GG Simmons

-Elder Nielson

Sunday was fun, we had 4 people come to church, one of which is named Patrick. He's a cool guy and he thinks we look like lawyers in our suits. We also got a text from Sharon who we were teaching, here's what it said, "Hi. I ended up going to my church. After much thought, I decided I'm not in a place right now, where I want to switch denominations. I love my pastors through sermons, and this what I'm used to all my life. I appreciate all that youvefone for me, but I know I will not be changing my mind. I am actually going to start volunteering at my church as they have a 9nce a month street church where they feed the homeless in DT Dallas. I'm looking forward to this to keep me busy. Please log onto Create Churches website to listen to this week or last weeks sermons for an insight on my theological faith."

Some people just want to settle for the Terrestrial Kingdom. 🙃 We asked her if she had even given the Book of Mormon a try and she just left us on read, so that's a no. If you never read the Book of Mormon, how are you even going to know if it's good or not?

Other than that nothing interesting happened on Sunday. Oh wait, except for transfer news...

Saturday was good, we helped an inactive member named Allan sort through some boxes. He's a funny guy, he just can't make up his mind about anything and seeing all the boxes just overwhelms him and he can't even really deal with it all. He moved from a house to an apartment and there's too much he can't bear to part with, so we had to take a firm hand. We ate at SmashBurger that night which was fun. Afterwards we stopped by some members, and were able to have a Facebook lesson at their place! We got a member to be on the lesson with us too, so anyone who says you can't get members on Facebook lessons is wrong. :) We had members with us on every single lesson we taught this week!

On Friday we went and did some service with the Sisters at Hope's Resale Store. Brother Rose gave us a ride there in his Mustang! It has a supercharger and is from the top line. It was the most fun ride of my life, the way he drives it he gets 10 mpg haha--its really cool and you can just feel the car's engine the whole way. When we showed up they were having a Baby Shower haha--so we just joined in and then helped clean up. We moved a lot of boxes for the store after that. After service Elder Barton picked us up and since we needed a new tube for Elder Stanley's tire we stopped at store after store looking for one but they were all out! Finally we found one at a Bike store luckily. For lunch at 4 since it had gotten so late we had some pretty good burritos, then for dinner an hour later we had Fettucine Alfredo! Lorna also brought by 3 more bags of cookies, so now our entire counter is covered with cookies and Brownies and donuts and pastries and bread and bagels.

In the evening we went with Brother Sparks to teach Audrey, and the lesson went so well! One of the best lessons I've ever taught. She said "wow" a lot during the first vision, and is super excited to read the Book of Mormon!

Thursday we did service at the food bank and for Peggy. We also did our weekly planning, and then stopped by some inactive members. We had chinese for dinner. Also Elder Stanleys tire popped!

Wednesday we did service for Lorna. We helped her pack up her RV for her trip. We had Spaghetti and Meatballs with Garlic bread at the Bushop's house for dinner and it was really good! Immediately after that we biked over to Olive Garden and had a lesson over our second dinner there with Sister Sparks and Sharon! I got the Fettucine Alfredo which was super good as usual. Sometimes 2 dinners is good cause then if one wasn't good you have another chance. Luckily both of these were good!

Tuesday we had our last district council of the transfer! We did it at the Barton's house, and it was super good. Afterwards we did floating and false prophecies. We ate taco salad for lunch. Then we went on exchanges, so I went with Elder Fuentes back to Plano 10. We had a good time, we taught a couple lessons in the evening. One of the lessons was with a couple and we taught a full Restoration lesson and it seemed to be going really well and then when we invited them to read the Book of Mormon they flat out said "no." Elder Fuentes about walked out haha--we basically ended up bearing our testimonies of it and then leaving. Afterwards we had a lesson with a guy named Lee, and we talked about the spirit. He said he is struggling to find answers, so we asked if he prays about what we teach. And he said yes. So we asked what he feels after he prays about it. And he said he feels the spirit and feels peace. Sooo basically we tried to explain that WAS his prayer being answered haha--he even said the last time he felt the spirit was when we last taught him a couple weeks ago. So he just needs to connect the dots!

Monday we had Zone pday which was fun! We had waffles. Lots of the day was spent talking about conspiracy theories that might be true! In the evening we had a great FHE lesson with the Bushes and Bebe. 

Hi everyone, heres my week:

--

P.S. I am staying and so is Elder Stanley. Sister Carr is going to be STL in this zone Sister Luke is staying and trio training

Elder Fuentes is leaving and Elder Van Tassel is staying

They are opening a new area in our district so 2 more Elders will be joining us!

