Crazy

Yep this week was a crazy one!  We had a lot of stuff happening throughout the zone with missionaries and what not.  We had some sweet miracles in our area though. 

 

We're taught alfonsis again this week.  He loves the church and told us that he knows Joseph Smith was a prophet.  He hasn't been to church for a long time and he didn't come this week, but hopefully we'll get him there this week.  His only hold up is that he believes in this Jewish mysticism stuff and he thinks that was how Christ worked because he was a Jew.  Something about how we have ten fingers and that they are sephirods to heal and how it is through the tree life which consists of 72 different gods and 8 archangels that each of the prophets in the new testament saw and went through.... Ya so he doesn't quite understand priesthood and he talks a ton about this tree of life/ archangel stuff.... but he believes that Joseph Smith was a prophet and the whole restoration.  We're trying to work with him to get rid of all the false Jewish mysticism stuff.  Problem is that he's been studying it a ton and almost looks at it as if it were scripture.  Its an interesting problem, but it will all work out eventually!  

 

The Wilsons took us to Del taco on Tuesday for lunch!  They are doing well and they are reading and praying consistently now.  They still won't come to church and we're not going to be able to teach them for a couple of weeks since they're going up to Bakersfield for thanksgiving. 

 

Something both Elder Smith and I have been working on is praying with precision to meet our daily goals.  We pray over our plans and goals everytime we go somewhere and pray that we'll be able to meet them and to know if we need to chnge our plans or what not.  Wednesday morning we had a crazy miracle happen with this.  We prayed over our plans and goals and that we would be able to be instruments in the hands of the Lord.  We knocked 4 houses that morning and the 5th house we got to we met this older lady and a lady in her 40's.  They just started asking us questions and they were super interested.  Everything we said was directed by the spirit and both of them felt it.  Eventually, the older lady went inside, and the 40 year old just opened up to us about how horrible her life was going and how we were an answer to her prayer.  She felt the spirit and we prayed with her and she started crying.  She knew that what we had told her was true and we set up a return appointment.  It was awesome!  One of the most spiritual experiences I've had on the mission.  The spirit was so strong, and I knew that we were literally instruments in the hands of the Lord.  Unfortunately the return appointment fell through, but hopefully we'll be able to teach her this week. 

 

From Thursday on, we were helping out the zone.  We had to take missionaries to be interviewed by President on Thursday, and then we had to take different missionaries to the doctor.  That night though we found a new investigator named Kyle.  He's Armenian and about 16.  It's so cool how for the short amounts of time we work in our area, the Lord provides us with so many miracles.  That night we went to dinner with Sal Pallila our former Ward mission leader.  He was the best one I have had on the mission.  Our new one is Brother Stevens.  He should be a good one to work with.  Friday was probably the craziest day of the week.  All I can say is that a missionary went home for health reasons and we are now in a trio covering two wards that are pretty far away from each other.  We don't know for how long we'll be covering both wards or be in a trio for.  Its alright though.  The ward is the Studio City ward and we've been going back and forth from there to Burbank a ton.  It's challenging, but we're working through it!  We got to do service on Saturday for a Baptist church.  We raked up all there leaves.  It was good.  We also taught a couple of lessons and got to go to a baptism that night for the North Hollywood Elders.  I taught their investigator once and he wanted me and Elder Smith to wtiness.  it was Awesome!  Sunday we went to Studio City for sacrament and then drove over to our building for Elders quorum.  Our wards have church at the same time.  That night we had a special mission leadership council with our Area 70 Elder Garnes.  It was so good!  He just wanted to see how the missionaries in our mission were doing and we had a question and answer session with him for about an hour and a half.  It was great! 

 

Well there ya have it!  Hope you all get fat on thanksgiving! 

 

Elder Nelson