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.

July 26, 2010

You are very much welcome for that dance class alena haha! (Ty talked Alena into taking a Social Dance class) And now that i think about it, it is a probably a good idea that you are taking more spanish, because my spanish is still horrible. But no we did not kill the mouse we just let it go. Although one of the grandkids of the people we are staying with just straight up stabbed one. I was rather impressed but yet a little saddened out at the same time. Mom i loved the mail and the talks you sent, and I loved the story about tyler praying not to be scared. I love the faith! Thanks for all of yall's prayers; family Grandma and Grandpa, chach and everyone else that is. I will take your advice and just write a letter to yall. So you don't have to worry about making your e'mails shorter. But ya if you could send me those stamps and if Alena could like burn me a church cd or send the alex boye cd that would be awesome. And i will send you the letter when i get the stamps. Love yall so much. Tell Payden to write me too. I think i am going to write steve o too. K bye!

*I'll post the letter when I get it...I know this is a little sparse

July 15, 2010

Hey!

So my letter for this week. This past week has been a pretty difficult week. Pretty much all of the investigators that we hoped to be progressing dropped us. Ironically, they all had something in common: their family had come down this week and would be staying for another week or so. Also, the one person we had a date for baptism was evicted from her house and we don’t know the address to where she is staying. As the saying goes, you need to teach to find and find to teach. The problem is that all the lessons we have taught have been one lesson and then no answer on the door on the next visit. So we have been trying to find those people whom the Lord has been preparing, but they have been eluding us for now. It is all good, cause I know they are there. I just need to work harder on trying do listen to the Spirit. I know for a fact that the Lord sent me here to Chelan for a reason…that is His work, and that if it is not progressing it is something that I am doing so please keep praying for me so I can know what to do. Sorry I couldn’t write this all in an email, but I only have 30 minutes on the library computers and by the time I get done reading everyone’s emails, I have only three minutes left to write. I Love y’alls emails. That video of Nate was hilarious! I always love Alena’s emails they make me so proud, and of course yours mom’s are what I look forward to, Dad’s just keep me so motivated and ready to work, and I love Angela’s and Alisa’s too. I love y’all so much!! Keep praying. I can feel them and I know they are helping.

Love,
Elder Nelson

From Chelan, Washington

Dear Familia,

Alright, so there is a lot that has happened here in this past week. I am glad to say that I am not quite as savage as Amanda, as far as finding and cutting a chicken’s head off. Funny! That is so crazy to think she has been through half of her mission already. As for me, this past week has been awesome. My companion, Elder Acosta, although a native is from Provo and speaks perfect English so it is not like a native companion with Amanda. He is way awesome and this area here is so beautiful. The only somewhat of a letdown is that it is both English and Spanish here, so I might not pick up Spanish as much as I hoped. The Spanish congregation here is a lot smaller than the one in East Wenatchee, with only a couple of families that are members. However, the new Stake Pres., Pres. Huntsaker, told us that he had a vision or a goal that in 18 months that this area would actually be an individual branch. This Sunday we had 1 Spanish family come and 3 other people. So overall I think there were 6 or 7 people that showed up. Yea, that is pretty sad, but I know that with our faith that in 18 months that this area can truly have a branch with all the priesthood authority needed to run it. So I guess this is something y’all can pray for is just the overall growth of the Spanish work here in Chelan. We did have a baptism here this week of a boy named Reuben. He is 9 yrs. Old and is part of a part member family. Hopefully with this baptism we can get his whole family fired up and get the members in his family active again. So I am praying for some miracles this week. We have already seen some, too. We found 6 new investigators this week., 2 of which come from an area where past missionaries have declared as dead. It was way sweet. In this same area I also had a big testimony builder. We found a guy named Jim Johnson. This older man was not born Christian but was converted in his 20’s and for the past 40 years has been studying the Bible. He told us how he had received inspiration from the Holy Ghost about certain things. These things which he told us about were what we believed. He quoted scriptures left and right and summarized chapters and was just a historian of the Bible. I then felt prompted to ask him a simple question, “Well then to you, sir, what is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He then replied that this was a hard question, and that he didn’t know. Throughout our discussion he had mentioned faith, repentance, baptism and receiving the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end, but his 40 years of searching the Bible and his 40 years of knowledge could not put these principles together to form what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is. With a 5 minute read in 2 Nephi 31 or 3 Nephi 11 or 27 we read exactly what His Gospel is. Although at this time he did not accept the Book of Mormon, he said that he would like us to come back. It was really awesome and a testimony to me of the divinity and the importance of the Book of Mormon. We also taught some really crazy Anti’s. Man the Anti’s drive me insane. It is a good thing that my testimony is based on Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost, cause they sure come up with a bunch of crazy stuff. Here is the last story for today. We had 2 mice come into our house, and my companion was all scared…haha. I acted like I was scared for his benefit. But anyways we tried to kinda catch it, but man that little mouse outsmarted us so bad. We caught him on camera and the video is pretty funny. If you ever see Anna Nygaard tell her thanks for the letter.

