April 17, 2012

Hey y'all,

So, I got the transfer call this morning... really weird, I have now been here for 6 months, but it has flown by. I'm not too happy I am having to head out. Elder Ford text President and asked if I could be left here, but it sounds like I'm needed elsewhere.

This past week has been an interesting one. We are pushing George's date back because he just isn't quite ready. We want to make sure he understands what he is doing. Hopefully in a couple of weeks he will be baptized. We found out on Wednesday that one of our investigators passed away. Her daughter who is like 30 asked us to come over and talk to the family. We had a good talk with them. We were really glad that even though they are very active in another church they trusted us enough to have us come over and help out. We have a lot of hope for them. It is a husband and wife and their 5 kids. The wife is a sister to a member of the Branch up here. They have started into the Book of Mormon, and we are praying they will find answers as they go.

Talk to y'all next week from wherever the heck I end up. There are like 20 areas opening up, so it could be anywhere.

Love ya,

Elder Nelson

April 9, 2012

Hey y'all,

We had a good week this Easter. We are getting a little more settled into our new place, we do have hot water! Now we just need to get a stove, refrigerator and a dish washer.

We had a bit of an uneventful week. We did have an awesome lesson with a family we started teaching. The mom is the sister of a member here. On the way over, the member called us and said "I can't be there tonight, but I just found out that they have invited a baptist preacher over too", So we were preparing for the worst, and praying for the best. When we first got there he hadn't shown up yet, so we started praying that he wouldn't come. Haha. We definitely wouldn't have had a problem bashing with him, but the spirit is never there when someone bashes. Well, he just decided not to show, and we had an awesome lesson. Hopefully we will be able to go back by and see them again soon.

Being District Leader is going pretty well. It is a bit stressful, having to plan a District meeting every week. Right now I am still praying and trying to figure out what to do it on tomorrow. As some added incentive, President Peterson is going to start visiting Dist. Meetings, so that will add some pressure, but it is all good. They always end up being okay.

Elder Ford and I did receive your package, and he said to tell you thanks! We both wore our new ties to church and had quite a few compliments on them.

Hope all is well back home!!

Love, Elder Nelson

April 2, 2012 THE BIG MOVE TO HUMBOLDT!!!

Hello!!!

This week was pretty awesome! On Tuesday we had District meeting and I was able to get Sister Olinger to come share her testimony with the District, it went really well. Then, I went to Dyersburg on an exchange and to interview a family that they baptized this week. It was really cool. Doing baptismal interviews is one of my favorite things to do now.

On Friday we officially moved down to Humboldt. We have been roughing it a bit, we had no running water until this morning so we had filled up a barrel with water and were using that to take I guess a sponge bath. Also, with no running water meant no toilets, so the back yard doubled as a commode. We finally got the water on this morning, so we had a shower. Problem is that there is no hot water... It was rough.

Conference was pretty awesome. The satellite was down, so Saturday morning we went down to Jackson and watched. We had one of our investigators able to come down, his name is George.Elder Scott's talk I got the impression that we needed to call one of our investigators named Cory that we hadn't seen in a few months. I called him up and invited him to come to Priesthood with us. We all hopped a ride with Brother Fisher down tho Jackson again. Yesterday we went back down there again to watch Sunday sessions and in-between we went with the Sisters serving there to a members house for lunch.

Well I would keep writing but my time on the computer is up.

Love y'all!!

Love Elder Nelson

March 26, 2012

Hello family,

It is so weird to hear about all of the younger guys in the ward heading out on their missions. Aren't they like 10 years younger than me??

This past week was pretty awesome, we started working more with some of the investigators we had found and were able to set 4 dates. Only one of them came to church, his name is George, and he seemed to like it. After he asked us to give him a blessing because he is going in for back surgery today. We also had a training meeting down in Memphis that was pretty awesome. We talked about the importance of the spirit. It was pretty cool right when we got back from the meeting we were on a real spiritual high and had some of the most spiritual lessons ever. They also were so much smoother and different than most. Kind of gave me a glimpse of what we can do with the spirit.

So, this morning one of the memos here, Brother Warren picked us up and took us fishing here in Trenton. It was a ton of fun. We each caught about 4 fish each and I caught my first catfish! Then he took us to his place and cooked us up some deer steaks. Just FYI, I'm going to move back to the South...I'm buyin into the southern way of life.

