26 Feb 2018

Hey there everyone 

SO we had a good week here in the zone. We are all working really hard to find new people and we are really close to baptizing the people we have. My new comp and I are working super hard. He is a really good guy. Like I said we knew each other way back when we started our missions so it was really awesome when I heard that we were going to be comps. 

So here in the mission we had a goal for this month to get 100 baptisms. Now we were all putting in our hard work and trying our best. Here in the zone we had two people ready to be baptized. But something happened and they weren’t able to go through with it. So we got a message from president Sunday night that said we had 98 baptism’s... 98... we need two more to hit our goal. Now me as a zone leader that really hurt me. It was because we could have hit the goal but we didn’t give it our 110%. Yes we did work hard and do everything we could but we came up short. It’s like going to the Stanly cup finals and losing in game 7 in overtime. Getting that close but not being able to complete with what we wanted. But now we know what to do. My comp and I have some things planned out for the zone for this coming month to see what we can do. 

So we were able to take Giovanni and Guillermo to the temple this week as well. We were able to have them see what it was like and have the sisters give them a tour. The thing is Giovanni’s family are all members. So it is really easy for him to get baptized because his parents will give him permission. But he doesn’t want to do it that much. And Guillermo on the other hand wants to get baptized and really wants to grow and learn in the church. But we don’t have permission from his parents yet. So we are going to work with that this week to see if we can help him and win the confidence of his mom. He was even talking that he wanted to go on a mission in the future. So we are really going to try and help him out. 

So when we went to the temple I saw a bunch of members from my old ward in Santa Marta. I was sitting down in the visitor’s center and out of nowhere the kid that always came on visits with us was there. So I jumped up and gave him a big hug. We talked for a bit and then he told me that Simon was there as well. I don’t know if you remember Simon but he was one of my baptisms there in Santa Marta. The day we went there was the first day he went into the temple to do baptisms. I was so happy when I heard and seen that!! It was so weird to see him to be honest. He has changed so much from when I first started teaching him. He just seems like he is happier and is just enjoying life. It was really great to see him. It made me see that what I was doing was helping other change their lives for the better. It’s been hard for me to see that during my mission but when I seen Simon it really made me see and feel that I was doing a good thing. 

So we did divisions with some members here on Sunday night. And these guys are crazy haha. They are two ex missionaries that have been home for a while now. And all they do is ask one another why aren’t they married yet or why aren’t they dating someone. They always just go off about that haha the thing is they are really good guys. They help us out a lot in the ward. They are just so weird when they talk haha I just hope that when I go home I don’t become like that when I see my friends haha.

But everything is going well this week here in the area. We are kind of upset that we didn’t hit the baptisms go but we are going to do all we can to be better. That’s a great thing about the mission we can try something and if we don’t complete it we can get up and try again. But in a different way. 

Thanks for all the love and support that you all have for me! I love every one of you! Thank you for your prayers and love! Hope you all have a great week! 

Elder Nelson

19 Feb 2018

Hey there family and friends.

So this week has been pretty good for us here in our area. We were able to confirm to baptismal dates and take some recent converts to the temple. But lets break it down a little more. 

So we have two investigators that are really really really close to being baptized here in our area. We having been working really hard with the ward as well to help them know the investigators better and help the investigator feel welcomed here to the ward. So one of the investigators names is Celeste. She has been listening to the elders for along time and she has a great testimony. Remember when i told you all about that investigator that wanted to bear her testimony_ Well this is her. We have been really pushing to help her make that this choice and be baptized. We have taken her to the temple, we have had the ward stop by and visit her, and she has visiting teachers. But she hasn’t taken that step of being baptized. So we had her talk with the bishop and talk about everything really. So that was going on and all that, and then the bishop pulled us into his office and we were there with celeste. We talked for a bit and the bishop told us that she had made up her mind and was gonna get baptized. We got so happy when we heard, it was awesome to be 100% honest. We just have to plan it all out so that her whole family can come. We got get that rolling this week. 

For the other investigator we have Adolfo. Now he is kind of a weird one to be honest. His whole family are members of the church, He has been listening to the elders for about 2 years now, and he is still not yet baptized. Like I don’t understand sometimes like who is it that someone could be listing to the elders for so long and not get baptized. Or how could you be living in a house full of members and you don’t know anything about that church. Like what do you talk about with your family? So anyways, we have been working really hard with this investigator was well. We have been trying to get his family more involved and having them get more supportive with him. His wife has been a member here who life and knows a lot about the church. We are really trying to help her see that if she wants to be with her family forever she needs to have her husband baptized so they can go into the temple together. But we did the same thing for him as we did for Celeste. We had him go into an interview with the bishop to talk about everything. Now when we heard that he had committed to a date for the 23 I was shocked. I didn’t think that it was ever gonna happen. Yes I had faith that one day it was going to happen but I didn’t think it was going to happen in my time.  But we are both really excited that both of our investigators are now committed to a baptismal date.

