Be Careful or the Parsnips might eat YOU

 

Greetings, 

This week flew by as usual, 

Tuesday we had a lot of meetings. We met with our photo team and talked about themes we could use for the Zone posts. We also had District Council, and in the middle of it, we got a call which of course we answered on speaker as we are supposed to. It was a scammer, so I just handed the phone to our DL (knowing he would take care of it). He played along for a second claiming to be the owner of a 2001 Honda Accord SPORT edition. Next, they told him it wasn't covered so he let out a blood-curdling yell saying "Help me help me, someday help me!!" I've never seen a scammer hang up so fast, and none of us in the room could even breathe we were laughing so hard. Tuesday evening we did some stopbys and street contacting which was fun. Street contacting is really fun if you just talk to everyone who is outside. We found someone new to teach. Then as we were going to head to DQ for Facebook since it was almost that time, I felt like we should stop by this girl named Lenora. We are teaching her but she hasn't answered our calls or the door the last 10 times we've tried. It's super sad since she's so golden. Anyway so we stopped by and knocked twice no answer. So we decided we would probably drop her. We were going to leave but I felt like I should write a note and leave that. So I started writing a note ad when I was about halfway done she answered the door! We would have never waited that long if I wasn't writing a note. We talked with her and she said she had been scared off because of jealousy in another pastor's eyes when we showed her our ingenious "Love" Plan of Salvation diagram and apparently he said some not very nice stuff about us. So she had kind of cut off contact with him and us. But we resolved her concerns and she said she was so glad we were persistent and didn't give up on her. She even said she wouldn't be talking to us if she didn't believe what we were saying.

Wednesday was fun, we stopped by a lot of people and walked around and talked with lots of people. Nobody was really interested, but it was super funny to mutter under our breaths after each one. For example one person said "I don't have time for a scripture" while sitting on their porch doing absolutely nothing. Our unspoken reply was "You don't have time for God then?" Another funny things is when someone is walking away briskly so they don't have to talk with us and then we go around the other way and corner them anyway haha--it's hilarious to see the look of dismay as he or she sees they've been bamboozled!

We also taught Doris the Law of Chastity which was fun cause she completely agreed with everything we taught, as old ladies do. 

Thursday in the morning we had some meetings with the social media specialists. In one or the meetings they gave us some cool numbers. Apparently in our mission this month as of Thursday there have been 87 people found through Facebook, 27 of those at church, and 11 or so of those on date. So Facebook has really been working well. And I will get to more on that soon...

Also on Thursday we had all 4 lessons cancel on us. Luckily we always have in a backup event on our calendar for every planned lesson so we did a bunch of stopbys in De Kalb. It was only 70⁰ so it was perfect for walking around. For dinner we had Tortilla soup with the Heiners which was pretty good. We have started getting members involved with the Zone page now that we are running it. After all it's much easier to send one of the Zone posts to one of their friends then to refer them directly to us. Then WE reach out to everyone who likes or interacts in any way, so it makes their job extremely easy. 

On Friday in the morning we helped someone (a non-member service referral) move for 5 hours. It was fun, I've always like helping move when it isn't ME who's moving!

Unfortunately we had 4 lessons with 4 different people who we were planning to put on date, and every one of them cancelled, as if they KNEW we were about to invite each one of then to be baptized. But it's fine cause we don't give up. >:) 

In the evening we walked around and talked to everyone who was outside. One dude was out there with his buddy arguing and we yelled out to them asking if they would like to hear a scripture. The guy's reply was, "I'm smoking Crack so I don't think you want to talk to me right now. You know the brown stuff? I smoke that!" At this point I was trying my best to hold in my laughter, and not doing to well. Finally we just told them to reach out if they ever DO want to talk, with laughs almost escaping the whole time, and we walked away.

On Saturday we helped with the move a bit more in the morning. We also talked to a girl named Mary (name has been changed) as we walked out of a lesson and she was looking really sad. So we went up to her, and apparently she is going through a rough time. She said she used to be a member of our church but then she had a bad dream as she was preparing to go to the temple and it scared her off. She cut off communication at that point. We were intrigued but didn't have time to talk at the moment so we got her address and set up a time to come by on Sunday. She said she was fine if we came by but she wasn't going to join our church. This is just the beginning...to be continued...

