Christmas

 Merry Christmas everyone!

Its been a good couple of weeks filled with sunny days, floods and a crazy neighbor.

We went on a hike last week called God's thumb. Over on the coast. And it was very beautiful but a little dangerous since in was pretty steep and super muddy, I was able to make it the whole way without slipping, my companion cannot say the same though. He slipped and fell probably about 20 times and we needed a rope to get him up the mountain. 

Anyways we've been teaching a lady named Serena who we found a couple weeks ago. And shes been able to come to church everyweek so far. Shes so awesome and so willing to learn, shes been reading the BoM and has really enjoyed it. 

We had dinner with Napolean dynamites parents a couple nights ago and that was really fun i kept making jokes about the movie( they think its the best movie ever made still!) But they are awesome and they actually gave us a referral, and we went over to the lady and she and all her kids are wanting to come to church and join the church. So hype.

Sadly I did not get an F-250 Shelby Super Baja for Christmas this year but its such a great time of year to spread the gospel and invite people to church. We've seen so many miracles lately and im really excited to see what happens next transfer!

Hope yall have some good Holidays! 

Elder Nelson

Texas Tea

    What up everyone! This week went by super fast! We've been slow cookin out here, I think that's a good thing. The work here in west salem is a little slow at times, and a lot of people tell us not to come back until January. So that's a little annoying. And all of our members are gone. But were having a good time.

Anyways we had our mission Tour with Peter M. Johnson, and it was good we learned a lot. The spirit was strong and hes a funny guy so we had fun....but it was also 8 hours long. So we left our apartment at 7:30 and got back at 6. Then had dinner and did our studies. So the only non member we talked to yesterday was our waitress. So I dont know if yesterday was productive or not, cuz we learned and stuff but idk 😐.

Hola we had a ward fiesta thingy and they had me raising and lowering the piñata 🪅 and I was cooking too much apparently cuz all the old ladies got mad at me when the little kids couldnt hit it. Im just too nice with it🤷‍♂️

But ye that was pretty much our week, we ready to run it up this week 😤 I wanted to Be A G so I went and got a BAG🗣

lil spiritual nug🫴

After reading about The son's of mosiah this past week, I relate my situation to theirs. Oregon might not be quite as bad as the lamanites( it might be worse lowkey) but I just love how much joy they found in teaching the lamanites in alma 26. And I definitely have felt that and Peter John said some heat about how when we get home, the only thing that changes is we take our tag off, that's it, our purpose doesnt change. 

Preesh 🙏🏾 

Luh E Nelly

Crazy neighbor

   Aye maaaaaaan I had some good fortune cookies from panda this week. 

Anyways we had a fire week this time around, we've been really turning this area around its been so amazing to see the progress over here in the hills🗣

  We found a dawg named Ivan on Saturday and the next day when we had our lesson wit him, we felt prompted to set a date for baptism with that boy so we got him set up for the 21st of December. And hes actually such a cool dude and willing to keep commitments.

We been talkin to a guy named Christian as well recently and he brought baptism in our last lesson so we set a date for him as well so that's exciting. He has had a rough life recently and said that he feels like there's something missing in his life, so we promptly told him that hes missing the spirit. But not for long🖖

We were weekly planning the other day when suddenly we received a call from a random number...and it was a dude named Mark, and Mark has been to our church once before and said it was the time of his life frfr. So we set him up with the ysa sisters cause he seemed really interested in that when we brought it up. But hes actually so cool he pulled up to the ysa activities the last two nights. But ye just thought that was coo.

Aye but speakin of the title today, we got this neighbor, and bruh this dude is actually a creep, one night as I was lying down i heard a tap on the window to my left....and I looked over confused, and there he was, a 60 year old man staring at me. And he lives literally right across the hall from us which is 5 feet away. And id say like every other day when we walk out of our door he opens his door and yells at us and calls us profanitys and other naughty things. But ye he weird fr.

Anyways I feel so blessed to be serving a Mish rn its changed my life, and somtimes it seems like it goes by too fast but I also feel like I been a missionary for my whole life. So I try to have fun while im out here and just grind from da rap.

Anyways if yall have a hard time reading this im sorry I just have have a lil duey on rn(durag) so brings me back to my rose park days fr.

Luh yall🧡🥷

Matthew McConaughey

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Yeauuuh.... a lady told me I look like him this week💪 but enough about me.

Jk its all about me, when we were driving over from bend we saw a little bit of snow on the ground( Prez & Sis Parker were driving for some reason) and they pulled over so we could get a picture with the snow and I accidentally nailed president with a snow ball, so hopefully I dont get sent home.

