Emergency Transfer

Well we got a call from the assistants during our dinner appointment yesterday and they asked us if we could excuse ourselves and step outside for a moment.  We did so and they told us that Elder Jones was being emergency transferred to Woodland Hills with Elder Gibson.  We were both shocked at this.  Elder Jones was hoping to stay another transfer in the area.  That would have been awesome, but something happened with some elders somewhere and a couple of people got Emergency transferred yesterday.  The assistants told us to pack and be at the mission office at 9:30.  Elder Jones was released as a zone leader and is now district leader in Woodland Hills.  As for me I'm now in a trio for this next week with the Solemint Elders.  Elder Bagely and Barnett are my companions and we're covering both the Saugus 2nd ward and Solemint ward.  It should be a fun week.  We've got a lot of meetings and things to do.  I'm sad that my companion got transferred so suddenly, but it's all good!

As for the week it was pretty good!  We had our "Meet the Mission President"  zone conferance on Thursday.  President Henrie is awesome!  Sister Henrie is awesome!  I'm so excited to work with them for this next transfer.  They just seem so pumped to be here and the training that they gave us on Wednesday was very good.  The power went out in the middle of the zone conferance, but we still went on with the training in the dark for 2 hours.  It was interesting.  We then moved to another chapel in the valley to finish.  For the training we discussed our purpose as missionaries and the story of Esther and a whole bunch of other things, but the main thing that I left the conferance with is a testimony that the Lord has called President Henrie at this specific time to work with the specific missionaries in this mission.  He's great.  

We also helped a member move out this week and I almost got crushed by a box avalanche.  We were stacking boxes in basically a semi trailer. . . on a slight incline.  We stacked a couple of rows of boxes up to the ceiling and they just started moving towards me.  Before I knew it boxes were falling all over the place and I almost died!  Ok no I didn't almost die, but it was pretty crazy nonetheless.  Needless to say we fixed the incline on the trailer and finished moving without any error.  We had a good lesson on Thursday with Denise at the Wilsons home. We helped her resolve her concern with prayer by committing her to write her prayers in a prayer journal.  She does still have a lot of concerns though with basically eveything,  hopefully once she starts praying about it all she'll have her concerns resolved, but if she doesn't start progressing, we probably will have to drop her in the next couple of weeks, which would be sad.

For the fourth of July, we knocked doors. It was pretty fun!  As fun as we made it.  We actually had some pretty good conversations with people and found a couple of potential investigators.  As you would guess, everyone was busy and had no time.  We got off an exchange that morning with the Solemint Elders which was awesome.  The day prior I was in the Solemint ward with Elder Bagley.  I was thinking to myself the whole time during the exchange that I would lve to serve in this area.  It's a huge area and has huge houses.  It's in the middle of the mountains and it just feels good.  I spoke to soon, because now I'm serving in Solemint!  Elder Bagely is awesome and we had a lot of good conversations with people.  He's from a small farm town in southern utah called Kusherem.  There's like 300 people that live there.  I'm excited to be able to serve with him and Elder Barnett. Anyways, back to my main point.  We had breakfast that morning with a the ward mission leader there which was a great addition to our 4th of July.  We had an awesome dinner with a member family and went to a ward get together at the Lindsays.  that night.  We didn't set off any fireworks, but we did have some poppers and stuff that we played with after planning that night.  

  Well right now we don't have to many investigators and it's pretty hard to find in this area.  this week we did a lot of finding and talking to people.  We found some pretty solid potential investigators and hopefully we'll be able to teach them this week.  Everyone is busy all the time and a lot of people just simply don't want to talk to us.  Or if they do, they want to tear us down. That's basically been the majority of my mission.  But all of the rejection and lack of investigators and teaching is nothing compared to the miracles that I've been able to be a part of.  Like I've said before, I haven't been able to directly see the results of my efforts turn into baptisms, but I've had the assurance almost everyday of my mission that the conversations and testimonies that i've shared with people have had an effect in some way on someone's eternity.  Just being able to have that assurance makes it all worth it.  And who am I kidding, I've been blessed beyond all belief on my mission with the people that I have been able to find and teach.  I've grown so much and I know they've grown too.  I've followed the spirit and Preach My Gospel to the best of my ability and I will continue to do so throughout the rest of my mission and the rest of my life.  The mission has been life changing and will continue to be life changing.  I love it and will continue to love doing the Lords work.  I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Elder Nelson