Ha

Hello yall!

What a week. Had so much fun, this week. By the end of the email I will say where I am going or if I am staying...maybe.

Monday evening we went out with Brother Rose, and he took his Mustang (with an after market supercharger on it) and we went all night zooming around! We stopped by an inactive family the YW told us to stop by and met a guy named Jonas, he said the other family had moved. But he was

 interested! We talked about the Book of Mormon and gave him one, he was super excited about it! Between each appointment the speed limit was merely a suggestion which made the whole night feel like a roller coaster. Definitely one of the best nights. After our lessons we got Braums which was really good as usual.

On Tuesday we went to the Barton's house and had District council. We had our District testimony meeting which was great, and then did False Prophecies and ate Lasagna too. 

In the evening we went to the Plano Stake Live Nativity! It was really cool, and it was also a warm night for it which was great. We walked through and basically how it works is you walk on a path that has luminaries and then you run into some tax collectors and other dressed up people. They have you sing a hymn, and then a kid says follow me to find the baby Jesus. Then you follow this kid and come to an Inn, and get an Innkeeper guide who then takes you along the rest of the path where you stop and meet wise men, shepherds, angels, and finally Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus. It's really cool, it was run super well, felt like a ride (that you walk through of course). After going through it once Elder Van Tassell, Elder Hansen, and I took it upon ourselves to be the hot chocolate and water carriers, and spent the night bringing hot chocolate to the tired actors. It was so much fun because I was also able to pull insights about transfers out of Elder Van Tassell >:)

 

Wednesday was pretty uneventful, we went to Minnie's which was fun, and then had 4 hours straight of meetings in the afternoon.

We went out with Olivia Allred in the evening and stopped by a lot of people. It was cool cause we were able to learn from her mission experiences!

Thursday we went to Minnie's again and then Operation Extraction (OE for short) began! Elder Van Tassell and Elder Layton took me out of Plano 10 to be in a trio with them for a day, and we left Elder Sartain and Elder Galbraith to fend for themselves in Plano 10. It was so much fun, I did weekly planning with the ZLs, then dinner at one of their member's houses and then went to English Class. It was super fun because we just got to talk so much, and relax. 

However throughout OE we kept getting frantic voice messages and calls from Elder Sartain and Elder Galbraith about various things that had gone wrong haha--apparently their member for the night canceled and they "had called everyone and literally NOBODY could take them" to which I gave them 10 names right off the bat that of course they hadn't called haha--by the end of the night somehow they had ended up stranded at a park in the pouring rain in Murphy, TX. They had somehow gotten a ride there but no ride back. So in other words it was really good to perform this operation because it helped them learn the area more than they would have if they just kept leaning on my knowledge of the area. 

We weren't originally planning on OE lasting over night but since the ride to help us exchange back fell through we decided we would have to. So I stayed at the 6-man apartment which was super fun! Many shenanigans happened. 

Friday morning we went and did comp study at Colin College library, which was awesome, and then decided to pull an elaborate prank where we pretended Elder Van Tassell had been taken from us and was going to be the new AP. Everyone believed us and it was great to see everyone's faces when he suddenly reappeared.

We exchanged back and went out with Edward in the evening which was fun, we taught several great lessons!

Saturday we got 3 dinners. The Novaks dropped off a huge BBQ spread and then when they saw there were 3 of us which they didn't expect they apologized profusely and then left to get us Braums even though the food they brought was easily enough for FOUR people. Then we went out with Brother Allred in the evening and he took us to Braums again! We taught a couple awesome lessons and Lisa and her family came to church because of it!

Sunday I was mostly stressed out the whole day because of transfers, so without further ado here is the news. I am staying in Plano 10 for another transfer to finish training Elder Galbraith! 

Have a great day!

-Elder Nielson

(P.S. I completely lied, I'm actually going to the Heath/YSA area to be a Zone Leader there haha--got you :)

Elder Sartain will be staying in Plano 10 with Elder Galbraith.