I met my new comp Elder De Vore. I absolutely love him, we have a lot of fun but we also work hard and have found some really cool people to teach since I've got here!

We met a young man named Jeagar, and he came to church on sunday! It was so hype and we invited him to get baptized but he said not yet..so that was sad but hes still down to learn and come to church so the spirit will get him eventually.

Our ward is super fun, Usually im the one with the rizz towards old ladies but Elder De Vore has been killing it with the ladies in our ward( I think the average age in this ward is 88) im kinda disappointed in myself so I will work on that. But anyways my point about the ward i was trying to say was, this is a very wealthy area. I thought bend was rich but wow its crazy over here. But I really like old people so im having a great time.

We are teaching The Cortez family and they are awesome, they want their kids to grow up with good friends and people to look up to so we committed them to coming to church this week. I did the can lesson with them and kinda broke my finger.

Yesterday I went on an exchange with Elder Lee, he is deaf. So I wanted to put the two cripples together, but yeah we had a great time. You would think a deaf missionary wouldn't be that great but hes such a good missionary it's incredible! We somehow found two different people through a ring doorbell. Which was new I've never done that before. 

But the People here in west Salem are sooo prepared its great, im very excited for this transfer. 

lil spiritual nug🫴 i got an awesome study journal with all the general conference talks from this last conference, and I've been reading lots of the talks. And the talk by Elder Cook was really good talking about the hastening of the Lord's work.

And with the recent announcement about girls being able to leave at 18 is so cool! (Hailey Cough cough) but ive definitely seen in the past few months that with everything going on inour world people are starting to flock back to churches just like the early days of our church! 

And just like what president Monson said, its time for members and missionaries to come together! You guys can all still be missionaries even in utah! But yeah the work is definitely hastening on both sides! So share the testimony you have!

Bye Bend

          I guess 8 months was long enough in bend! Im really excited to see some change, but im also going to not the nest area. Im headed to west Salem and I'll be training again😵 and it will just be me and my trainee in our apartment. But im honestly really excited!

Anyways now I have to go say bye to a bunch of people today😢 

This last week was really great! We taught some awesome people including a guy named Richard Long(yes that's his actual name) but hes had a hard life and struggles with a lot of things and he said that hes going to come check out church as a last resort this Sunday. 

We taught Aaron a couple times last week and hes so legit im gonna miss teaching him and seeing his baptism😭 but im really excited for him! We alwayd run into him at the park, somehow we always end up there at the same time and I think he knows.its a sign from God for him to get dunked.

Nathan & Destiny have been coming to church almost every week since they've been baptized, and they have 4 kids. So when they joined the church it about doubled the primary. And they ward has alwasy complained about having a tiny primary and as soon as we got more for them they started complaining about one of the new kids being a problem. And its gotten to the point where the ward gossips about it a lot, and im super worried that Nathan & Destiny could go inactive from it.

We are currently working with 4 inactive members, and we got 3 of them to come to church and the other took us to dinner. So that was great.

But yeah im gonna miss bend, im gonna miss a lot of members that are old so I probably won't see them again 😇 and i dont know how Christmas will be with just me and my comp but🙏 maybe it'll be fun.

I love the Christmas season though and everyone is way more willing to hear us out around this time so it'll be a great transfer! 

Love Elder Nelson

Week 50

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Sorry I couldnt think of a better tittle

We had a really good week! We've been finding a lot of new people to teach, and we haven't even been knocking too much! I officially have 1 week left in bend( i actually have no idea, it could be longer)

But anyways we found this dude named Aaron on tuesday, and on Saturday he randomly called us, and kinda gave us his whole life story and we invited him to get baptized and hes so down. He pulled up to church the next day and absolutely loved it! I mean who couldnt, it was the primary program🤷‍♂️

I was able to attend two funerals this week, it was great. The lady we gave a blessing to a couple weeks ago had hers on Sunday and at district council we had one for the missionaries going home( apparently that's a thing).

We got a call from a lady that needed help digging a ditch, so we ran that up and it reminded of the good old days at the construction sites🥲. Everytime we do any physical labor my boy Elder Childs gets Flamed by whoever were doing it for, and I feel bad but its also really funny because its literally EVERYTIME we do anything haha.

