Hola Hombres

Hola Hombres!  Sounds like everyone's doing good back home! 

This week was another week full of work.  We went on two exchanges and taught a lot of people.  We also had Zone Conferance on Tuesday which was amazing!  I never thought I would like sitting all day in a 9 hour meeting, but I thought wrong!  It was so good!  President and Sister Hall are amazing and are truly inspired leaders of this mission.  We talked about the new mission training plan and we specifically focused on teaching simply.  It was so good and I got so much out of it.  It got me so pumped for this next year.  Presidents dream is to have every missionary baptize monthly and in order to do that, we need to study better, talk to more people, and teach simpler.  It was great.  After Zone Conferance, we went to the Ramirez family home to teach a lesson.  We had planned on teaching the Plan of Salvation, but we got in there and asked Lucy how she was feeling about baptism and she just broke down crying and told us that she doesn't feel like she deserves a blessing as great as baptism.  She told us she doesn't feel worthy.  She understands that it is necessary for one to be baptized, as does the whole family, but that she doesn't feel worthy.  We brought Jason Crosby with us, our Recent convert from October to help us teach, and he was able to relate with her so well.  He shared how he felt before he got baptized and how he knows that its hard.  He told her that it was the best thing that she could do though and that when you're baptized you feel clean because those sins are washed away.  We shared a couple scriptures with her and assigned her to read Alma 36.  She felt better after about an hour.  She still wants to get baptized so everything is good.  I was so glad that we invited Brother Crosby to come with us to the lesson.  What he said really helped her.  Thursday I went on an exchange with the Korean Elders into Korean work.  We didn't do much.  The Koreans are trying to advertise their English class a whole ton lately, so we worked on that and tried to find places to put up flyers.  It was a long day.  Friday we went on another exchange with the Assistants.  Elder Wright from Coleville Utah came with me into my area.  We taught the Ramirez family again that night and we taught them the Plan of Salvation.  It was a good lesson and we committed them to pray about getting baptized as a family.  Laura still doesn't feel like she is prepared, and Jose is on the brink of committing to the 15th as a date.  Lucy wants to get baptized with Jose, so hopefully once they pray as a family, the Holy Ghost will touch them all and they will all want to get baptized on the 15th!  They're all ready to be baptized.  We went over the baptismal interview questions with them and everything.  Later on that night we went to a Member named Noel Larson.  He's an active member who is in his sixties, but he lives with his girlfriend.  It's weird.  His girlfriend Janice is a nonmember and has been taught by missionaries before.  We went over there and shared a short message with them and tried to include Janice, but she refused to read or committ to anything.  She kept saying that she didn't beleive in God and her and Noel got into an argument.  Noel told her that she had no foundation for life.  It was awkward!  She asked us some standard questions (Why do bad things happen etc.)  Which we answered, but she denied them all and refused to do anything.  It was a fun experience, but a weird situation.  The next morning we knocked a lot of doors and found a few potential investigators.  We went to an appointment with a super solid potential (or so we thought) named Brian.  We met him like 3 weeks ago and told us that he was a man of his word and that he would read the whole book of mormon before we come over.  We went to his house and he inveted us in, and told us his religous backround and asked how we came to be mormons.  He then went off about all his problems with mormonism and he would not stop talking!  He was the most anti-mormon person I've ever met on my mission.  Anyways, we eventually just stopped him and bore our testimonies and walked out.  It was fun.  He wanted to argue and you could tell that he was mad that we weren't argueing.  It was funny, but he was so blind, spiritually that is. That exchange was awesome.  I always learn so much from the assistants.  They are such good missionaries.  Super Bowl Sunday was great fun.  We had a great day at church and the Ramirez family came to church again!  They all stayed for three hours this time and got to see Selvin get the Aaronic Priesthood which was amazing!  We helped our neighbor move in too.  He's from Palmdale and moved here for work.  He doesn't have a lot of stuff so moving only took about 30-45 minutes.  His brother was there to help and he had a lot of questions about the church and missionaries and what not.  Hopefully we'll be able to teach them soon.  Anyways, that's all I got for ya this week!  Until next time!  Love you all!

Elder Nelson