Hey y'all!
So I have to be quick because I only have 10 minutes on the computer. As you know Elder Carter was transferred and my new companion is Elder Scott from Ogden. He is the same Spanish speaking Elder Scott that spent a week with us in Southaven and has lived across the street from me for the last 5 months. They made him a zone leader and moved him across the parking lot. We are super excited to serve together. We are what is called a Zebra companionship, meaning that we will teach both english and spanish investigators as well as our Zone leader duties. It will be fun.
We had a great week this week, we have basically been falling bass ackwards into blessings all week that culminated with 9 investigators at church. It was awesome, we have about 5 part member families we are teaching right now, so next month could be a great one.
On Friday we had probably one of them most powerful lessons of my mission, we have an investigator we have been working with ever since I have been here, she had completely changed her life and was doing awesome. But then her whole life fell apart around her. She was still holding strong but on Friday we went by and she had fallen back into all her old habits and was struggling. We had no idea what to say, but I had an impression to read from Alma Chapter 5 which is a pretty bold chapter. We started off by telling her that for the next 10 minutes we are going to make all of us feel like the scum of the earth, but by the end we would change our lives, so we did. We figured out everything that was holding us back from being exactly what Heavenly father expects us to be and committed to get rid of them. It was unbelievable how powerful the spirit was. By the time we left her, her entire countenance had changed. We are really excited.
Anyways, I am out of time, but I love y'all! Have a good day!
Love elder Nelson
Monday, August 27, 2012
So long Elder Carter, Welcome Elder Scott!
So long to Elder Carter... and thank you for your hard work, dedication and a great companion, you will be missed! Hello Elder Scott my new Spanish speaking companion...Looking forward to a great time and a lot of hard work.
Monday, August 20, 2012
August 20, 2012
Hey y'all,
So I guess I will start with sharing our story for the week, won't tell you how we got on the subject but we had dinner at a members house last night and ended up having an hour long lesson from the dad about Hysterectomy's...haha with hand motions, youtube videos...the works. It was awesome. haha
Anyway, on to missionary news, Elder Carter is getting transferred, we were both pretty surprised, we figured we would be staying together or I would be leaving, but apparently not, so I will be getting a new companion on Wednesday. Things went well this week, we had a zone conference on Wednesday and our job was to create a scripture chase relay of some sort for missionaries to compete. It was pretty fun. We also were able to get Lamar to institute which ended up going well, even though the teacher decided to take the night to plead for everyone to start dating and get married...(for an hour and a half) he liked it though. We are still having some good success. Hopefully the transition from Elder Carter to the new guy will be a smooth one.
Glad to hear all is well back home. Now I will finish with a nice appropriate joke I was told this week,
"Why do they call PMSing, PMSing"????? "Because mad cow was already taken"!!!
Love you guys,
Love, Elder Nelson
So I guess I will start with sharing our story for the week, won't tell you how we got on the subject but we had dinner at a members house last night and ended up having an hour long lesson from the dad about Hysterectomy's...haha with hand motions, youtube videos...the works. It was awesome. haha
Anyway, on to missionary news, Elder Carter is getting transferred, we were both pretty surprised, we figured we would be staying together or I would be leaving, but apparently not, so I will be getting a new companion on Wednesday. Things went well this week, we had a zone conference on Wednesday and our job was to create a scripture chase relay of some sort for missionaries to compete. It was pretty fun. We also were able to get Lamar to institute which ended up going well, even though the teacher decided to take the night to plead for everyone to start dating and get married...(for an hour and a half) he liked it though. We are still having some good success. Hopefully the transition from Elder Carter to the new guy will be a smooth one.
Glad to hear all is well back home. Now I will finish with a nice appropriate joke I was told this week,
"Why do they call PMSing, PMSing"????? "Because mad cow was already taken"!!!
Love you guys,
Love, Elder Nelson
Monday, August 13, 2012
August 13, 2012
Hey Y'all!!
We had another great week, we found us 8 new investigators and we have some very solid people we are working with. Right now we have 4 baptismal dates and have a few more investigators that we are planning on setting dates with this week. The biggest thing that has contributed to our success is we have had a lot more lessons with members there, it changes the whole lesson. We should be having some baptisms very soon.
