been taught in the past. So that was fun and he is really going to need some prayers. We also found a really nice family. We taught both the husband and the wife, once on separate occasions. He believes in God, but not that he answers direct questions and he doesn't believe in organized families. The wife, Guadalupe, is a really strong Catholic that reads the scriptures a lot, but what she wants most is her family to come together and believe in Christ. So we are just praying that we can get an appointment with their whole family at once. I loved pop's analogy about the work being compared to the ball game. I mean God's team is going to win no matter what. Granted I am not a player that wants tosit on the bench. If He allows, I want to get a couple of interceptions for the team and help get the win. I think sometimes, it is hard to realize that the scout team is often what makes the starters as good as they are, and a good player has to accept His rule, but yet always strives to do his best and become the starter. Maybe that is the concept of life. Working as hard as you can to:
A. Make the starters better
B. Make yourself better in order to become the starter if the coach allows and then work hard to remain the starter and to keep confidence in the coach.