Elder Nelson

June 28, 2010

Hola Familia! Well as you may know it is transfers this week. So my companion should be arriving back in Layton Utah sometime today. crazy! His full name is Elder Benjamin Jacobson. It was way wierd when he left but I found out who my next companion is going to be, and i will meet him tomorrow. His name is Elder Acosta. Apparently the Lord realized that i needed to learn spanish really bad so he sent me with a native. So i am excited for that. But i am not going to lie i was depressed for like a couple of minutes because i am going to be leaving East Wenatchee as well, and there are so many people that we are so so close with and are progressing so well. BUT LUCY WAS BAPTIZED THIS SATURDAY AND TO BE APART OF THAT WAS SO AMAZING! to see her so happy, and to feel the light in her and see it in her eyes was just so amazing! AND THE CONFIRMATION WAS SO POWERFUL! she was crying and i was like, now this is what the mission is all about! I love it. But i am excited for the other missionaries coming to my area here; Elder Collier and Elder Lively, they are the Zone Leaders and they are going to do work here, I know it. And i know also that the Lord is going to bless us in Chelan, which is where I am going now. I don't think i ever understood what Amanda meant by it being hard to leave an area, but now i realize what she meant. It is hard to leave the people that you have come to love. But on the other hand, I am glad to meet some new faces as far as missionaries go. I don't know why i get so irate about little things that some missionaries do, but i do. I mean they say that they don't understand why they are not having as much sucess as some and its because the little things are so important, and it is the little things that they are not doing. so i want yall always to remember the words of Alma, by small and simple things are great things come to pass. The greatest coaches will always take there teams back down to the fundamentals if they ever see they are struggling. Here is another analogy that i just thought of. In football a wise man once told me to hit them hard and hit them low. I was always a small guy and this was my only way of being able to knock down the bigger opponents. Without comparing myself to the works of satan haha satan tackles us in the same way. In the pre-existence we chose to follow the plan of our Heavenly Father, and with this came both the ability to chose and to receive mortal bodies. This is very important because with these gifts from God we were made stronger than satan can ever become or hope to become. Which is why the scriptures teach us that there is not temptation of affliction that we can not overcome through Christ. Christ is our Coach, and he has taught us all the fundamentals and the plays to defeat the foe that we have once already defeated. We have the advantage, we are a bigger and stronger team and if we execute what we have been taught by the coach we cannot lose. However the opposing team also has an advantage, they have the film from the last game and know what we like to run; they know are weaknesses and strengths; they also have all been perfectly instructed on hitting low. They have learned that when they hit low that the greater part of the man will fall with it. The Film that they own is simply the pre-existence in which we all knew each-other and were truly spirt brothers and sisters. It is here they learned our weaknesses. We as the bigger and stronger team do not have this memory, we have only been instructed by the greatest coach of all time, and can decide whether to do the things he teaches or to do it our own way, as many athletes do. He has taught us the fundamentals of Faith, Repentance, Baptism, and Enduring to the End. He has taught how to excercise these principles, by going to church (practice), Reading the Book of Mormon (Learning the plays and the situations of the game) and Praying (realzing that you can't do it on your own: humility) As we do these things are foundation is strong and we don't have to worry about getting knocked over. However if we do not our foundation is weak and endanger of us getting hit low and being knocked over. This is exactly why satan has coached to hit hard and low. Because if you knock on leg off of a three leged table it will fall. Satan attacks these small areas because he too knows that it is by small and simple things that great things come to pass. And so if he can break down your fundamentals eventually he will win the game as well.
That analogy hopefully made sense because i was just typing as i thought. But i kinda have to go now. But I love yall so much. It was the front two teeth that go knocked out. and my address will not be the same so if you wanna write me wait a while for the right address. Love yall bye!
**You can still write Elder Nelson at the address on this blog. It is the mission office and they will get his letters to him.