We have been really working hard with those two right now. We have some other investigators that are coming along little by little but it will all come in time. I have found that we teach a lot of people with the same need. For example I have taught a lot of people about taking that step of faith. And there was a story in the bible that talks about this kind of step taking. It tells the story of a group of men that are gonna pass through the Jordan river. But there was a prophet that told them they would be able to cross through the river because the river would open up. But once they got to the river, it was normal. It hadn’t changed or anything like that. So they sat there for a while until one of them put his foot into the water. And the water started to open up. They walked a little bit more and then the whole river opened up and they were able to cross. The morale of the story is that we need to take that step of faith until something happens. We need to act on something if we want to change something in our lives. Now I have used this example with almost all of the investigators in the mission. It’s really interesting how we can say we have faith in something but we just wait for something to make our faith grow. Unless we act on the faith we have and help our selves grow in faith. We will be standing by the edge of the water waiting for something to happen. This is something as well that I have taken into my life here in the mission. If we have faith that there are people here in our area, we need to act on and work hard and search for these people.

The saying I have been using my whole mission is keep moving forward. And it has become something really special to me. It helps me know that there are going to be hard time here in the mission but we just need to keep moving forward to open new doors and do new things. Because we are curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. And the paths that we go down here in the mission are the paths to people’s doors. The paths to our own conversion. The paths to help build our testimony. There are hundreds of different paths to go down but we need to first move forward to find them. 

Thanks for all the love and support always! Thanks for all the help you all give my family and me! Hope you all have a great week! 

Love Elder Nelson

12 Feb 18

Hey there everyone. 

So just like always I forgot to write during the week. So here I am trying to put something together right before pday. So this might be short.

So this Tuesday we were able to have divisions with the ap’s. So we got to go to their area and visit and work with them. We had 4 elders working in one area. So the elders here in the mission only get a car if they are in the office. So the ap’s are some of those elders. So we got into their car to go to there area. And we are driving enjoying life and all that fun stuff. When one of the ap’s said. Hey I don’t remember this road. And then the other elder says, yeah I don’t remember it either. That’s because it wasn’t our mission. We had taken a wrong turn and went to the central mission. So here we are driving around the city trying to find our way back. We ask some guy on the street, and all he said was 1, 2, 3. And was just pointing in one direction. He really didn’t tell us anything. So we were still lost. And we got up next to a taxi and the ap’s said to ask him because they know how to get everywhere. So we yelled out and asked how to get to the zone we needed to go. And once we asked he just said, Okay follow me! So here we are following a taxi driver through Guatemala. And after all of that we finally made it to where we needed to go. 

It was really cool to go work with the ap’s though. We were able to get a lot of work done. I was working with this one elder named Elder Hansen. He is also from Idaho. It’s been kind of weird to see how many elders are from Idaho I have worked with. But he is a good elder, Likes to work hard and likes to get the job done. So once we all got home from a day of work we made some French toast. And it was pretty good not going to lie. But we are just sitting there eating and talking when out of nowhere one of the elders jumps up and runs to the door. And we were all sitting there like what just happened? So we go and look for him and he was lying in his bed. We all just stood there and was like, Hey man what’s up?  He just looked at us and said, guys I just want to be comfy when I talk. We were like okay man its all good.

So we had a really great lesson with Geovany the other day as well. We were in divisions with one of the elders from the zone and the lesson was really really good. So his grandma is a less active member and hasn’t really wanted to come back at all. So we had her in the lesson as well. We started with a hymn and jumped right to it. We talked about doing the will of the father. As we know the most famous story of that is when Jesus passed the atonement. I really enjoy this part of the life of Christ because it teaches us what we can do as well. Christ was humble enough to put down he’s own life for us so why shouldn’t we humble ourselves to do what the father wants of us. So we talked about what we thought that god wanted for him. And we were able to have him say a prayer and asked what god wanted him to do. And after he was done with the prayer, the spirit was so strong in that room. Even his grandma was able to feel it. It was very special to be honest. 

So my comp and me were talking the other day as we were walking down the road. He turned and looked at me and said, elder we are zone leaders now. I kind of looked at him weird and said yeah man we have been zone leaders for a while now. We laughed about it but then talked about back when we started our mission and how we looked up to all the leaders of the mission and thinking how great they were. Then we stopped and realized that we are now those elders. We hope that the elders in our zone look up to us as well. It’s super weird though to think that I’m a leader still in the mission. To be 100% honest I still cant believe that I can speak Spanish its kind of crazy. But that’s how the mission is I guess.