We are going to be moving down to Humboldt this week, so it you send anything you can send it to our new address at 163 Medina Hwy, Humboldt, TN. 38343

I love you all!!

Love Elder Jake Nelson

March 12, 2012

Hey y'all!!!

We had a pretty awesome week. I dropped off Elder Dannatt on Wednesday, he was transferred to Pine Bluff Arkansas, I have only talked to him once since he left though.

My new companion is Elder Ford, from Layton Utah. He has now been on his Mission for 6 months. He spent the first 6 down in Memphis, in a place called Orange Mound.

How is Oklahoma? You still need to be sure and send me a t shirt from there. I'm glad you noticed how many churches there are. Haha. It's nuts huh? From the library we are at I could throw a rock and hit probably 8 different churches. Y'all should drive through the ghetto once while you are there. It is interesting to see little houses with church signs out front. I'm still trying to figure out what the difference between 1st, 2nd, southern, and all of the like 1000's of them. It's nuts.

We had a pretty good week this week. We ended up having 5 people to church which was awesome. The Branch Presidents wife invited her friend and kids. Hopefully we will be able to keep teaching them. The kids loved church.

We aren't sure when exactly we are going to be moving down to Humbolt, should be in the next two weeks. We just need to finish up a little on the house down there. We are pretty excited. It's a nice place. I'll get y'all the address as soon as I remember to.

Anywho, I love y'all, thanks for all you do.

Love, Elder Nelson

February 27, 2012

Hey y'all!!!

Had a weird week. I told you that we were going down to Memphis for a mission tour and to hear Elder Allen speak. He is the head of the missionary department for the church. We went down there on Thursday and it was awesome, and I also stayed down for Leadership training on Friday. Both days war intend to Elder Allen and President Peterson as well as a guy named Brother Donaldson for about 7 hours. It was sweet. The mission is going to change a ton. They talked about some of the things that the mission has done just as traditions, like a conference call every Monday night with the leadership in the mission. Well, all the things that aren't in the book are now gone, so we won't have months zone meetings either, which means I get to prepare more district meetings... We are pretty excited though. He also said no more tracking!?!? haha his words were "it's stupid, it's unproductive, stop... so we are going to be working a lot more with the members. It is going to be a lot different, but will boost the mission in the long run. We have been averaging about 30 baptisms a month as a mission, but we have set a goal to start getting 80 and then go even farther and get 150 a month! We are really excited.

Next week we will find out who is getting transferred, but it is sounding like Elder Dannatt will be leaving. It is pretty amazing how much he has grown over the last couple of months. It has been pretty cool to watch.

Tell everyone hello for me!

I love you guys!

Love, Elder Nelson

February 21, 2012

Hey family!

So, the baptism this week... It will go down As the most difficult baptism of my mission. Everything that could go wrong, did. I will have to give you the details once I get home. BUT it happened, and it ended up being awesome. Demitri got a call Saturday night that his mom had gone in for surgery and had some complications. He had to hop on a bus at 9:00 that night for North Carolina, so he hasn't been confirmed yet, but should be this week or next.

This upcoming Week is going to be pretty cool as well. Today we are going to help a member move, which will probably take most of the day, tomorrow we are first going to help the Branch President cut some limbs out of his tree, then we are going down to Humbolt to help the Fishers out. He is having to get everything moved out of his old house Wednesday, because the lady he sold it to is moving in. We are also helping him put a kitchen in...the Fishers are the Corbetts of Treton, they are awesome, they usually feed us a couple times a week. They have a couple of sons who are living in Utah, I think one lives in Taylorsville, the other in Mapleton?

Anywho, then on Thursday, we are going to Memphis for a mission tour. Elder Allen, who is over the missionary department of the church is visiting the mission, so he will be speaking to us. We are all pretty excited, then we may be doing some service on Saturday, so it is going to be an interesting week. Hopefully we will be able to find some people to teach and get some lessons in between service and Memphis.

I love you guys!

Love, Elder Nelson

February 13, 2012

Hey all!!!

We had us a really good week. Elder Hanneman and Elder Gerber came up and worked with us one day this week. Elder Hanneman is the one that is going to play baseball and football at BYU. It was a lot of fun and we got some good work one. We also woke up a little early and went over to the high school and ran some stairs on the bleachers and then got to throw the football a bit. It was fun.

