Birthday Bash

Well I'm now 20 years old as of Saturday!  Woohoo!  Thanks for all the birthday wishes and packages and what not.  It was a good day!  That Saturday morning I was on exchanges with one of our district leaders and we had an appointment with a potential investigator at 10:00.  Elder Black had taught him a little bit before and he said that he was open for more, but he gave him a bunch of scripture referances to study before coming.  We studied them and went by.  They were all on faith and works and worshiping God.  The potential invited us in.  His name was ironically, Josh.  Apparently he had been surrounded by LDS people all his life and been invited to things and taught a little bit.  He is Baptist/born again Christian.  He told us he knew a little bit about the church, but immediately after he went into the scriptures and lovingly tried to prove us wrong.  We had a good discussion about faith and works in James 2 and and Ephesians 2.  And also talked about baptism.  We testified a whole bunch and the spirit was there and we told him the only way he can know the truth is by reading and praying about the book of Mormon.  We invited him to do so, but he told us that he wouldn't pray about it, because his allegiance was to Jesus Christ, not our God.  Turns out that he had been fed with anti-Mormon stuff for most of his life just like the majority of the people here that have been to the local churches.  We testified of many different things that morning, just the usual stuff like Joseph Smith, Jesus Christ, the Book of Mormon etc. and my testimony of the church grew because of it. The spirit was undeniably there, although the person for whom it was intended did not receive it.  Unfortunatly I've been in that situation more times than I'd like too, but the experience strengthened me nonetheless.  It was a good birthday bash.  Later on in the day there was a baptism for the Canyon Country 2nd ward and we were asked to teach the Restoration while person being baptized was changing.  We taught it and the spirit was unusually strong.  There were a lot of nonmembers in attendance, including the person being baptized mom.  She cried during the message we shared and it was awesome!  When I finally came home from the exchange, I got in the apartment and there were balloons everywhere and streamers on the ceiling and what not.  Turns out the sisters had come by and decorated our apartment for the Birthday.  It was pretty cool.  And I got a whole bunch of packages too.  So ya the birthday was great!  As for the rest of the week we went on two more exchanges.  The Assistant came with me to Saugus on Tuesday and we taught a sweet lesson to our investigator Maria we found last week and her sister Seetilani.  They are Buddhist from Mexico.  We taught them the restoration and they are super open and want to learn more about Christ and Joseph Smith and the Church.  Right now they are painting their house and we helped them with that a little bit this week as well.  We also went on another exchange with the Solemint elders.  Elder Bagely came here and we worked super hard.  This past week it has been real humid so we have been sweating a ton more than usual.  It's pretty fun let me tell ya.  We also taught Denise again.  She is in the same spot as she was before and we have plans to drop her this next week.  It's sad, but its what we gotta do.  So this next week we only have Maria and Seetilani that we are teaching.  It's been a while since I haven't had more than 1 or 2 investigators to teach.  Man Ive been blessed on my mission.  We are trying our best to find more people to teach.  We're knocking a lot and talking to a lot of people.  The work is amazing and I love it.  I'm excited for this next week.  I've only got 3 weeks left!  I gotta make the make the most of it! 

Love ya!

Elder Nelson