June 21, 2010

Alright well this was an awesome week. As apparently yall already know I had somewhat of an accident haha but it's all good. It was this last past p day and originally we had started of playing dodgeball (companion style) which was way fun and which my companion and i had won 3 out of the last 4 games. But then Elder Lively decides that we should switch to basketball for some reason. probably cause he is a baller. But anyways i am guarding an Elder named Elder Andersen ( Ironic) and as you could guess is not all that good at basketball. haha just kidding nick. But anyways he has the ball and tries to some spin around move, not quite sure what he was thinking but he spins right in to me with his elbow swinging right at my open mouth, and bam! One tooth is on the ground and the other one got caught by my giant lip. And i am standing there thinking well that is not good. haha and apparently the first thing i said was, " Do these things grow back?" i think i was in a state of shock though lol but to make a long story short we ran over to the dentist and they gave me two root canals, some vicodin and some antibotics and glued my teeth back on or something. And my lip had swolen frome a black man lip to a giant balloon on my face and so i didn't look so appealing to say the least. But this work is not about how good i look or even about me at all. This is God's work and His glory so we went got me an arby's shake to eat and went and preached the Gospel. And we had an awesome week! Oh and we had a quorumn of the 70 named Elder Pearson come this saturday and speak. And wow there was some power there. He talked about knowing our identity and who we are. And about how there is no such thing as a bad area, only bad missionaries with a bad attitude. And I was like so true, just let me out of here and i am going to go to baptize someone. And there was a lot more too but i do not have my notes, but it was amazing. And was a pivotal point for me as a missionary. As well as the miracles i have seen this week. The miracle family who had found our pass along card. Araceli, Urtiza, y Lorena and her mom and hermana all came to church again this week. And we set up another appointment with them, and found out that Lorena's brother is coming down for friday, Saturday and Sunday. And this is the brother who got baptized in January and has been bearing his testimony over the phone to her ever since. So i can honestly say that there are no coincidences in the gospel. It is not a coincidence that before they moved here that they had been to church and it is not a coincidence that they could not find the church but went to one of the two stores in all of east Wenatchee where we had placed our cards with our number. It is not a coincidence that we were able to teach them and committ them to baptism on the 26th and i repeat it is not coincidence that her brother who is a member is coming down at the end of this week and could possibly have the opportunity of baptizing her. When you are living righteously there are no coincidences. This is God's work, and we our simply His tools that our bringing the message of Him and His church throughout the world. To everyone that reads this e-mail, I want you to know, that I know that The Church of Jesus Christ has been restored here on this earth, by a man named Joseph Smith. Who was called by God to be a prophet to this people. I have never seen Joseph Smith, I have never seen Mormon, Moroni, or God the Father and His Son, but yet I know that they live! And i know this through the power of the Holy Ghost which speaks to all men women and children, and soley testifies of truth. This is HIS church, this is HIS work and I am so thankful to be a part of it. I love yall all so much, and I know that I am in your prayers, and that God does answer those prayers, for i have seen the miracles tender mercies of God for me. Keep praying for me and For Lorena Araceli, Urtiza, and also Lucy. I don't have time to share everything so i am going to have to leave yall with that. LOVE YALL
OH AND POPS AND MAMMA HAPPY BIRTHDAY! 50 blasted years old that is so crazy! 49 is not so bad though. Oh and happy father's day too. YOU ARE THE BEST DAD I COULD EVER ASK FOR AND THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR EXAMPLE.