Our district is going from 6 missionaries to 9 missionaries haha

Title

Hi everyone, 

Monday was Labor Day supposedly (still not sure if this is true) so all the missionaries in the Plano Stake got a bunch of food and gathered at the Stake Center. We played Volleyball and a game called Love Letter. It was pretty fun! 

We went to Starbucks as usual for Facebook and calls, and they gave us a ton of free pastries and donuts and bagels! It's the least they can do, since they get to have our presence there so often!

On Tuesday we had District Council which was really fun as usual! My district us awesome, its too bad transfers go by so fast. Afterwards Elder Barton took us to Braums again which was super good. In the afternoon we had a lesson with Bebe over Zoom cause she's traveling. We also had a member on that lesson too. We knew Bebe had a lot of questions about the temple so we decided to show the Rome Temple Tour Video. It was just exactly what she needed, she said it answered every single one of our questions. So that was that. They are planning on visiting the Rome temple after she gets baptized! Some people with money can just do things like that on a whim :)

In the evening we ate some really good Chinese food and then we went with Brother Balley to a lesson with Lee. Nobody answered the door so we tried calling him and his phone is disconnected! Luckily we always have backup plans, so we walked down the hall to knock a few other formers. On our way a lady randomly peeked her head out of her door for no reason at all, so we asked if she wanted to hear a message about Christ. We ended up talking for 40 minutes with her! I'm getting really lazy, so I am just going to copy what I put in the lesson notes and paste that here:

 "So we just ran into her in the hall. She happened to open her door as we were walking by with Brother Balley, so it was a huge miracle! She's super elect! Loves the word and is looking for a church. She's interested on reading the Book of Mormon! She's awesome! She wants to come to church. Taught her about the Book of Mormon simply and about Christ. She talked about how she's looking for a church. Brother Balley told her all about church and invited her to come! We gave her a Book of Mormon! She was super thankful for it and seemed to really appreciate it. Invited her to read and pray about it. Brother Balley bore his testimony of the Book of Mormon. Also she told us about her life a bit and it's crazy. She said she would come to church in 2 weeks!"

Wednesday we helped at Lorna's place again. This time we scooped some horse droppings and moved a LOT of wood. Later in the afternoon we had a lesson with Melissa and a member at a park in downtown State Farm. It was super nice outside and the lesson went really well! The Social Media Specialists also made us the Interactions Response Team for the Mission Facebook Page (they merged the Zone Pages) which is what I get for doing a good job at it before when we were Zone Reps tsk tsk

On Thursday morning around 7 we helped a referral from the West Mission move in. She was moving into an apartment on the 3rd floor in a retirement community, so us and her moving team got really good at loading and unloading elevators! It was kinda fun, I've never helped someone move via elevator. 

Later in the morning we had a lesson at the Bushops house in Murphy with Peggy. It went super well! She said church is her happy place, so we will definitely put her on date this week. (If I had my way she would already be on date 😤). It was great having it at the Bushop's house cause he and his wife shared such great insights throughout the lesson.

In the afternoon we went back up to Murphy because someone called us wanting a Book of Mormon. We gave him one and talked about it, he's really weird and funny haha--he says all members of our church are better-looking then everyone else in the world. He also wants to be a missionary like us but he just can't get the look down he says. 

In the evening we had some fancy corndogs from Two-Hands Corn Dogs. We also had some Horchata Slushies. It was all really good and interesting. This ward hasn't missed a single night of feeding us :)

Friday we did a lot of calls and studies, nothing too interesting happened. We had some super good Costco Pizza and Cheesecake at the Woods house. It was really good, Costco pizza is better than most pizzas, and I had forgotten that cause it's been so long. Also Brother Wood is a Rush, Muse, Boston, and more artists I love fan! He's met Tom Shultz and has some signed stuff from him! He's a software developer and a singer for a band by night :))

On Saturday we had the Stake Day of Service activity! One thing we did is we packaged 30k meals for some kids and refugees from Ukraine. It was super fun, even President Seitz showed up by surprise! After the service project a member took us to Liberty Burger and it was really good! I got a burger with avocado, salsa, chips, and refried beans and stuff on it.

Sunday was Stake Conference, and us and the Sisters sang in Stake Choir which was great! I can't remember a Stake Conference when I wasn't on the stand to be honest. 

Nothing else of note happened this week that comes to mind. A bunch of pictures are coming.

-Elder Nielson 

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