Anyways I've been isolated in bend for a while now, and everytime president and sister Parker come out here, they are so burnt out from going to all the other zones. And in interviews the sisters took like an hour each so he was so done by time it was the Elders turn. But I did put in a good word for myself to go back to Salem, so we will see what's up next week🙏

We taught Keaton about exaltation and he loved it, so maybe when we teach people we should just start with "you can be a god one day" and maybe they will like that more.

lil spiritual nug🫴 Jesus loves you!

Love Elder Nelson

The Rain

 The Rain is back, and it brings me back to my first transfer when I actually forgot what the sun looks like.

But hey were having a great time out here in bend! We have interviews with our president tomorrow and im debating if i should ask him to stay here or ask him to leave. Because I love this place but its getting too cold for me so if be down to leave. With my luck I'll be back on a bike.

For whatever reason we keep getting random calls from non-members asking us to help them move. And then we pull up and do all the work and then they dont even thank us. And obviously im not out here for myself yk but it would be nice to get a thanks or like a pizza or something yk. 

Anyways for Halloween we dressed up as ninja turtles and im not gonna lie, we looked gooooood. But we had to be in our apartments at 5 on Halloween and prez wanted us to clean. So we cleaned for 4 hours and didnt get a single trick or treater.

But were teaching some cool friends my boys Jorge and Jose. They are brothers that live together that we found like a week ago. And they're Dawgs we teach them like every day and they love it. Hopefully we can get them to church on sunday. 

We went to Walmart today and my comp tried to buy a forever roll of toilet paper. It was 30 bucks and I told that that was a bad use of tithing and he ignored me so now we have a massive forever roll of toilet paper that we can't even put anywhere.

Anyways in our recent meetings with president and we also met with Peter Johnson of the 70. We've been talking a lot about our missionary purpose and our personal conversion. Cause its kinda hard to teach people if you don't believe what your teaching. 

Although I have a testimony on most things we teach, its not alwasy perfect so ive been on the grind with my personal studies.

We got a new stake president recently and he keeps bringing up his favorite chapter of the book of mormon(Jacob 5) and I'll be honest I've been skipping jacob 5 everytime I read the book of mormon🤣 cause it makes no sense to me. Buuuuut he explained it really well and basically he wants us to "focus on the good" so that is what I've been trying to do. Even when it gets hard or gets discouraging we gotta focus on the good.

That's all I got this week so hope yall have a good rest of your week. Also this Wednesday p-day thing makes the weeks go by even faster! Its crazy🤪

Love Elder Nelson

RIP Poncho Villa

 Well we had an interesting week. 

We went over to Chris's house on Friday and usually his house smells pretty bad, but that day it was so bad I could taste it. We sat down, said a prayer, and chris goes "yeah, poncho died three days ago" pats the bundle of blankets right next to him. "Im hoping he'll rise the third day like Jesus". So yeah Poncho was dead on his couch for at least 3 days, probably longer because Chris has no idea. So I made Chris bundle poncho up and I carried him out to the front yard and buried him. 

Also last week we got a call from some guy wanting us to give a lady a blessing and we asked where to go and he said shes at the hospice center. So we pulled up and she was completely unresponsive, she was breathing but had no idea we were there as far as we know. Gave her a blessing and dipped.

But other than all that we had a great week! We found a ton of new people to teach and a lot of them are super cool! We went to a trailer park and found a bunch of Mexicans that speak perfect English so that was lit. 

We also found this kid that's 15 and hes really cool, hes getting baptized either next week or the week after, so keep Aiden in your prayers!

And wow i almost completely forgot! BYU beat Utah haha, I wish I could say im surprised😂🥱

Hope yall have a great week! Jesus love you!

Elder Nelson

Elder Mitchell

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 Hey Yall lowkey a boring week but its been a good start to the transfer. My new comp is cool I really like him and he really likes bend. He thinks its the prettiest place ever, hes from Vegas so hes a sinner too.

When I found out I was staying in this area again I was a caught off guard cause I wasn't expecting to stay. But for whatever reason god needs me here and I got a rush of motivation, so we've been doing some good work. We've just been trying to find new people to teach.

We had dinner with a family that were teaching, they got us wings and pizza it was great. And they had a baseball game on the TV. But Jackson is 14 and he wants to get baptized, but his dad has a lot of questions about our church that we have to help him answer first.

We also found out that if your serving in bend you dont get to go to the temple. Even though that's the whole reason prez changed p -day. So that was a bummer.

We've been having a lot of lessons with Nathan & Destiny, they are doing great Nathan was participating in elders qurom which is impressive because elders qurom is a little sketchy. Hopefully we can get Nathan the preisthood this next week.

Elder Nelson