I got to climb a few trees this week, haha it was fun. I had to coup and cut down some limbs out of a members tree that were about to fall. I also fell about 15 feet out of a tree, the limb I was holding on to broke, but like a cat, I landed on my feet. It was pretty sweet.

Demitri had his interview this week, and all went well. He will be getting baptized this coming Saturday and he is going to have Elder Dannatt do it!! It will be his first time!

Today we are going down to Humboldt and spend the day hanging with Dustin and Dimitri. We are supposed to play some basketball, but I guess a pretty bad storm is heading our way, so we may not be able to.

I love you guys, talk to ya later!

Love Elder Nelson

February 6, 2012

Oi!

Hello Everyone!

We had a really good week this week. I don't ;know if I ever told you about Demitri, he is a friend of some members here that we have been teaching for awhile. We could never figure out what was holding him back, but we had a lesson with him this week and finally were able to figure it out, and set a date with him for the 17th. We are excited for it.

That's pretty exciting Elder Crawford is heading out, he is going to love it out here. The ALRM is the greatest mission in the world. Hopefully he at least serves around me so I can say hello to him!

I had my first district meeting this week, I really don't know how it went, but Elder Dannatt said it was good, but he is probably lying. We talked about extending and helping investigators keep commitments, our district has run into some trouble getting people to church. It definitely is a little stressful preparing for District meetings, but it's all good. Other than that we are doing quite a bit of finding. It is a little more difficult finding people to teach in the winter because not as many are outside, but we are gettin the job done anyways.

I love ya'll Thanks for everything!

Love Elder Nelson

January 30, 2012

Hello,

This week has been weird! I can't believe that Elder Boice is home. When I came into the field, he was 10 1/2 months out, now he is gone... haha really weird! I learned so much from that dang kid, I really don't know how I would have made it my first two transfers of my mission if I had been trained by anyone else.

Anywho, this week was pretty cool.. We knocked a ton of doors and found some really cool people. We were supposed to have like 7 people to church...none of them showed, that is what we used to refer to as the famous Blytheville let down. It's all good though, we are going to keep working with them and good things should happen.

So ya, President Petersen called me on Monday, and called me as District Leader. I'm over the youngest district in the mission. We have 3 new missionaries, and the oldest missionary besides me has only been out 8 months. They are all grew missionaries though. My District consists of the sisters serving in Jackson, the Elders in Dyersburg, and us. Each week I will prepare a district meeting, we just discuss the work and other stuff, as well, each Sunday the other areas will call in to me and report their numbers of the week, I record them and then call the zone leaders down in Frayser and report to them. I as well will go on exchanges with Dyersburg at least once a transfer. Normally I would with all the areas in the district, but since the Jackson missionaries are Sisters, I won't be going down there, It will be pretty cool. I have been a little stressed about preparing District meetings, but I'm excited for it. I get the same feelings as when I was first out and preparing to teach Gospel principles each week. It scared me to death but that was one of the things that helped me a lot in learning to teach, so I know that this will help me grow as well. I will also perform the baptismal interviews for those being baptized in Dyersburg and in Jackson. I'm excited for that, I have heard that baptismal interviews are great experiences.

This week Kollin Newhouse came to church in a white shirt and tie and passed the sacrament again, it is so cool seeing recent converts begin to get involved in the church. Briana also sang in their sacrament meeting down in Jackson. I haven't heard how it went, but still awesome that she was able to do that.

At church one of the members started talking about how I needed to run for president, she got quite a few members to agree with it. Haha. And I was thinking back because for some reason I have had so many people tell me things I should be when I grow up...so far the ones I remember are... President, preacher, pilot, surgeon, Pediatrician, comedian, sports therapist, model ???

Janitor, talk show host, sports analyst, astronaut, fire fighter, police officer, motivational speaker, mountain man, actor, pyro technician, professor... Haha and there have been many others... I think the one that suits me best is janitor. I'm really good at unclogging toilets. Oh! And I was told I need to be a boxer... I really have no idea where all these came from, but ya,don't even know why I'm telling you about it either.

