Hello e,
Time to tell you about my week®️
Monday was pretty fun, we went to the Blanchard farm for Zone pday. The only problem was, the air conditioning was not working, so, as you will see in the picture, we were all sweating a lot. But it was really fun, we ate pizza, played games, and I played some Foosball. Foosball was really fun for me, because I didn't lose a single game! I even played one-handed, and still destroyed every opponent who dared to play me. :) Fun fact, this isn't a very good way to make friends, but I wasn't there to make friends. >:)
Tuesday was a great day. In the morning we had another amazing lesson with Mark, and put him on date! After this we proceeded to meet our finding goal for the week, on day 2! It was so much fun, I guess prayer does work. My favorite person we found was a dude named Dailyn. When we were doing our daily planning in the morning, I felt prompted to put in a stop by that we had tried a ton of times. This lady has never answered the door, the house looked abandoned, and it was kind of out of our way. But I guess it's maybe a kind of good idea to listen to the spirit, so we put it in.
Later when we arrived at this house, it looked ever run down and empty as usual. So we left without knocking.
Ha! I got you hehe--just joking of course we knocked it anyway. A dude named Dailyn answered. He came out and sat down, and had us sit down too. We talked about the Book of Mormon, and read the entire intro with him. He was intrigued. He asked us a bunch of questions like where we were from and why we were in Texas, which we happily answered. He then asked if we had a church and we said yes! He said, "You probably don't believe me, but I WILL be coming to church on Sunday." We were really glad to hear that. We said we'd arrange a ride for him, and then he told us this. He said, "I had a dream about Utah, and missionaries last night. So that's why I'm talking to you now!" It was super awesome to hear! Dailyn already seems very golden, we gave him a copy of The Book of Mormon, and set up another lesson in a few days.
After we found Dailyn we did a lot of street contacting in the neighborhoods of New Boston, and found some more people. I even watched the Sunset--attached below in a picture (8k).
Wednesday was full of crazy things, and it all started when we woke up, as all days do. We drove to Queen City and picked the Elders there up and drove us all down to Bossier for Mission President interviews and district council. Distruct council was a blast as usual, and I loved my interviews with President and Sister Seitz too. I rapid fired some questions at president on things we could do to improve our area and he rapid fired the answers back at me. It almost seems like he recieves revelation for the mission, but I couldn't tell for sure.
One thing I decided is I NEVER want to get set in my ways as a missionary, I constantly want to be learning and improving so Wednesday overall was great because I learned so much and got so many new ideas.
After interviews we got Chick-fil-A, and then drove back to Queen City. In Queen City, and by Queen City I mean not Queen City but actually Atlanta, we exchanged with the Texar Elders. So Elder Rainey and Elder Maisey drove back to New Boston, and Elder Nelson and I drove back to good old Texarkana. It's really fun going on exchanges with Elder Nelson (who goes home in 2 weeks), cause not only is he hilarious, but he has an extreme amount of experience and knowledge to learn from. We got back to Texarkana and went to Slim Chickens for comp study, and much to my slight dismay--Elder Nelson got us both a meal. As we ate we just talked about how sad it was that so many missionaries go inactive, and we talked about all the ways to avoid this blunder. Elder Nelson has done it right, he just tells people to shoot him if he ever goes inactive. He's told so many people this now, that he literally can't go inactive or he will die :)
In the evening we decided to walk the streets and neighborhoods of Texarbanana and it was fun! We just basically ran around trying to catch people before they went inside. Not a single person was interested, but sometimes that's 1 of their 8 needed contacts before they ARE interested. It was so much fun to walk around with Elder Nelson, he is hilarious. We also stopped by a lady, who didn't have time for a message, but she said we could say a prayer for her. Elder Nelson started the prayer, and it began like any prayer. He was just praying, as you do, and one thing he said was "we are thankful for all the sunshine." This must have been the wrong move though cause the lady just started LAUGHING! We were unsure what to do but he kept praying and then the lady TOOK THE REIGNS. I wasn't aware that you can just take over someone's prayer bit apparently you can--cause she did it. She took over and finished the prayer. We just kind of said goodbye and walked away still confused what had happened. When we got our bearings we complained about the state this world is in these days. You can't even be in charge of your own prayer! Also we ARE grateful for the sunshine, I don't know what she was laughing at--the heat makes things much more interesting!
This was only the beginning of our night though!