Sunday morning was great. As we were getting ready for church I got a message from this guy I had randomly messaged on Facebook a little while ago to look for him at church today! And sure enough he showed up to church after parking his longboard. So I have now found at least one person on Facebook every transfer so far!! Facebook really does work super well, I just wish I could get our Zone to believe me that it works. We've been trying to get them more hyped about Facebook work,, but they are all so pessimistic about it. >:( Anyway back to the guy, he's so cool, he came in with us and and asked for a copy of the Book of Mormon. We gave him one and he said, "I always thought there was more writings, not just the Bible." We spoke in church and afterwards he told us he loved it. He us also intrigued by the thought of modern prophets and said, "it does make sense that they would exist." He stayed for Sunday school even. Then another member of our ward came up to him with a surprised look on his face, and apparently the two work at the same place! So they talked for a while, this means we already have a fellowshipper! He even posted on his Facebook after church thanking us for being so welcoming. 

Okay, now to return to Mary. Sunday evening we went over to her house, with not very high hopes. She answered her door and we day down with her and basically asked her why she was scared away from our church. She told us it was that dream she had. But we knew there was something more so we kept pressing. She them said one thing that concerned her was polygamy. We promptly told her that isn't a thing anymore and she said, "Really? Oh well that's a relief!" We then explained a bit about why it was a thing before and she said, "Oh yeah, I'm sure God had his reasons." We then asked if she had other concerns and she said, "The spirit is telling me I should be honest with you guys. So actually I didn't have a dream that scared me off. I was actually shown a video by these Baptists about some horrible things going on in the temple and I know I shouldn't have watched them but I did and it scared me." We were shocked to hear some of the things they had showed and told her, and quickly told her nothing like that would EVER happen in the temple. She was so relieved like a weight had been lifted and we told her she can't believe everything she's told. She agreed and seemed much happier now. She then told us she had never actually been baptized, she had just been working towards it, and had been scared off. We asked if there were any other concerns and she said "how do I know it's actually God's church?" And we said great question and went to Moroni 10:3-5 and started reading but as we were reading she interrupted and said, "Actually I already did this, I prayed about it and I know it's all true cause the Spirit told me." And we were stunned again. So we got a return appointment, told her next time we'd tell her everything we were allowed to talk about that goes on in the temple next time and we are planning on putting her on date to be baptized! 

That's it for now 

-Elder Nielson

((3x)' + (5.2£)' = 45) - 4*

 

Hi everyone,

This week was pretty busy--and pretty fun too. On Tuesday we went to Allen for transfers. Its amazing how much richer that area is, I didn't realize how nice everything there is last time I was in Allen. Transfers were fun, you basically just go to a church building and congregate and talk to other missionaries in the parking lot for 2 hours! I got my new companion Elder Maisey and we stopped at Raising Canes to eat lunch. After that we went to Buc-ees (basically a huge gas station with lots of things to eat and buy, Texas is famous for it). 

Wednesday we taught a lot of lessons. We also did street contacting and I have a goal to pull out the most underused scriptures when street contacting and so far it's pretty fun. Street contacting is really nice, it's fun to give out copies of the Book of Mormon. And sometimes someone in front of us that spots us will quickly sppedwalk inside. Or sometimes he or she will start walking the opposite way. It's fun to walk faster and faster ourselves and watch he or she be forced to speed up more and more to avoid talking to us. Sometimes they have no choice but to face the inevitable though, we are fast walkers hehe

On Thursday we also did some street contacting. As we were walking around an apartment complex a lady was passing through with a master key cause someone got locked out of their apartment. When she saw us she said, "You are going to have to leave. We don't allow people to loiter and walk around offering/selling things to people, but I'm sure you already knew that." She went on to say that she hates to put it that way since we aren't really selling anything, but that it still wasn't allowed. Elder Maisey explained that it wasn't tracting, and that we were just talking to anyone who was already out and about. It was good Elder Maisey did the talking cause I was trying so hard not to laugh the whole time haha--It was difficult to keep in. I know they can't do a thing to actually kick us out because we know a bunch of people in that complex so if they ever give us any trouble we could just say "We're actually stopping by our friends here who want us to stop by" and that would be the end of that. :) 