Love y'all,

Elder Nelson

January 23, 2012

Hey y'all,

This week was interesting haha, we went to a zone conference on Thursday that took up the whole day, we got locked out of our apartment one day...took a couple of hours to get in...and then Saturday we had to drive all the way to Jackson to get our oil changed. Needless to say, the week wasn't all that superb. It ended really well though. The Stake Patriarch and his wife were up here to give patriarchal blessings and to speak. They gave some amazing talks and as well, one of the members of the Stake Presidency spoke. It was by far the best sacrament meeting I have seen on my mission. After, we had a bunch of members coming up and telling us about people they were going to talk to and wanting copies of the Book of Mormon to hand out. It was pretty cool. Also, Kollin passed the sacrament for the first time yesterday and received his patriarchal blessing after church. he is going to be one heck of a missionary some day. He is incredibly smart and already knows so much about the gospel.

Not much else going on. Hopefully we can find some people to teach this week. That would be weird if I trained Nick, haha probably won't happen, but hopefully he serves around me, that would be pretty cool. What day does he go into the MTC? Does he realize he is going to the greatest mission in the world??? (scientifically proven). He is going to love it. I will see if I can put a good word in and make sure he gets himself a good trainer haha (like I have any pull)jk

I love you guys,

Elder Nelson

January 17, 2012

Hello,

So ya, I'm writing on Tuesday because the library was closed for the Holiday, ( James Earl Ray day, as they call it in the south) haha

Anywho, Sunday morning I woke up and was getting ready and I looked at my calendar and was like "hey, it's my birthday" I had completely forgotten. It was a good day though. Morgan was baptized on Saturday, and I was able to confirm her on Sunday. It was awesome, and her whole family was able to be there.

After church we had a linger longer and one of the counselor's in the Branch Presidency made me stand in front of everyone while they sang happy birthday to me. Haha. We also had dinner at the Turner's that night and Mel, April and Sophie Osborn came and brought me a cake. It was a good night. It hasn't really hit me that I had a birthday. Haha. Holidays are just another day in the mission field.

Thank you very much for the birthday dinner. It was incredible. I was wondering on Thursday when I got your first package why you sent me a package of rice??? But I figured it out once I got the enchiladas on Friday.

I received everyone's gifts, so thanks all

Anywho, I love y'all!!! Thanks for everything!

Love Elder Nelson

January 9, 2012

Hello, This week flew by...I honestly don't remember anything from it really, it was just a blur.

Kollin was confirmed! His little sister Morgan is also going to be baptized this coming Saturday! We are excited for it.

So, I told you last week that they called us on Friday night and asked us to teach Elders Quorum. They didn't give us much to go on, just "goal setting" so we decided to take the time to talk about a Branch Mission plan. It went well, there were only a handful of Elders there, so it was small, but went pretty good. We are going to get together with Brother Powell, the Branch mission leader this week and write up the Branch mission plan, see if we can get things cooking.

So Mom, to answer your questions about having New missionaries and their trainers teach Gospel Principles. No, they don't always do that. We just do it here in Trenton, and we also did it back in Blytheville because there isn't anyone else to do it. Haha. It's cool though. I really enjoy teaching Gospel Essentials... Elders Quorum, not so much.

I was with Elder Boice for 2 transfers, generally out here a news missionary will be with his trainer for 2, but sometimes more.

I'm glad you didn't forget my Birthday Mom!!! Cause I sure did. Haha. I'm going to be Legal!!!

We will have to celebrate by knocking on doors ! And being in by 9pm!!! And in bed by 10:30!

Haha

I love you all, Hopefully we will have another baptism to report about next week.

Love, Elder Nelson

January 3, 2012

Oi family,

We are just hopping on the computer for a few minutes since the library was closed again yesterday. Last week was crazy, probably one of the most stressful weeks of my mission. We had one day where we walked probably 10 miles knocking on doors and talking to people and only talked with one guy. It was actually more like listening to him babble about nothing. Then on Friday night we got a call from a member in the branch, asking if we could teach Elders Quorum. There wasn't actually a lesson planned, so they asked us to teach about goal setting. Then we also had to prepare our a gospel essentials lesson...so that was really fun!

