Saw A Ghost

Hi everyone! This was a great week, we had a lot of fun,

Monday right as we were nearing the end of pday I was on the phone with family and then I started getting a call. So I hung up and answered. It was a lady named Sharon who past missionaries haven't been able to get in contact with. We talked with her for about 40 minutes, she's going through a lot of hard things and is feeling very alone. I just taught her on the spot and we set up a lesson with her and one of our ward missionaries. It's great that she called us out of the blue instead of her pastor or someone else haha

Tuesday was great! I studied the war chapters in personal study so during comp study I decided to go in depth and map everything out for Elder Stanley. Many people never realize how cool the war chapters are, so sometimes us war historians need to help them out. Not sure how he liked spending an hour and a half talking about these wars but I enjoyed it so that's what matters :)

We had District Council and interviews in the afternoon which was awesome. I had Sister Carr give a training on Listening and resolving people's concerns which was super good, just what the district needed. My interview with President Seitz was awesome, he gave me tons of ideas and great wisdom. He also gave me some tips from his District Leader days. After District Council, President finished with interviews but Sister Seitz was still going strong so President just sat down with our district and shared stories and chatted with us for an hour. Then our ride home fell through also, so President gave us a ride home. It was fun to talk with him for so long, he gave us a lot of Mission President insider knowledge >:)

Wednesday was super fun, we helped Lorna again and she gave me my requested Cheesecake Brownies and Elder Stanley his Salted Carmel Cookies. We placed our orders for next time too so that will be good too. We had two lessons at Starbucks in the afternoon and evening. We had members on both those lessons which was awesome. We are trying to get members on every single lesson! One of our lessons was with Sharon and it went super well, we had Sister Sparks on that lesson. She invited her to sit with her at church which was great. We also gave away 2 Book of Mormons! (I refuse to edit that to say "copies of The Book of Mormon")

On Thursday nothing of note happened, we did service at Minnie's again though. We stopped by a lot of people to no avail. People are rarely home at apartment complexes around here. And when they are home all they do usually is peek out and never open the door. Which means they probably need to get their doorknobs looked at! It was a fun day though, we saw lots of pretty skies.

Friday we went to help the Sisters at Hope's Closet. Only problem was it was a 50 minute bike ride haha--it was a fun one though, lots of nice bike trails through parks and woods. On the way home we stopped at Chick-fil-A which was super good. On the way home it was raining and my front bike tire slipped. We both went down pretty hard haha--except somehow I looked like I hadn't even crashed. There wasn't a scratch or speck of dirt on me, Elder Stanley was a bit more scratched up though so we went home so he could change.

For dinner a member brought us a fajita platter which was super good! It also had really good rice and beans. We also got a cal from a random person saying he wants to trade some electric wheelchairs to the Church in return that they pay a bit of his rent haha--he wants to do this rather then sell them cause he thinks the church could do a better job finding people who actually need them. 

Later that evening we were at an apartment complex walking down the halls and we ran into a guy named John, and talked with him for about 40 minutes. He mentioned something about wheelchairs and we thought nothing of it, but then about halfway through our conversation he showed us a text thread with some guy from our church he had been texting about some wheelchairs he wants to trade. I then connected the dots, and realized the person he was texting was me! But every time I was going to tell him that he was texting with us, he just kept talking. So we went the whole conversation not telling him haha--we should have said something but it somehow just never happened 🙃

We texted him later and told him, and luckily he thought it was funny rather then being mad.

On Saturday the Bells dropped off our commissary, which contained no copies of the Book of Mormon cause the mission is completely out of them. Luckily they also dropped off another mysterious package hehe--they talked with us for a bit, bemoaning the supply chain issues and lack of Book of Mormons, little did they know that the mysterious package addressed to me was a whole box of the coveted books. I mourned with them about how hard it was to get them these days, but I knew that WE wouldn't have to worry haha

In the evening a member invited over Melissa to our dinner with them, which was awesome! Hopefully Melissa starts to see why she needs this church community in her life. We read the Restoration Proclamation with Melissa and the 10 members that were there which was awesome. Afterwards on the drive home where our Fellowshipper drove Melissa home she reported that Melissa started asking more questions about our church, and they talked for like an hour in the car about it. Which is huge progress!

Sunday we woke up at 5 cause our Stake President gave us a ride to the Stake Center cause of an SPR meeting we had. Our meeting wasn't until 7, but he had earlier meetings so we had no choice but to wake up early :)

Elder Stanley wasn't too pleased I don't think about getting up so early on a fast Sunday, but I thought it was pretty fun! The SPR meeting was super good, I felt really important sitting there at a huge conference table with the Stake leadership >:)

We also had 3 people come to church, one of which was Sharon! She even stayed for second hour. In the afternoon we did Stake Choir, and on the way the craziest storm ever hit us! There are branches and trees all over the roads now. It was super fun to drive in, it was the most heavy rain I've ever seen!

-Elder Nielson