We did something pretty cool this week. Our entire zone went down to Hot Springs for what is called a ward council outreach. Each missionary was paired up with a member and was assigned to 6 - 7 less active members. We went out and invited them to a devotional much like the one we did here in Little Rock a couple months ago, we just redid it in the Hot Springs ward, there were some pretty amazing experiences, we were able to find a couple people that had never been to church in Hot Springs but that wanted to come back, as well as a couple of part member families for the missionaries to teach. We still haven't heard the total numbers for the entire outreach, but Brother and Sister Stephens and I had some great success.
Our Zone meeting went really well, it was on improving our teaching skills, we did a pretty fun companion unity activity at the end because Elder Carter and I had been thinking a lot about how important that was. About a week ahead of time we sent out a questionnaire for each missionary to fill out about their companion to find out how well they knew them, then in the meeting we invited 3 companionships up and tested them. We would ask a question and both would write it down then reveal their answers, it was a lot of fun. We ended it on a spiritual note by having a couple of companionships share their favorite scripture and conversion story, we are hoping it helped unify everyone. The zone had another baptism this weekend which takes us to about 5 for the month which is more than we had all last month, we should keep having some throughout the rest of this month.
Things are goin great out here in Little Rock. Thank yall for all your support.
Love, Elder Nelson
We had another great week, we found us 8 new investigators and we have some very solid people we are working with. Right now we have 4 baptismal dates and have a few more investigators that we are planning on setting dates with this week. The biggest thing that has contributed to our success is we have had a lot more lessons with members there, it changes the whole lesson. We should be having some baptisms very soon.
We did something pretty cool this week. Our entire zone went down to Hot Springs for what is called a ward council outreach. Each missionary was paired up with a member and was assigned to 6 - 7 less active members. We went out and invited them to a devotional much like the one we did here in Little Rock a couple months ago, we just redid it in the Hot Springs ward, there were some pretty amazing experiences, we were able to find a couple people that had never been to church in Hot Springs but that wanted to come back, as well as a couple of part member families for the missionaries to teach. We still haven't heard the total numbers for the entire outreach, but Brother and Sister Stephens and I had some great success.
Our Zone meeting went really well, it was on improving our teaching skills, we did a pretty fun companion unity activity at the end because Elder Carter and I had been thinking a lot about how important that was. About a week ahead of time we sent out a questionnaire for each missionary to fill out about their companion to find out how well they knew them, then in the meeting we invited 3 companionships up and tested them. We would ask a question and both would write it down then reveal their answers, it was a lot of fun. We ended it on a spiritual note by having a couple of companionships share their favorite scripture and conversion story, we are hoping it helped unify everyone. The zone had another baptism this weekend which takes us to about 5 for the month which is more than we had all last month, we should keep having some throughout the rest of this month.
Things are goin great out here in Little Rock. Thank yall for all your support.
Love, Elder Nelson
Monday, August 6, 2012
August 6, 2012
Oi!
Here goes the recap of our week. 3 days, 1200 miles, 3 states... 1 night spent in our own bed. I told you what our plans were last week so I won't bore you with them again, but I will say that when we returned home our AC was broken and it was the weekend so the people at the office had gone home, so we have been crashing with the Spanish Elders for the last couple of days.
This week was pretty awesome. We didn't get to do a lot of work in our area, but we set 2 more dates which takes the grand total at the moment to 6, we also had a really cool experience at church. So, we were supposed to have a few people at church, we called them yesterday morning and none of them answer so we are sitting at the back of the chapel just bummed out, none of them were there and to top it off the Stake President had come so we were pretty embarrassed. In the middle of sacrament I had a feeling that we needed to go to this guy named Jamal's house that lived pretty close to the church, but we were in sacrament so I said no. Again, it came to me "get up and get Jamal" "NO" "get up and get Jamal, it's the middle of sacrament come on" "get up and get Jamal, he needs you", "ALRIGHT" haha so I leaned over to Elder Carter and said "I'm going to get Jamal, you comin"? Yep, we ran outside, drove to his house, woke him up and he followed us to church. We sat down feeling pretty good while the the last 20 minutes of sacrament wound down and watched as one by one 5 more of our investigators came in and sat down. It was so cool. After the meeting we asked Jamal how he was feeling and he said "man, I needed to get up there and say something". Unfortunately he didn't know he could. During the day he was asked to introduce himself twice, once in gospel essentials and once in priesthood and both times he said I'm Jamal, gave a brief bio and said I'm planning on being baptized here in the next few weeks. Elder Carter and I couldn't help but smile and give a fist bump behind his back. After priesthood ended he was swarmed by members inviting him to their home and to activities, it was really cool. It taught me real quick not to ignore a promoting.