We did have our baptism on Sunday, and we were trying to get it all set up, and didn't have the program filled until about 30 minutes before it started, and had to hurry and get it all printed out, all the while the font was filling with cold water because the water heater wasn't working,so I had to climb up in the attic of the church and mess with the hot water heater so we could at least get luke warm water...haha. And just for some icing on the cake, Saturday night we were visiting a member, and he said "happy new years" and I realized amongst the chaos of the week, I had forgotten it was new years.... Haha. I guess this is what "Getting lost in the work" is. Haha and somehow with all of this going on, I'm happiest I have ever been. It's weird .

The baptism went great though. He asked me to baptize him, which I was really excited for because he is a really awesome kid, and Will be a great missionary one day, hopefully.

So, a cool story Mom, you have been doing missionary work without even knowing it. On Saturday, we hear a knock at the door during studies, I went and answered the door and a lady and her husband are standing there and she says "are you Elder Nelson". I had no idea who they were. So anyways, this couple were members in North Carolina (I think) and they were in Trenton visiting her grandparents, who are not members, and they started talking about the missionaries and that they didn't think missionaries were still in the area anymore. So the lady looked it up and came across my mission blog and gotta our address from it and they came by on their way out of town to see if we would go by and teach her grandparents... It was really cool. Keep up the good work Mom!!

Anywho, Happy New Years,

Love, Elder Nelson

December 5, 2011

Ello!!!

So kinda weird, Elder Sprauge and I have been talking in some kind of English/Australian accent and it has gotten so out of hand, that now when I text or email I have realized that I am thinking in an accent...Yep, I'm going crazy.

So Yes, Briana did get baptized, and it was amazing. It was kind of funny, right after she was baptized we were standing in front of the font and this little girl that was there, who is like 10 was like "that was so awesome" everyone got a good laugh out of it, but ya, it was way cool. I think I told you that we found out that she lives in the Jackson ward boundaries, so she is supposed to attend there, and we were a little worried if she would ant to and how that would go, but she went to church there to be confirmed and ended up seeing a lady who used to give her vocal lessons, and she talked to her and now Briana is going to be in the ward choir down there. Pretty cool stuff.

So, Elder Sprague goes home next week. I will droop him off in Memphis on Monday, where he will go to the Temple with all the Elders that are going home. Then he will go to Little Rock to the Mission home for dinner and a final testimony meeting then to bed, and head home first thing Tuesday morning. So, I will get to hang out in Frayser with the Elders there!!! I'm pretty excited about that. Wednesday, I will go to transfers to get my new comp. and head backup to get to work.

Thanks for everything, I love you guys.
Love, Elder Nelson

P.S. I got Keith and Crystals wedding invitation this week, awesome!!!

November 28, 2011

Oi!
Had us another awesome week. We have been teaching Brandi's friend Briana, and on Tuesday, we taught her and I decided to have her and Brandi look up "Safety for the Soul" by Elder Holland after we left and watch it. That night we got a text from her that said, "hey, this is Briana and I decided that I want to get baptized on the 3rd by Elder Nelson", it was super cool. We were pumped! So, she will be baptized on Saturday.

Thanksgiving was actually pretty awesome. We spent it with a family that lives here in Trenton, the Kellie's. It was fun and we had some awesome food. Other than that we ended up knocking doors the entire day. We didn't have any appointments for Thanksgiving because people were all with their families, but we ended up having a good day from it. We didn't really know what to do, because everyone we knocked on said "oh well, we are going to visit family or we have company", so we came up with a plan that we would just try to tell them we are going around showing our gratitude for the Savior by sharing his word and ask if we could share a quick scripture about what we were thankful for. I decided that I was going to use a different scripture from the Book of Mormon on every door. It was pretty cool. People would answer the door all angry that we were bothering them, but if they would accept a scripture they instantly changed after we started reading it and we ended up with a bunch of return appointments and potentials from it. The best though is this guy named Clyde. He is a pastor of another church, but is pretty down to earth and has an open heart. He listened to the restoration and wants to know it is true so bad. He has been reading and praying to find out. We went back and had an incredible lesson with him on prayer. When we left he told us he couldn't come to church this week, because he was being ordained at his church on Sunday, but that he would come this week... haha He was actually a bit solemn when he told us he was bring ordained. We are hoping that he gets an answer and has the courage to act on it.

