Van Nuys

Wooooooo!  I'm in Van Nuys!  I knew I would come here at some point in my mission.  I'm not a fan of the car area.  Biking was so much more fun and energizing.  This area used to be a bike area, but they switched all the Van Nuys areas to car because people kept following the missionaries around on their bikes and stealing them.  The thing is, all the Spanish missionaries here are on bike, so I'm wondering how they don't get their bikes stolen!  The area is a lot like West Hills.  Its a barrio and there are spanish people everywhere.  It's fun though.  We cover part of Van Nuys, Panorama City, and North Hollywood.  It's a good area.  We have a lot of investigators and a lot of recent converts we're teaching.  My companion is named Elder Blumel from Orem.    He's a good missionary and we get a long.  

The district is all the missionaries in the Van Nuys ward and the Northridge ward.  Speaking of which, I'm emailing at Lindsy's church building right now..... weird.  The district is awesome though.  We have 4 sets of missionaries in Van Nuys, including a senior proselyting couple, the only one in the mission.  Northridge has two sets of missionaries as you know.  They are all just awesome hard working missionaries.  Lindsy you better go out with the sisters! 

We have so much work here!  We have about 14 investigators and 3 are on date.  It's awesome.  We didn't get to work much last week though because I had meetings up in Santa Clarita all week.  It was good though.  I learned a lot.  I had to go to a District leader meeting on Thursday for about 5 hours and then to a 6 week followup training for my new companion on Friday most of the day.  Tuesday we were up in Santa Clarita most of the day too because I had to stay after transfers for the new DL training.  All of these meetings were awesome though and I learned a ton on how I can halp my district.  

Our investigators that have a baptismal date are Princess Clemente, and Eperanza and Lluvia.  Princess is the daughter of a recent convert that was baptized about 3 months ago.  She is 14 and is the typical bratty teenage daughter.  They're from the Phillipines and she's still learning English, but its a lot better than her Dad's.  We taught her about tithing and the importance of church reading and praying.  it was good.  The problem with her is that she's only been to church once and her date is for the 7th.  Her dad would take her to church, but he's tight financially and doesn't have a job so he has to go to malibu to do work  and get money for his family.  He's solid though and reads everyday.  The Kempfs (Senior couple) are working on getting him a job so that he doesn't have to work on Sundays.  The mom however works on Sundays as well and won't let Princess go without her Dad.  So were praying that things will work out with that.  I haven't met Esperanza and Lluvia yet.  They have a date for Sep. 21st.  which they should make.  The concern with them is getting them to church since they haven't been yet, but they know everything is true, or so I'm told by my companion.

The ward here is great.  The bishop has a solid ward mission plan and we have a solid ward mission leader.  There are a ton of Philipino's in this ward which is great because they can help us out with people who speak Tagalog.  Anyways, I'm excited to work here and I know the gospel is true.  

Love you all!

Elder Nelson