Hello people,
Monday two weeks ago was fun, we shall return to it soon...
Tuesday was good, we had District council, and afterwards ate at Braums. Then I went on exchanges with Elder Frenzel. He's cool, I always love comp study on exchanges cause it's a great time that I get to hear about how missionaries are doing, and gauge where they are at. It's also fun to have different discussions and hear different perspectives. In the evening we taught Lee, and it went super well! Brother Talley was with us, we read Alma the Younger's repentance story with Lee.
On Wednesday it was my birthday! It felt weird to have my birthday on the mission, but it was good. We made soooooo many calls in the afternoon. Everytime we go through our Area Book we are blocked by more people then last time, what is people's problem? 😤 If I were them I would love getting harassed by the missionaries, if I knew my eternal welfare was at stake! In the evening we ate at Shlotzky's and went out with Brother Faucette to stop by people. We had a good night, and ended by getting ice cream at Braums to end the night. The whole day I kept getting random messages on Facebook saying Happy Birthday from people who usually ignore me, so that was fun haha
Thursday we did service at Minnie's, and then went to Sam's club with some other missionaries and a member payed for our food! Then in the evening we went out with Brother Allred and did some stopbys. It was fun, afterwards we went and ate this amazing barbeque with him! And thats saying something coming from me, cause I think barbecue is over-hyped and not that good in general. But it was soooo good, really pricey though! We have so many nice members here.
In the morning on Friday, we went and helped out Lorna, we moved a lot of marble slabs haha--the rest of our day was pretty normal, lots of meetings and then some member lessons in the evening.
Sunday was good as usual, our streak of 4 people to church for the last 3 weeks was broken sadly. :( It was a really rainy day, so we had a lot of fun riding through Breckinridge park! The temperature was perfect. That evening we had steaks with the Andruses and talked about how we can help the Elders Quorum. We are really trying to build trust with the ward council, we would love for them to do their job and give us names. :) In the evening we biked around and stopped by some inactive members. For some reason people think it's okay to go to sleep at 7:30 here, don't know what on e they are thinking!! It's puzzling and irritating when we knock on someone's door and they say "we were just going to bed." Don't people have more important things to do then sleep tsk tsk
Monday felt super weird because it wasn't pday. We made another video to get our Zone excited about Facebook again which was fun! In the evening we had big plans to go to downtown State Farm, but then my tire suddenly had a hole, so instead we had to spend some time patching it, and then did some calls haha
On Tuesday we had District council, then Elder Barton took Elder Stanley and I to Braum's for lunch! I couldn't help myself, so I got the bag of 5 cheeseburgers, and it was worth it! Every time I get a burger somewhere, I wish I had 4 more, so this was perfect. In the evening we went out with Bushop and ate at a pretty good Thai place! I got some herb fried chicken fried rice. Afterwards I interviewed someone the Sisters are teaching for baptism. That was really fun, I like doing baptismal interviews more and more. By the end of this month everyone in our district will have had an October baptism!! Also we are at 100% members on lessons in our district. Which is a hugeeee improvement from when I first got here.
Wednesday morning we went and helped Lorna again, she's fun to help and talk to. We had Chipotle for dinner, and also had this super good honey dew ice cream smoothie! Which is surprising, honey dew is usually just referred to as the "less-exciting fruit," but it was really good in the smoothie!
In the evening we went out with Brother Johnson and taught 4 lessons! It was lots of fun, my favorite lesson was when we taught Lee the Plan of Salvation. It was the best Plan of Salvation lesson ever, he seemed to really get it, and agree with it. Brother Johnson was also really good at relating to him.
Thursday was a great day! It was pday this week because we got to go to the temple. We went to the Church and played some games with our district in the morning. Or at least we intended to play games and instead ended up talking most of the time. We did play the tortilla game though. Afterwards we went and ate at El Norte, and Brother Faucette payed for our whole district! We spent some of the time convincing the Sisters of various things like the fact that Elder Layton goes home next transfer and Elder Van Tassell is really from Japan. ;) The rest of the time we had fun just talking with our district.
In the afternoon we went to the temple, and it was great! I love the Dallas temple, highly recommend going.
In the evening we had pizza for dinner and then went out with Brother Mendenhall for some lessons. We taught Audrey again and she's so awesome! She has some friends she wants us to teach next time haha, so she's helping us out! We also talked to her friend who was there and gave her a Book of Mormon and taught her!
Friday we went to Minnie's, but before that we had a Zone Meeting. Only problem is it's a 30 minute bike ride to Minnie's, so we hopped on the meeting while we were en route. And we even participated, I think everyone was impressed. In the afternoon we had some meetings with the STLs and ZLs, and we also did some more companionship calls. Then we went out and stopped by people with one of the new ward missionaries. He's 18, so hopefully this will help him want to go on a mission! I also went and interviewed someone the ZLs are teaching for baptism.
On Saturday we finally had time for our weekly planning, which was super good. We are trying to figure out how to help our friends want to make the next step. It's also harder to find new people to teach in this area then my last area, so we are finding new ways to find people. In the evening we went over and had dinner with some members and taught Eleanor! We taught her about prophets and following the prophet, which was fun. Then Brother Allred took us out to some more lessons and stopbys. Afterwards he got us some super good chicken with rice from Hawaiian Brothers, and some superb Dole Whip! It's been a while since I've had this level of quality from a Dole Whip.
Okay now back to Monday from 2 weeks ago. It was Zone pday, so we had a Zone costume party!! I was a bag of Ice and Elder Stanley was a lunch-lady/lunch-man. It was so fun we played a lot of games like Halloween jeopardy and paint the pumpkin.
In the evening we went out with Brother Adams to some appointments. As we were stopping by people we ran into Audrey, and the first thing she said to us was "I need to come to church, I've just been scared to ask for a ride." We told her of course we could find her a ride, and that we would get back to her. She was busy but said to come back in an hour. So we went and stopped by some other people in her complex while we waited. So we went up to this one lady's door named Michelle. Her door is covered in crosses, as many doors are. We knocked and then waited, enjoying pleasant conversation with our member (our usual past time on peoples doorsteps). She didn't answer, so I started writing a card, and when I had almost finished the door swung open and there's this wide-set lady there with a knife ready to strike!! We kinda jumped cause we thought nobody was home and then she started yelling at us haha--something about us always leaving our dirty cards at her door and eating candy and leaving wrappers everywhere (ah yes, my favorite pasttime, sitting at a lady's door eating candy and writing cards). We kept trying to say "okay we won't come back" and leave but she wouldn't let us haha, she just kept demanding why we kept coming back. Sue also said "don't let these crosses on my door fool you, I will cut and shoot you if I ever see you again." The Christian way I suppose, I'm sure Christ would do that too! Elder Stanley and I were about to snap and start yelling back at her, but refrained and finally just turned and walked away, her yelling at us that we were going to hell as we went. She also mentioned that she had called the cops on us haha--and that we weren't even supposed to be here. Which is not true. :) After that Brother Adams and us joked about it, and then we knocked on this inactive member's door. She let us in, and we had an awesome visit with her!! She and Brother Adams got along really well, he was definitely meant to be with us that night. At the end of the visit she asked what we were doing next and we told her we were going to teach Audrey. Once we said that she said, "does she need a ride to church?" Which of course we said yes, so now we have the inactive member right across the hall from Audrey coming with Audrey to church on Sunday!! It was definitely a miracle, and we taught Audrey afterwards and she's excited to come.
Okay that was a few things from my last couple weeks. One million pictures are coming.
-Elder Nielson
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