September 17th, 2012

Dear family,
Hello! I hope you are doing well! I have been! I had a great week this week with lots of good experiences.
The coolest experience I had was that on Sunday I had the great honor of being able to confer the priesthood on and to ordain Terrence! It was so cool! Terrence really is the man! I felt the spirit very strongly during the blessing and the words that I said were truly words from our heavenly father and I was just the mouth piece. I realized something very cool after the blessing as well when the bishop came up and asked me for a copy of my priesthood lineage so he could make one for Terrence! It took me a a second but I connected the dots and it was humbling to realize that my name and your name dad and glades name and all the others will be a part of Terrence's lineage and his kids lineage for the rest of their lives! I was humbled. I teased Terrence that he would never be able to forget me now and that I would follow him everywhere! I love Terrence so much and I am so excited for his future! We are teaching him this week and we are going to talk to him about the temple and about serving a mission!! It is my hope that in a year Terrence will attend the temple and that I will be able to get permission to go through it with him! How sweet would that be! Terrence is awesome.
Unfortunatly this week elder stainback and I have to be bold with some investigators and drop them. They are long term investigators and are still not keeping commitments or coming to church and we love them but we have other people that we need to spend time on. They just aren't ready. Its a tough decision to decide to drop someone. We prayed about it though and it is necessary We felt re assured in our decision.
On Thursday this week we got to go do some serious service up at Camo Liahona!! And seriously it is such a beautiful place!! It is in the midst of the redwoods and it is just so sweet! There are a bunch of cabins and things to do and I was excited to tell you about it because it would be a great place for a family reunion! Get online and check it out cause it really is awesome. The trees were huge! On the way back from the service we drove along the coast and we got to see the ocean and it was very pretty. It was a great day! I feel like it was almost cheating because it didn't feel like service it felt like an extra P-day! We had a blast! We helped clear out "the sacred grove" and built a path that led up to it. So if we ever went back I could show you the fruits of my labors! Unfortunately I forgot my camera.. so that awesome day of service will go undocumented.. oh well.
I went on another exchange this week with Elder lenon. I went to his area which is a Spanish area so I was dazed and confused all day! By the end my thoughts were in Spanish I had heard so much! It was really fun though! I was fed so well by the Spanish members..oh man... The coolest part though was that in some of the lessons Elder Lenon would ask me questions and translate my answers to the people so it was pretty sweet. The spirit was very strong in a couple of the lessons and even though I had no idea what was being talked about or said I Felt it testify of the truth being taught. It was frustrating though because when you feel that spirit you just want to teach and testify so bad! But I couldn't because I had no idea what to say! It really was good though. I learned a lot and got a great insight into a day in the life of a Spanish missionary.
We will be doing a ton of finding this week so pray that we will be led by the spirit to find people that are ready to hear the gospel! I love you all and am glad you are doing great! Sorry this is short! I look forward to hearing from you! I love you!
_Elder Nelson