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