I will be staying in Trenton this transfer, we had our interviews with President yesterday and I should be here. Elder Prague will be going home in 2 weeks. I will find out his moms number for you.

Anywho's, love yalls, hope you're having a good holiday season. Tell Thomas to get to work, he is taking my place for the year, and quit being a punk and write.

Love, Elder Nelson

November 21,2011

Wowsers!!!

So, this past week has been amazing... We have been seeing miracle after miracle, sooo cool. On Tuesday, we had the zone leaders come up to go on exchanges, I went with Elder Lester and stayed here in Trenton. We had done a little thing where we pray over the area and pick streets to tract and compare lists and then we tract whatever street we have in common. We came up with a street called Lyndale. So, Elder Lester and I went out and got lost? haha I don't know the area too well yet, but we ended up walking down the wrong road a few miles, so we walked back and found our way to the right road, by this time we had about 45 minutes until we had to be back to the apt. to meet Elder Sprague and Elder Gerber to go to dinner and it was about a half hour walk from where we were. We knew that there was someone there to find, so we kept going and got to the street and didn't know whether to go left or right, so I said a quick prayer, and felt like we should goleft... the first house we knocked on, a 19 year old kid answered and invited us in. He had just moved here to get away from the streets and to straighten his life out and had been praying for help... We committed him to baptism next month and with tears in his eyes, he accepted. We went back the next day to check up on him and he had done all of his reading and was doing awesome. It was so cool !

We also started teaching one of Brandi's friends, and Brandi's grandma said to take it easy because she probably wouldn't respond well if we treid to commit her to baptism, so we went and taught the first lesson, and the spirit was amazing, so we went ahead and committed her to the 3rd of December. Then on Thursday, we had a meeting all day in Memphis and we were sitting tere and got a refferal on the phone from mormon.org. It said "Hi, my name is ___ and I live with my family who are members of your church. I want to meet with you and take the lessons and possibly join your church"! We called him up and set up an appointment to go see him. These are just a few of the miracles that we have seen. It has been so cool, and it has all come from Obedience and hard work, and then to top off the week, Brandi wasw baptized and confirmed on Saturday and Sunday. It was so awesome and I was able to confirm her... It was amazing!

I can't believe that Thomas is already home! It was just yesterday that we walked out of Molca Salsa and said "Same place in 3 years?" haha and then he left for his mission. You need to tell him to write me and give me a recap of his mission and, make sure you rub it in to him, that I still have another year left!!!

Thanks for everything family!
I love you...
Love Elder Nelson

November 14, 2011

1 year....

The 10th brought some crazy mixed emotions. It is incredible how fast the past year has gone. I can't really describe it. You come out and two years seems like an eternity, but each month you look back and it seems like it went by in a flash. I have started to realize why two years can be so tough on some people. When you look at it forward, it is tough, but when you remember how fast it has gone, it makes you not want to waste a second. It has also been really nice to be serving with Elder Sprague, he is closing up on the end of his mission in a few weeks, and he is determined to go out strong. There is such a contrast between missionaries like him and those who start to check out of their mission as it winds down. You can tell a difference in their persona. They are all happy, but you can tell those who are happy because they are going home and those that are happy because they have just experienced the best two years of their lives. I'm hoping that I can be the latter.

Dad asked me what I have enjoyed the most about the first year of my mission, that was a tough one. I think one thing is the knowledge that I have gained up to this point. Whether it was in Blytheville, where I learned the basics of the gospel, so that I could teach it, or in Frayser when I learned to adapt it to different people in different walks of life or coming to understand that all of the knowledge in the world doesn't matter if you don't care about those you are sharing it with.

I have loved being able to meet so many varieties of people. I have loved seeing myself grow and come to love people I barely knew. Being an instrument in the Lords hands and seeing how he has blessed me. I have loved the challenges that I have been through, that had I seen them before my mission, I never would have imagined getting through them. I'm so thankful to be able to say that my testimony is growing. It sat around and was a bit of a waste before my mission and now that I am working at it and sharing it, I can feel it growing.

We had a long discussion this morning about how blessed we are to know God's true plan. Seeing it from any other perspective but from in the church with the knowledge we have seems scary. We have so many answers to fill in the blanks. I have loved coming to understand that the gospel and the scriptures have answers to absolutely everything. That along with my testimony to know that even when I can't find an answer, I know that there is one, and then to study it out and to find the answers. My mission has been amazing so far, but I have so much to still work on. I don't want to waste a single minute over the next year.