I am glad ya'll have turned into the missionaries "go to" meal, that is pretty cool. There are very few people out here that we would feel comfortable just showing up and asking to have dinner. Ya'll must be doin something good.
We are looking forward to this upcoming week to get out and work our tails off and find more people. We have a zone training meeting tomorrow that we are planning right now. We aren't sure what to focus on, but we are thinking companion unity and something else to do with teaching. We found out that our mission is one of the top finding and baptizing missions but our percentage of those found who get baptized is the lowest in the States, so we need to improve our teaching.
Thanks ya'll for all your support and prayers, I love ya!!
Love, Elder Nelson
Here goes the recap of our week. 3 days, 1200 miles, 3 states... 1 night spent in our own bed. I told you what our plans were last week so I won't bore you with them again, but I will say that when we returned home our AC was broken and it was the weekend so the people at the office had gone home, so we have been crashing with the Spanish Elders for the last couple of days.
This week was pretty awesome. We didn't get to do a lot of work in our area, but we set 2 more dates which takes the grand total at the moment to 6, we also had a really cool experience at church. So, we were supposed to have a few people at church, we called them yesterday morning and none of them answer so we are sitting at the back of the chapel just bummed out, none of them were there and to top it off the Stake President had come so we were pretty embarrassed. In the middle of sacrament I had a feeling that we needed to go to this guy named Jamal's house that lived pretty close to the church, but we were in sacrament so I said no. Again, it came to me "get up and get Jamal" "NO" "get up and get Jamal, it's the middle of sacrament come on" "get up and get Jamal, he needs you", "ALRIGHT" haha so I leaned over to Elder Carter and said "I'm going to get Jamal, you comin"? Yep, we ran outside, drove to his house, woke him up and he followed us to church. We sat down feeling pretty good while the the last 20 minutes of sacrament wound down and watched as one by one 5 more of our investigators came in and sat down. It was so cool. After the meeting we asked Jamal how he was feeling and he said "man, I needed to get up there and say something". Unfortunately he didn't know he could. During the day he was asked to introduce himself twice, once in gospel essentials and once in priesthood and both times he said I'm Jamal, gave a brief bio and said I'm planning on being baptized here in the next few weeks. Elder Carter and I couldn't help but smile and give a fist bump behind his back. After priesthood ended he was swarmed by members inviting him to their home and to activities, it was really cool. It taught me real quick not to ignore a promoting.
I am glad ya'll have turned into the missionaries "go to" meal, that is pretty cool. There are very few people out here that we would feel comfortable just showing up and asking to have dinner. Ya'll must be doin something good.
We are looking forward to this upcoming week to get out and work our tails off and find more people. We have a zone training meeting tomorrow that we are planning right now. We aren't sure what to focus on, but we are thinking companion unity and something else to do with teaching. We found out that our mission is one of the top finding and baptizing missions but our percentage of those found who get baptized is the lowest in the States, so we need to improve our teaching.
Thanks ya'll for all your support and prayers, I love ya!!
Love, Elder Nelson
August 6, 2012
Because I am so very proud of our Elder, it seems that for once in my life I am not the emotional one when it comes to him??? But this morning as I landed at the Salt Lake Airport bright and early (from visiting Tays in Oklahoma) the airport was filled with new missionaries with their brand new shoes and suits... Some just waiting for their flights, some on the phone talking to family, and I was filled with emotion! Just knowing what each of these Elders have in store for them, and thinking of what the past 21 months have been for our Elder fills me with gratitude (and a little longing)...
We are so very blessed! KJ
We are so very blessed! KJ
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