We also ate dinner with the Smiths that evening and got to hear more of Brother Smiths touches with death, motorcycle chases, and shark catches. He could tell life stories nonstop 24/7

Also on Thursday we got a call from the social media specialists, which was ominous. They called us to be the Zone Reps for our zone. So we will be over the Zone page and Facebook work in our zone haha

On Friday we had some meetings where we learned what our responsibilities are, and what we need to do to get started. We had mission conference too, which was fun. We also had an awesome lesson with Amanda about patience. In the evening when we were doing Facebook at Dairy Queen I felt like I should talk to one of the employees and it turns out he's been wondering who we are and what we do! So I gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon and told him about what we teach with people and he's pretty interested. We have found a ton of new interested people this week, it's kind of crazy. Next week we will probably just rest and do nothing because honestly the work is done. 

Saturday we went to De Kalb and decided to walk around and stop by some people Elder Clark and I found last week. It felt like 102⁰F according to the weather app. (Though I've always wondered what business it has telling ME what it feels like. I can decide for myself what it feels like thank you very much. 😤) It was pretty fun though, once it gets hot enough you just stop noticing it haha--we talked to a tonn of people here. Talked to a dude named D-money and another named Buggy! Talking to D-money was pretty fun, it's always funny to talk with their lingo so we fit in better.

Sunday was good too, we got 3 people to church! It also misted all morning on Sunday so it was fun to study outside after church. Overall our week was pretty good, we taught 17 non-member lessons which is more than I've done in a while.

Well that's all for now, we will leave the situation involving the needle, the pork, and the straw hat for next time. 

-Elder Nielson

Monk of The Open Hand

 

         ,

Tuesday we had our last district council of the transfer. It was really good, and we did floating which I am forbidden to explain. We also had a really cool lesson with a lady we've been trying to get in contact with for a long time. She just randomly reached out to US and set up a lesson so that was great. We also did some painting for a lady in the Texarkana ward.

Wednesday we had several good lessons, and then in the evening we went to a Sign language class our ward just started. It was really cool, but also super overwhelming. But the good thing is I am now fluent and can speak it effortlessly (as one does after a single class). After the class we had a Q/A with the young men. It was super fun to talk about all the weird/fun things in missionary life and I wish we could have had a few more hours. 

On Thursday we walked around a lot--street contacting in the neighborhoods and complexes in Hooks. It was hot but fun, and we found someone new to teach. She said she didn't want to come to church because she doesn't want to wake up at that time but that should change if we can get some members to come with us and fellowship her. 

Friday we finally got to meet a couple who have cancelled on us 6 times. They are incredibly flakey, we didn't even try to set up another lesson. If they don't want to get resurrected first then I guess that's that...

Saturday we went to a funeral for Brother Woody in our ward. It was sad but also really cool to hear about his life. Radio DJ and anesthesiologist were a few of his many endeavors. After the funeral Elder Clark and I stopped by a guy named Odie and taught him the restoration. It went well, and afterwards we felt like we should walk around his whole apartment complex. So we walked around and talked to people and found 4 new interested people! It was lots of fun, we gave out some copies of the Book of Mormon and got each person's address and phone number. 

In the evening we put Stephen (who we've been teaching for a while) on date to be baptized! It was great, the best part was putting it into area book cause everything turns green and it's the first time I have seen the on-date goal advance :)

On Sunday the morning was uneventful but in the evening we went up to Texarkana to watch the YA devotional with our district. It was a really good devotional and an investigator who is getting Baptized watched it with us! So he got to hang our with 8 missionaries which as everyone knows is much better than hanging out with normal people. 😎 After the devotional we stayed the night in Texarkana since we were going to have to come up here anyway for p-day. 

As we waited for transfer news the tension was palpable. We called the Sisters so that our whole district could get it at the same time. It's very stressful since the email could come anywhere from 9:30 to 10:40 haha

We had some fun sending a fake transfer news email that looked identical to the right one to the Sisters and we got some appropriate gasps from them before they realized it was fake hehe

It finally arrived and Elder Clark is the only one leaving! So I will get a new companion and the Sisters will be trio training but otherwise our district will stay the same! 

