Thats the Devil! -Keaton

 Hey Yall what's up

We just had an amazing week here in bend so many miracles! We had a bunch of lessons with Nathan and Destiny this week, we even did service for them for about 4 ours on Saturday. But its been an awesome journey for them, they've completely changed their lives in just a few months so that they could join our church and raise their kids in it. And its been such a blessing to watch it all happen, they will be getting baptized during general conference because they want me to be there and I told them I'll probably get transferred so we had to squeeze it in.

We had a couple lessons with Keaton and Melanie as well, they're so awesome they aren't quite ready to come to church yet but they love the lessons and were still Keaton boys so we will keep working with them. 

We met with kelsey on Friday and she's been taught everything were supposed to teach and she wants to get baptized but she had something that made it so she couldn't. But that thing went away this morning! So were super excited for her and her daughter kadence, they are getting baptized on the 11th.

We had stake conference this Sunday and two of the 70 were there to speak. One of them had the thickest accent. So I couldn't understand anything he said but I could still feel the spirit coming from him. We got a new stake president and I called who it was gonna be Ike 3 months ago and I was right. It's funny because him and his wife both graduated from lehi. 

Im gonna write a spiritual thought because im feeling spiritual and I read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John this week. There's some really good stuff in there but a couple things stood out to me. In mark, Christ heals a man's son, who is possessed by an evil spirit. He goes to his house and tell him "all things are possible to him that believe" and the man says " help thou mine unbelief".

It stands out to me because I remember when I was there, we all have doubts at times, and our faith is always growing its a life long process. I remember when I needed help believing, I asked God this same thing, to help me believe. And ive always been able to feel and hear the spirit really well, maybe not always the best at listening to it haha but I could aways hear it. And so I would do the things that help me feel the spirit, because that's how we learn truth is through the spirit. 

We were talking one of our youth last night and he told us that hes been struggling with doubts. And it made me think of when christ went into Gethsemane, he told Peter, James, and John to pray so that they won't enter into temptation. I think that's so powerful because when we're in sincere prayer with our father in heaven we have protection from the evil around us. 

And it looks different for everyone, if you have doubts all you need to do is feel the sprirt. Do what you need to do to feel the spirit. Maybe that's the temple, maybe its scripture study, maybe its a hike in the woods. The devil will tempt you to not do these things. Life is hard sometimes I wonder why this life is so hard even while im out here serving the lord. But why would it be easy for me, when it was never easy for him? He was homeless, one of his closest friends betrayed him, and his closest friend denied him 3 times when it mattered most. He was alone so that we never have to be alone. 

Hopefully that wasn't too much! 

Have a great week yall

Love Elder Nelson🫶

Zone Conference

 Good Afternoon everyone.

It was a very eventful week and full of cool miracles! On tuesday we were talking to people in the park and we started talking to some jahovah witnesses( I hate jws). Ive been wanting a new world translation Bible and so I asked them for one, and they said they ran out but that I could get one at the kingdom hall tonight because there was a meeting that night. So we pulled up and knocked on the door, they let us in and some of the jws recognized me and they gave us a Bible and were going back next week to learn more. 

We also got bashed by some dude Saturday night and we cooked him because he had no idea what he was talking about but anyways we ended up deciding to do a church swap so we went to the grace Bible church yesterday morning... it was really weird and they wouldn't let us take their sacrament which is fine but I thought it was rude. But anyways it just showed me how true our church is.

We had two lessons with Keaton this week and both lessons he felt the spirit really strong to the point where he started crying, and it was really cool to see because hes not the regular person we teach, he calls me gator and he always has a football game on when we're there and hes cussing up a Strom the whole time and saying all kinds of crazy stuff but everytime the spirit is there.

We had a lesson with a lady named Lisa as well and she started crying during the lesson and told us that she could feel the spirit that we brought to her home. Then at like 8:45 that night we started talking to this homeless guy named Ryan and after we were done talking with him he was in tears so the spirit was really strong this week and im super excited for all the cool people we found and are teaching.

We also had zone conference and it was probably my favorite one I've had, both my trainers go home this transfer so im sad to see them go, but the work is definitely progressing across our whole mission.

We have a lot of cool friends that are progressing towards baptism and we saw a cool miracle yesterday at church. We started our fast and we decided to fast about getting friends to church because its been a bit of a struggle lately, and we walked into church and like 10 minutes later a couple walked up to me and turns out they aren't members and they just randomly decided to come into outer church so that was really cool and were teaching them now.

Anyways my testimony has grown a ton this last week and we've seen some really cool thing happen. Love you all

Elder Nelson

Fire

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Yo what up Fam were doing good over here in bend, I Picked up my new trainee on Thursday hes a dawg and were having a good time fr.

We had some great lessons this week we taught Nathan and Destiny the word of wisdom and we had to move their date back a little bit but they're still down and willing to work towards it so we'll see what happens.

Bend is a blessed place for everything except missionary work. They have a concert place across from my apartment and last week I heard a song that ive heard a million times and it took me a sec but I realized it was Reba McEntire so that was fun, I definitely didn't go walk past the concert to hear some more😬

We had to teach second hour on Sunday so that was pretty lame but i think it went OK and it was good because we were able to get a lot more members willing to help us in lessons.

We play a lot of basketball every p day and were going on a hike today i forgot where but should be fun. 

Im getting kind of sick of bend everyone is rich here and even if they are intrested they are just so busy and they are terrible at keeping commitments. Im ready to go back to Salem but I still got at least 5 weeks here so im gonna lock back in tonight.

Training is really fun and im loving it. I didn't realize I'd learn more from training than when I was in training, but I feel like I have and I feel like the most growth has come from it.

Not too much happened this last week we found some cool people that seem like they can progress so well see how that goes. I got in contact with David Campbell and was able to set up a lesson with him so im super pumped for that.

Bend is super smokey right now, we are in fire season and it's pretty crazy we've had a couple missionaries get evacuated and we just breathe in a ton of smoke all day. It's kinda hard to see sometimes. But I think we will be ok 

Anyways that's about all for this week. We got zone conference coming up so it should be a great week im excited for it!

Love you all E Nelson🫶