Matthew McConaughey

 ​

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

 ​

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