Pictures are attached. (This is all the information I will give about them as usual)

-Elder Nielson

Cygnus X3 - The Ascent of Descent

 Hello,

I hope everyone had a good Mother's Day (this is the correct use of the apostrophe I decided after much meditation, if it wasn't an official holiday though it would most likely be Mothers' Day)

On Monday we went to the Shreve for Zone p-day. It was pretty fun, one of the things we played is chair soccer. Monday evening we did some walking around in neighborhoods and we talked to everyone who was out and about. We found a new person to teach also. I have started using Alma 37:37 (one of my new favorite scriptures) as one of my goto in-the-moment scriptures because it is very unique and good. 

On Tuesday we taught someone on her porch the Plan of Salvation and she told us to wait a second, went inside, and then grabbed a notebook. She then took about 1.62 pages of notes as we taught. She was really excited about this plan and asked us why we didn't tell more people about it and said how her life would have been very different if she had known about it sooner. We were very glad to see such good reception, she also liked our visual we gave her to help her remember it. I have attached a picture of it. Later in the afternoon we did some street contacting and stopbys in Maud and we talked to an old lady and man and gave them each copies of the Book of Mormon. For dinner we went to a member's trailer house and ate some amazing hamburgers and fries they made. Some of the best homemade burgers I've had for sure. They even made us fry sauce which was a surprise since there are so many inferior people who do not care for fry sauce in this world. :(

Wednesday we had a few good lessons, but nothing particularly interesting happened. We helped the youth plan some activities in the evening, because otherwise they would only have the physical activities planned. We are trying to help many of them prepare for missions so we try to befriend them all every chance we get. 

On Thursday we had a gigantic storm come through. As we were doing personal study at our apartment it started pouring exceedingly hard. It got super dark outside too and there was almost constant thunder and lightning. The power kept going in and out, lots of flickering, but never long enough in my opinion.

In the afternoon we did our usual weekly planning. I was the whiteboard scribe, as usual, and my designs are getting more and more elaborate. I may even clarify our latest whiteboard as "rococo" and "a modern day Mona Lisa." DaVinci would be proud. Not Leonardo DaVinci, but the much lesser-known Harold DaVinci--Leo's younger brother who was also a painter, of houses. I will not attach a picture of it, because it's best to imagine the greatness of it.

On Friday we drove to Shreveport again for mission president interviews. It was really fun to talk to President and Sister Seitz again, they seemed extremely tired though. We did district council there and then they just pulled us each out one at a time to talk with each of them separately. We sang our usual closing hymn (Battle Hymn of the Republic) and everyone must have been in especially high spirits because it was sung by some at full volume and if we had been in Jericho the walls would have come a-tumbling down. 

On the drive back we played the sign game where you try to read every single thing on every sign you see before somebody else in the car reads it. We had 4 Elders in the car so it was quite the noisy drive. Mainly because there's thus unspoken rule that if you talk over the other people you don't even have to be accurate in your reading (as long as everyone can hear you are making a loud attempt to read every sign).

Because of having to go to Shreveport twice this week we have already blown over 550 of our 1250 miles haha--so we will need to he careful the rest of the month. 

Saturday we went to De Kalb and did a bunch of stopbys and street contacting in that area. It was humid and hot while we walked around and almost everyone was mean and didn't want to talk with us as we walked around, but it was kinda fun anyway. There's just something about walking around in humid weather with short-sleeved Sunday shirts that's fun. I'm not sure what it is, but we just talked the whole time as we walked around (mostly about food because that's what I talk about) and it was pretty fun. Talked to some people who were high as a kite and that's always really fun too!

On Sunday I found someone on Facebook which was really fun. I invited him to church and didn't expect him to actually come but he did! He even stayed for the second hour. We gave him a Book of Mormon, got his number, and will be teaching him this week. Sunday was very hot, it was 91⁰ but it felt like 99⁰ cause of the humidity. It's nice though because then whenever we return to our apartment it's like walking into a Costco freezer haha, it feels really nice. 

That's all for now I believe. 

-Elder Nielson

Able Was I, Ere I Saw Elba

Hello everyone, 

This week flew by because of Zone conference, I couldn't dream of getting to everything that happened but I will do what I can.