But to be honest it is really crazy to think how far I have come here in the mission. It is crazy to think that I have been away from home for 15 months now and I’m a zone leader as well. I never would have thought that I would be any kind of leader when I started my mission. To be honest I thought I was gonna be a Jr. comp for my whole mission for the way my Spanish was haha. But I guess in time things change. Its crazy to see the change that I have personally had here in my mission. This past week my comp told me that he liked how I didn’t get mad or upset when a lesson fell through. And it was interesting for me because I remember in the start of my mission I would always get a little upset when something fell though. But as time went on I understood what I needed to do to not get upset. And that was to remember that there is always something to do. There is always something to keep busy. It is a crazy change though that I have seen in my life. 

So that was my week. Sorry its not to long or that I put a lot of stories but ill try this coming week to do better. I want to thank you all for the love and support always. Hope you all have a great week and that everything goes great! Love you all.

Elder Nelson.

05 Feb 18

Hey there everyone. 

So just like always I forgot to write during the week. So here I am trying to put something together right before pday. So this might be short.

So this Tuesday we were able to have divisions with the ap’s. So we got to go to their area and visit and work with them. We had 4 elders working in one area. So the elders here in the mission only get a car if they are in the office. So the ap’s are some of those elders. So we got into their car to go to there area. And we are driving enjoying life and all that fun stuff. When one of the ap’s said. Hey I don’t remember this road. And then the other elder says, yeah I don’t remember it either. That’s because it wasn’t our mission. We had taken a wrong turn and went to the central mission. So here we are driving around the city trying to find our way back. We ask some guy on the street, and all he said was 1, 2, 3. And was just pointing in one direction. He really didn’t tell us anything. So we were still lost. And we got up next to a taxi and the ap’s said to ask him because they know how to get everywhere. So we yelled out and asked how to get to the zone we needed to go. And once we asked he just said, Okay follow me! So here we are following a taxi driver through Guatemala. And after all of that we finally made it to where we needed to go. 

It was really cool to go work with the ap’s though. We were able to get a lot of work done. I was working with this one elder named Elder Hansen. He is also from Idaho. It’s been kind of weird to see how many elders are from Idaho I have worked with. But he is a good elder, Likes to work hard and likes to get the job done. So once we all got home from a day of work we made some French toast. And it was pretty good not going to lie. But we are just sitting there eating and talking when out of nowhere one of the elders jumps up and runs to the door. And we were all sitting there like what just happened? So we go and look for him and he was lying in his bed. We all just stood there and was like, Hey man what’s up?  He just looked at us and said, guys I just want to be comfy when I talk. We were like okay man its all good.

So we had a really great lesson with Geovany the other day as well. We were in divisions with one of the elders from the zone and the lesson was really really good. So his grandma is a less active member and hasn’t really wanted to come back at all. So we had her in the lesson as well. We started with a hymn and jumped right to it. We talked about doing the will of the father. As we know the most famous story of that is when Jesus passed the atonement. I really enjoy this part of the life of Christ because it teaches us what we can do as well. Christ was humble enough to put down he’s own life for us so why shouldn’t we humble ourselves to do what the father wants of us. So we talked about what we thought that god wanted for him. And we were able to have him say a prayer and asked what god wanted him to do. And after he was done with the prayer, the spirit was so strong in that room. Even his grandma was able to feel it. It was very special to be honest. 

So my comp and me were talking the other day as we were walking down the road. He turned and looked at me and said, elder we are zone leaders now. I kind of looked at him weird and said yeah man we have been zone leaders for a while now. We laughed about it but then talked about back when we started our mission and how we looked up to all the leaders of the mission and thinking how great they were. Then we stopped and realized that we are now those elders. We hope that the elders in our zone look up to us as well. It’s super weird though to think that I’m a leader still in the mission. To be 100% honest I still cant believe that I can speak Spanish its kind of crazy. But that’s how the mission is I guess.

But to be honest it is really crazy to think how far I have come here in the mission. It is crazy to think that I have been away from home for 15 months now and I’m a zone leader as well. I never would have thought that I would be any kind of leader when I started my mission. To be honest I thought I was gonna be a Jr. comp for my whole mission for the way my Spanish was haha. But I guess in time things change. Its crazy to see the change that I have personally had here in my mission. This past week my comp told me that he liked how I didn’t get mad or upset when a lesson fell through. And it was interesting for me because I remember in the start of my mission I would always get a little upset when something fell though. But as time went on I understood what I needed to do to not get upset. And that was to remember that there is always something to do. There is always something to keep busy. It is a crazy change though that I have seen in my life. 

So that was my week. Sorry its not to long or that i put a lot of stories but ill try this coming week to do better. I wanna thank you all for the love and support always. Hope you all have a great week and that everything goes great! Love you all.

Elder Nelson.