We then drove to a green dot, and taught her the Plan of Salvation. I love teaching about the Plan of Salvation, cause nobody else has such an ingenious plan--and you can see those you teach thinking it too when you teach it. After this we were walking to our car until we saw this dude by his apartment. We walked us to him, and soon realized he was a bit drunk, and was wearing a slightly long t-shirt. Under his t-shirt, we think he had nothing else on, but we didn't have the heart to confirm this haha-- It looked like fun so we naturally offered to share a message. He invited us in and we talked about the Book of Mormon. He apparently teaches at a church that has 6 members :) Judging by most churches in Texarkana it's probably called something like "First Baptist Church of GOD on the Rock of the Rock In the Rock of the LAMB Holy Ghost Holy Temple Tabernacle of Texarkana." A church named something like this is the true church fun fact! Christ definitely set up a church named something you can't even remember. After we talked with Willie, we did some calls and then watched our usual Stake President devotional.
Thursday Elder Nelson and I spent the morning writing the Eulogy for his coming funeral. Also, sometimes the Natural Man is just eating a jar of peanut butter.🤷♀️ After personal study we headed to a park for a meeting and comp study. It was a beautiful day!! I love that park. Because we were on exchanges Elder Nelson got to join my meeting with the social media specialists, and since he used to be a sms he had no reservations just unmuting and letting out a blood-curdling scream. That got the energy going, and the meeting went very well! After the meeting we went to a donut shop and got some donuts while we did some Facebook work. The donuts were pretty good, though definitely not F.D.A.D. good. I did like how you could choose what to fill your donut with right there and then since they just had empty filled donuts in the case.
After we had lunch Elder Nelson accidentally smashed his phone, so we spent a lot of time setting up his new one. Then we went to do some study at Wendy's. After this we talked to a homeless dude who said, "why would I lie to you" when explaining why he needs money. All non-liars say this so we completely trusted him and gave him all our money. Every jot and tittle
Then we headed to the Church building on the Texas side for a lesson with Trevor (a guy the Sisters ate teaching). They have a problem--they keep running out of people to teach cause they all get baptized too fast. :(
Anyway this lesson with Trevor was top tier, definitely one of the best lessons ever. It was Elder Nelson and I, the three sisters, and a recent convert, all there to teach Trevor. Because there were so many of us the lesson flowed sooo smoothly from person to person and the recent convert (who counts as at LEAST 2 missionaries) bore his testimony basically the entire lesson about every single thing we said. He also brought up conference talks and scriptures left and right. HE basically taught the lesson haha--and he was only baptized a couple of weeks ago! But I guess that makes sense, cause he was going with the missionaries on lessons even before he was baptized haha--he's one of the coolest people I've ever met in my entire life. Anyway back to Trevor, he loved our lesson and even gold us about how he had received an answer that the Book of Mormon was true. He said it didn't make any sense because he's only in second Nephi, and he can't put the spirit in a box like he's used to doing with things in his life, but he couldn't deny it was the spirit. The lesson went so well, as the Sisters and Elder Nelson taught the spirit was super strong--I can see why they are baptizing so many.
After the lesson we dipped and booked it to exchange back, cause Elder Maisey and I had a dinner appointment. Much more happened, but I'm running out of time.
On Friday we had a blast!! We had another amazing lesson with Mark, he's such a cool guy. In the afternoon we decided today was sauna day! So we decided to do street contacting in the hottest time of the day. It was so much fun! As usual it worked, and we found 2 new people to teach! We taught an on-the-spot Restoration lesson which was really fun, and then I also took some pictures for a post.
In the evening the Smiths took us out to a Mexican restaurant which was really good! I got a steak/fajita beef, salsa, cheese, and bean burrito smothered in white queso and it was pretty good! I've has better bur I've definitely had worse. I didn't take a picture of it cause I ate it :)
We read and talked about the Restoration Proclamation with them, and it was so good. If you don't like the Resto Proclamation you are wrong.
After dinner we did more stopbys and street contacting, but nobody was interested. Which is fine cause little do they know we won't go away. >:) One of these times they will have no other option but to hear us out!
Saturday was great, we did some calls and got a lesson set up. After the calls we had our meeting with the ZLs on how to best help our Zone. We got lots of great ideas. Afterwards we went back into the heat and talked to lots of people.
After dinner this sudden storm rolled in out of nowhere and darkened the sky. It was so cool! We expected it to rain but it didn't so we street contacted all evening. Because of the storm it was sooo nice outside! It was lots of fun to walk around and see all the greenery.
While we were stopping by a green dot, this young man came out dressed completely in Black, with a black ski mask, black backpack, and black gloves. We, being missionaries, asked for referrals! He gave us one, and then headed off to burgal his next house. :) He seemed pretty nice.
On Sunday Mark came to church! He even said he didn't drink water so he wouldn't have to use the bathroom during it haha--he stayed for the whole church and loved it. Then he came to lunch with us and the Pierces after! The Pierces gave him an indefinite invitation to all their missionary lunches. He wants to come again next week. Also he's started sending us accountability texts for whenever he does better on Tea and Coffee, and we didn't even ask him too! He's definitely getting Baptized, probably sooner rather than later.
We had a ton of other great things happen but that's all the time I have
-Elder Nielson
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