December 17th, 2012

It is almost Christmas!!! I love this time of year so much and the spirit is so much more evident in the lives of everyone we talk to! It has been a great week! Elder Welch and I have continued to develop our companionship unity and are becoming better friends. Ever since day one with him I knew that it would be hard but I have had this great feeling about the potential that Elder Welch has and that our companionship has! I foresee us accomplishing great things here in woodland together!

I am very excited to be here in this ward at this time of the year! This holiday season is always very fun and exciting and I look forward to the time that will be spent at members homes with their families! I am always very humbled by the love that the members show us.

We are going to be having some great baptisms here in Woodland in the next couple of weeks! J.R. Gallagher is getting baptized this Saturday at 7:00pm and Lori Stonebraker is getting baptized on the 29th! Both of them are amazing people and I don't think I have ever met more solid converts. These people seriously just need to be baptized! They are so good and are doing EVERYTHING that they should be. It has been a honor to teach them and to hear their conversion stories. We have some other great people that we are working with as well, and guess what! New area, new people, SAME PROBLEMS. Smoking and GETTING MARRIED.We have three investigators who could pretty much be baptized if they would just get married. One of them would need to stop smoking though. IT is so crazy how the world views marriage these days! It is like it isn't even important! This morning in my studies I read a talk by Dallin H. Oaks about Protecting the children! It talks about marriage in it and about how the world is destroying something that has been ordained and set apart by God to be sacred and special.

We had a pretty sweet miracle happen this week! We had a former investigator call us out of nowhere and ask us to come teach her! IT was sweet so when we went over and got the full story she told us that she had been investigating a few months back but that she dropped the elders and didnt want anything to do with them anymore.. well after a while she started to miss the elders and the spirit so she started to try praying again and then began to read the Book of Mormon and she knew immediately that this is what she needed in her life and she also knew that she had to step away from it to be able to realize that it was what she needed! During the lesson she kept asking "when can i get baptized!?" haha it was so sweet but we told her that it would take some preparation (she smokes) and we set her date for January 12th. She then told us that she was "all the way in" and that " she was going to give this all she had" It was a great lesson and the spirit was very strong as we taught her the Restoration!

I taught my first District meeting this week! It was really fun! Everyone after said that it was great and so as far as I know it went pretty well! There were some things that could have gone better but there always is! The lesson was on revelation through the Book of Mormon.

I went on an exchange this week with Elder Johnsen one of our Zone Leaders. It is always so fun to go on exchanges and see how other missionaries do things and go about the work. Elder Johnsen was a VERY good planner and I picked up some things that I am going to start applying to my planning.

 

 

I love you all and hope your christmas is going great!! OH! Skype on christmas!! let me know what the best time is for you guys.. we will have district meeting that day so there will be times that I cant do it but let me know when is good for you and next week I will let you know when is good for me! cause i dont know at this point.. I love you!!

Elder Nelson