Tuesday was great, we got to teach some surprise lessons, and they went really well! We had dinner with the Smiths, and Brother Smith is hilarious. He has tons of funny stories, many about his escape from the police. He constantly has a twinkle in his eye, and has an endless stream of hilarious stories to tell. 

On Wednesday we had Zone Conference, so we drove down to Longview. Zone Conference was awesome, I'm liking President and Sister Seitz more and more. We also got some new tires, which puts our possible max speed at about 340 mph. We will give it a try today I believe. 

Driving to and from Longview was fun because we got to listen to some Hugh Nimbley. He talks like an encyclopedia, and is as smart as a whole library. We loved his talk "A Critical Opinion of the Pearl of Great Price."

Wednesday evening we went to the Church building and helped the clerks and ward missionaries update the ward list. It was fun, they should make an academic competition out of updating ward lists, it takes a lot of brainpower.

On Thursday we had some awesome lessons. We were able to bring the ward missionaries with us too, so it was lots of fun. He have 3-4 progressing people who are so close to being put on date, we just need them to come to church! We also had some really good pulled pork sandwiches and baked beans with a member family that night. We are trying to get the ward more involved in missionary work, because it makes it 10 to 13.62 times easier if the members have the same missionary mindset as we do.

Friday was really fun! In the morning we went to this gigantic park to help set up for a "Scout-a-rama." We put up some signs, put giant garbage cans everywhere, and at every campsite, and set up tables everywhere. It was really fun, and it was in Texarkana so there were 6 of us helping. After service we went on exchanges, so Elder Nelson and I went back to New Boston while Elder Clark and Elder Rainey went to Texarkana AR. 

Elder Nelson is hilarious and he's so fun to work with. We did some stopbys in De Kalb, and at each stopby we also walked around and talked to anyone outside who was in the area. We taught around 5 unplanned lessons and gave out around 6 copies of The Book of Mormon. We found some interesting people and also even a new person to teach. It was the most successful 2 hours of my mission. Elder Nelson is also really charismatic so everytime I do stuff with him our success doubles. I also love giving away copies of The Book of Mormon because then I get to carry around a new fresh one! It's also so satisfying to talk about it, share some scriptures from it, and then give it to them. All of this is much to my companions dismay because we have a limited amount of copies, and everytime Elder Nelson and I are on exchanges we give out exponentially more than is sensible. 

Friday night we went over to the Ward Missionaries' house and roasted marshmallows and made smores there with an inactive family. We invited them to church and hopefully they will come.

Saturday morning we went back to the huge park to help out some more with the scout event. It was the best "service" (if you can even call it that) I have ever done. Once we got there the staff basically just sat us down and talked with us while feeding us snacks. Then we found out that the only thing left to help with was judging the Chili competition...but this was no ORDINARY competition. >:) This was the real deal, once we signed up we became judges for the International Chili Association (which has raised over 80 million dollars in their worldwide competitions). Whichever Chili we picked would go to the world championship, so there was no messing around! They gave us a judge training and it was very serious. No talking with other judges while judging, cleanse your pallet very thoroughly after each spoonful (with grapes, tortillas, and sour cream), always use a new spoon, take as much time as needed (true judges are never rushed), etc.

We were also instructed to write comments for each chili to give the cooks things they could improve on or remember in the future.

It was really fun to judge these, it was a completely different experience than the ward chili competition. Unlike the ward cook-off, every single chili was top tier. Each one was very unique and incredibly delicious. Each judge chose their top three chili's and out of the 15 of us we were not to compare notes. My number one chili was easily the best chili I have ever had, and I kept giving it more tries well after I knew my favorite chilis, under the guise of a contemplative face--as if I was considering it very carefully and judging meticulously. Being the chili expert I now was, I shared some insightful comments about each chili on my judging sheet, and how they could improve. It took about 45 minutes before judging was completed and it was super fun! 

After doing service we came back and did some more service working on a member's gigantic lawn. It was so big it had to be mowed with riding lawnmowers, and even though we couldn't drive those, Elder Clark and I used the weedwackers to get what the mowers couldn't. It was really fun, but also exhausting. Afterward we went over to some Italian Members' house and had some of the best Spaghetti I've ever had. 

Sunday was good, but uneventful.

That's all for now

----------------Elder Nielson

(You can never predict the precise number of dashes I will use :)