I love you guys, thanks for sending me out here.

Love Elder Nelson

ps. We do have some ivestigators, the top one right now is a girl named Brandi, she is awesome. She is supposed to get baptized next Saturday as long as she can stay smoke free, she also introduced us to her friend, and we are going to start teaching her and I think that could be a pretty good opportunity.

Welcome to Trenton, Tennessee

Dern tootin, I'm a Redneck...

I just got placed back in the sticks!!! It is awesome. I am in Trenton Tennessee, it is the farthest north east corner of our mission, and it is awesome. There is a little branch here of like 35 active members, it is pretty cool. My companion's name is Elder Sprague, he is from Payson, and is on his last transfer. Luckily he isn't getting trunky and he wants to finish off strong, so we are working hard. The area we cover is actually pretty big and most of the work we do is in a town called Humboldt, which is also where the chapel is. It remeinds me a ton of Blytheville, but less ghetto and less crime, I think.

Leaving Southaven was pretty tough. Going around saying goodbye to people wasn't too fun. We went by to see Crystal and Keith Saturday night and they gave me some gifts and Crystal had written me a big long thank you note. So they are getting married on December 10th and Keith asked me to be his best man!!! It was way cool. Unfortunately, I am too far away to go back down to it, so I won't be able to:) still cool that they are going to get married, and they are doing so well. They even talked about getting ready to go to the temple and be sealed in about a year.
We also went by to see Betty, it was scary... haha Elder Crotts says "so Elder Nelson has some bad news..." (and Betty had been praying that I woudn't get transferred) but he says that, and she gets this angry look on her face, and stood up like she was going to punch me and just started saying, "No" I assured her that I would be back and she calmed down. But, it was pretty tough. Elder Crotts and I sang God be with you till we meet again, which was pretty tough on all of us, but it was a good goodbye.

Well, I'm going to end this because I don't know what else to say, but I love yall!

Love, Elder Nelson

October 31, 2011 TRANSFERRED!

Family,

Okee Dokee... lots to talk about, I think?

So first off, Betty was baptized!!! It was awesome! She is the sweetest lady ever. This month in the mission it was the most successful since I have been out. As a mission we had 54 baptisms. We had 22 of those in our zone, and 10 of those in our district of 3 areas, so our 3 areas had 1/5 of the mission baptisms... It was awesome. So the chili cook off was great, we didn't win, but I'll be honest...we made some awesome chili... it had 3 lbs of beef in it haha, it was kind of a bummer, we were really the only ones that made actual chili, everyone else just made like tortilla soup and called it chili, so we should have won. It's all good though. Elder Crotts and I went as each other, we were supposed to have investigators there, and we wanted to make sure they could recognize us, so we just switched name tags and went like that... Oh and I rocked a mean comb over... it was a lot of fun though, they had a lot of cool stuff goin on, even had a hay ride that lasted like half an hour, they went down through a neighborhood behind the church around this really pretty lake and stuff, pretty fun.

So, last but not least... I'm getting transferred... boo! I', not super excited about that, this area has been amazing. I was looking back over my journal last night, and I came across an entry when I first got here. When I was et'd I was pretty bummed, I went from one of the highest baptizing areas in the entire mission to an area that hadn't had a baptism in over a year, not to mention, I just loved Frayser, so I was pretty down, and things were pretty hard. But about 3 weeks after getting here I have a journal entry that said, "I was sick of being down... I was sick of not baptizing, and as of tomorrow things are changing, we are going to go out and work harder than anyone." My next journal entry talked about Willie's baptism, and we have consistently baptized since. I'm so glad that I didn't keep things going the way they were, this would have been a long 5 1/2 months here. Instead we got out and worked and over the last 5 months, we have been one of the most successful areas in the mission, and the ward is about to take off, they will have a ton of success in the coming months, if things keep progressing the way they are now. I'm nervous for my new area, but I will go work hard no matter where it is...

I love you guys, thanks for all of your prayers and all of your support! I can't believe I have almost been out a year... today is the one year mark of my farewell talk... haha this is going way too fast.

Love, Elder Nelson