Tuesday, January 18, 2011

January 17, 2011

hey yall,

just so yall know, the back is doin fine, the prescription that Dr. Fogg sent was the same that the other doctor had given me..
this week was pretty good though. i think i told you about Ronnie, we tracked into him a couple weeks ago, he is an awesome dude. he spent time in jail, but has turned his life around, he is trying to get his record expunged so that he can get a job, but he is also going to school. anyway, we have been teaching him, and he came to church yesterday.. He walked 3 miles in the freezing cold, and got there a half an hour early... he is the man. he loved it though, it was ward conference so the talks were great, and then we went through the oath and covenant of the priesthood, which is pretty deep stuff for a first timer, but he seemed to understand, then we had a potluck after, he stayed and loved the members, the members here are great at fellow shipping. he is excited to come back next week and is planning on bringing his daughter. we will have to find them a ride.
we also tracked into a lady named ruby, we started talking to us and told us she was preaching at her church Sunday night, and we helped her with her talk on the atonement. then she invited us to come and listen, so we did... it was crazy, they had the band goin and people jumpin around, we got about 15 shout outs from ruby as well as the pastor and other people that went up haha it was sweet.
My birthday was awesome, thank you everyone for the presents, they were great.
highlight of the day... i finished the bom that morning, guess what? its true... haha
We went to the ward and met with brother Layton, the ward mission leader and talked about the missionary work in the ward for a while, after he went out and made some stops with us at some investigators as well as some less actives then we went back to pizza inn... it was bomb as always haha broke my record, had 21 pieces of pizza haha and kept it down this time, the Corbett's also had us over for 2 meals this week, and made me a chocolate cake for my birthday, you will get a video of that one when i send it haha.
Not much else goin on though, just doin work, keep praying for us that we will come in contact with those ready to hear our message!!

p.s. mom and dad, did you get my letters?

Love yall,
Elder Jake Nelson

Thursday, January 13, 2011

JANUARY 15TH HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELDER!!!

The Pizza Inn... 21 slices on Elder Nelson's birthday... Did he win the contest??


Happy Birthday...

What a great cake!

Thanks Corbett's



and a Black and Tan coon hound??? Did you get that for your birthday?

I don't think so...


It's snowing in Blytheville!




January 10, 2011 Q & A

hey what up yall.
answers to your questions.

l) how often do you have district meetings?
we have district meetings usually once a week.
2) how often do you have zone conf.?
zone conferences i think are once a month or once a transfer
3) How did it go with Cat? Is she interested?
we haven't been able to meet with cat. some weird stuff going on there)
4) Have you found anyone else to teach? we actually have 5 new investigators this week. Helen, Eleanor, Ronny, George and tareesha. they are pretty cool. we will see this week if they are for real... Helen was a really cool lesson. she cant really talk. can say yes and no, and other than that uses hand gestures. it was an awesome lesson, she was crying the whole time. we tracked into all of the new people. Eleanor was out with her family, invited us in and agreed to read the bom, we are going to see her tomorrow i think. same thing happened with Ronny, George and Tareesha. Hopefully some good stuff happens!!!
5) What are you teaching in gospel essentials?? how is that going? I taught gospel principles yesterday on our heavenly father. it went alright. i think. I really have no idea haha
6) do you ever have to speak?? not yet
7) gang activity still going on, or have they caught the guys? haha its not like a few kids doin the gang activity. everyone in town is part of a gang haha so yes its still goin on.
8)) Is your bike doing better? the bike is holding up well. no problems since the crank shaft broke.
9) did you have black birds falling from the sky??? It showed on the news a picture of an Arkansas street with hundreds of blackbirds dead all along a road.??? we didn't here in blytheville, but we heard about it. it was in bebe arkansas, and it was actually hundreds of thousands of blackbirds that died, as well as 100,000 fish showed up dead on the bank of a river... some crazy shiz goin down!!

Well, time to go, I love you all... Elder Jake Nelson

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Pictures from Blytheville!

These are pictures of our planner covers, and here is what goes down. We decorate them with pictures and whatnot, and lamenate/tape them onto our planner. Anywho, I am going to send a couple home for the family to decorate with pics of the fam, byu stuff and whatever you want.
This is my District that I am in. We had just eaten lunch after district meeting... we have a very small district. The Elders are Elder Kelly, Elder Hannaman, Elder Boice and me. Elder Hannaman is the Elder going to the "Y".

Jumpin Elder Nelson







Happy New Year's Jan 3, 2011

What's up yall,

Happy New Years!
I'm going to go ahead and answer all these here questions yall sent me!

1) Did Linda make it for baptism? No Linda didn't make it to baptism, she ended up getting baptized by other means...unfortunate
2) Did you get Taysia's Christmas present (she heard it had been resent)? I did get the photo book, and just by the way, we have the best darn looking family ever, hands down..
3) How was New Year's? dinner? pizza? New Years was pretty sweet, we ended up not doing our pizza eating contest, it got postponed until next month, but we did get to go over to Sister Corbett's moms house new year's for lunch with the whole fam. We had black eyed peas, cabbage, fried potatoes, and hogs jowl, hogs jowl is a lot like bacon, it is just the meat from the cheeks/jowls of the hog. It wasn't too bad, other than the aftermath...haha
4) How is your weather?? We heard Missouri and Arkansas had bad tornado's (I looked up the counties and it looked like you weren't in the middle of them??? We weren't hit by any tornados, but that day that the storming was goin on we were out riding and it got dark and we went to visit an elderly woman in our ward, and when we left it had started raining, so we headed for the church which was 3 miles away, and about half a mile into the ride it started pouring, we were soaked and covered in mud by the time we got there, it was pretty sweet though. The rain here is insane, Elder Boice said it wasn't that hard of a rain and it was raining harder than I had ever seen it rain in Utah.
5) Have you found anyone else to teach?? We are all praying for you to find people.. Tim told me it was hard to find people to teach in France too.. "On Sunday this lady named Cat came to Church, which was a surprise, they had taught her before I got here and she is one of Linda's friends, but she showed up and actually paid tithing!!! (she is not a member) anywho, we are feeling pretty good about her and are meeting with her on Tuesday, so we are thinking maybe Linda was just our way to finding Cat!!
6) So your birthday is coming, do you need anything?? I hate to just send stuff you don't need but have to house... "I really don't need anything, just some ties... every missionary likes ties!
7) Can you listen to the "Arkansas" songs?? or just specific artists?? "I have heard the Arkansas songs in most of the cars I have been in, so I am going to say yes..
8) How is the "gang" activity going?? any worse? or better? The gang activity is about the same, on New years day we were walking down the street and all of a sudden 2 housed down a guy came out and unloaded his shotgun off his front porch...scared us to death!!!haha

so funny story, the other day we stopped at sonic to get some grub, and the girl that delivered the food handed me her number haha so we promptly wrote ours down .... on a pass along card... and gave it to her... never got a call, shoot,, still hope she will get baptized...

I also learned something interesting that I had never heard before, we were visiting with a guy and the civil war came up. Turns out they don't refer to it as the civil war, but as the war of northern aggression, or the war between the Americans and the d*** Yankees. haha I never knew that the south didn't consider it a civil war because they were succeeding, and didn't consider themselves a part of the country, they also say that the war was not over slavery at all but over economics, and the explanation we got actually made a lot of sense. It was cool to learn something new about the south!!!

Well, I have to get off, but I love yall. Tell everyone hello, and tell dad he can still call me "Jake", haha Talk to you next week

Love, Elder Nelson

ps Glaziers sent me a great package, with a freakin basketball hoop in it, we hung it on our door.