Ïgloo Wilderness

Hi again,

This week was fun! But nothing extremely interesting happened so I will try and make this quick:

Monday it poured all day which was fun! We went to Canes with the ZLs and Elder Stanley and Fuentes had coats on, and Elder Van Tassel and I did not--the true way to appreciate rain. In the evening we went street contacting at the park at the State Farm corporate headquarters, and it was super fun! Nobody accepted a Book of Mormon though, more for me I guess! We ran into this couple who said they've been looking for a church, just not ours. We managed to leave them with a pamphlet anyway >:)

On Tuesday we had Zone Conference which was super fun! We got a ride from a private jet pilot who has been to the top of of Burj Khalifa many times! It was great seeing some missionaries I haven't seen in a while, and we learned so much at Zone Conference. In the evening we went with Brother Mills to a lesson with a guy named Lee. It went really well. The only problem with this area is everywhere we go people ask where Elder Newton (one of the past Elders here) went haha--they rave about how awesome he was, and we've even been told several times that we have big shoes to fill haha

Wednesday we went and did some service for a Nonmember named Lorna. Apparently she has beenhaving help from missionaries for over 5 years now, and everytime missionaries help her she bakes each missionary whatever they want. So she has a whole fancy menu haha--next week I will report on if she's a good cook! 

In the evening we stopped by a family who's stepmother is in the hospital with cancer. Their 2 boys are being taken care of by their grandparents right now, so we went over and had a great visit with them. They said it's hard not being able to attend church in person cause they want to protect their stepmother's health, so we hatched a plan to have us and a group of boys from the ward stop by on Sundays to share a spiritual message and chat. 

Thursday we went to do service at Minnie's food pantry near downtown Plano, and the ZLs were there too! I guess it's in their area so we shouldn't have been surprised. So we helped out there for a while and it was a lot of fun! We bagged thousands of "Pasturized Heavy Whipping Cream" and then made bags with fruits and vegetables while sorting out the bad fruits and vegetables. 

In the evening we went to the Bushop's house for dinner, and afterwards we turned their house into a film set and filmed them for a video we are making for the mission Facebook page.

On Friday I finished editing for the video, and then we did a lot of street contacting and stopbys. We ran into this old guy who we talked to who started trying to bash us on how we were wrong and the Bible was the only thing we could trust. He wasn't very smart so all of his arguments fell flat, but like all bashers he didn't let us talk much and avoided any argument piercing questions I threw at him. Elder Stanley just stood there, so I got to do all the talking. After about 30 minutes we finally got out of there. Hopefully we left him unsettled cause he wasn't very nice--he put on the facade of being nice but got more and more aggravated as the conversation continued. The best thing to use with bashers is your testimony cause no matter how hard they try they can't prove that wrong haha

On the way home by back hub on my bike suddenly broke, so we had to get a ride home with our ward mission leader. Luckily he has a bike I am borrowing while they see if mine can be fixed!

Saturday was pretty normal, the only interesting thing that happened in the afternoon is I had a meeting with the STLs for them to report on how exchanges with the Sisters went, which was fun! They are pretty cool STLs, I expected them to be uptight but they are pretty chill. It would be easier if we just did exchanges with the Sisters but I guess we can't tsk tsk

In the evening we had some pretty good Texas BBQ with the Andrus family. It was supposedly really good, but I only found it moderately good. I think BBQ is wayyy overhyped haha

Sunday we had 5 boys show up to talk with those boys from earlier in my letter. We had only been expecting 2 so it was awesome to see them show up to give support! 

On Saturday evening we had a lesson fall through with a lady named Melissa who we have wanted to meet with for a long time but it keeps falling through but then miraculously a family in the ward invited her over to our dinner with them! We didn't even ask them to do it, they just did it of their own accord. It was awesome to see, if members took the initiative in missionary work like thus more, not only would more people want to join the church, but members would have more friends!

-Elder Nielson

Armadillo!