Josh's Latest Letter

Hello everyone!  Sorry about last weeks letter.  I don't know how it got cut off in the 6th sentance and I don't remember what i was talking about.  All well.  This week was good!  We went on two exchanges this week.  My first exchange was with Elder Kang, one of the Korean missionaries.  he came over to my area while my comp went to theirs.  Elder Kang has only been out as long as I have, and he has never done English work before.  It was good for him to take a step back from korean for a day.  We learned a lot from each other and had a good time.  Elder kang was in Jeff Hunters MTC district.  They were pretty good friends.  On Wednesday we went on another exchange on Wednesday with the Valencia 2nd Elders.  I went over to their area.  they are in a trio and I was with elders Baughan and Swyers.  They are also in a bike area, so i got to ride my bike all day for the first time!  it was so awesome!  I kind of wish that i was in a bike area because it feels so good to ride a bike.  I'm kind of sick of the car.  We have to give everyone rides and it takes a lot of time out of our day.  anyways, the exchange was good.  They introduced me to some of the new members that moved from V2 over to V3 with the whole boundry change last week.  One of them was the Larson's.  I'm glad they called you mom!  They're great.  thursday was zone training meeting which was great as well.  I love our zone leaders.  Their names are elder Chandler and Elder Choi.  elder Chandler is from Hawaii and elder Choi is from Korea.  english is his second language and he was called english speaking.  he does help out with korean work from time to time when he goes on exchanges.  They are so awesome and loving. elder Choi is going home next transfer along with elder Smith, Powell and Ah Chee.  They all got up and bore their testimonies at the end of the meeting and it was amazing!  The spirit was so strong and their testimonies really helped me out.  We also taught the Crosby's our investigators with a baptismal date this past week.  We inherited them from V2 with the boundry change.  they are so awesome!  They have been prepared so well!  they have been investigating the church for about three years and their baptismal date is the 19th, however, we are probably going to push it back to November 2nd because of the boundry change.  if they got baptized on the 19th, they would have only been able to go to their new ward once and they won't have anybody at their baptism because we wouldn't be able to announce it the week before in Sacrament meeting.  We still have to teach them quite a bit, but they have such a strong testimony of the gospel.  They have two kids who are like 2 and 3 years old I think and they are crazy!  They have a real hard time controlling them in sacrament meeting, but it is their dream to raise them in the church.  Brother Crosby even wants his 2 year old son Mason to go on a mission! It's so cool!  they study the scriptures every day and have a lot of support from their old ward. They haven't been able to meet very many people from our ward yet, but they will love our ward.  I love our ward!  They are so awesome to the missionaries and we get fed almost everyday!  We weren't able to teach the Palomino's this week.  They cancelled on us, but we are hoping to meet with them this week.  We ate dinner with the Casattas this Friday, 2 new investigators that we got 2 weeks ago.  they are so prepared to receive the gospel.  They're daughter Stephanie is a convert and married a return missionary and lives in Utah.  The Casattas like to talk a lot, so we weren't able to teach our lesson that we had planned out for them.  We were over there for 3 hours and we invited them to General Conferance and talked about family history.  They were so interested in family history and they wanted us to help them with it sometime this week.  Brother Casatta also loves the Salt lake Temple and wants to be sealed.  The only problem that they have with the gospel is Joseph Smith.  They ran into some Anti Mormon stuff like a month ago saying that joseph smith was a fraud, but Stephanie's husband Briant (the RM) talked to them about it and they are saying that the Book of mormon could be true.  They are so cool and i love them so much!  We also got one new investigator this week.  When me and Elder kang were on exchanges, we visited a former investigator named Sarah Freil.  We knocked on her door and she invited us in!  it was so unexpected!  We ended up talking about the Book of Mormon and Prayer and set up a time to come back this Tuesday.  Looking at her old teaching record, she seemed like she was progressing very well, but she dropped the old missionaries because she wanted to study on her own.  She does have a testimony of the Book of Mormon though and I really think she could be baptized.  We just need to get to know her better.  conferance this weekend was so amazing!  I loved it so much!  Some of those talks just spoke to me and really helped me out.  it's so easy to get discouraged out here and feel inadequate, but listening to Confearance was what I needed.  The Lord is watching out for me.  It was awesome to see a lot of my friends in priesthood session!  I saw Ben, tyler, nefi and a whole bunch of other people that I know from Murray!  this next week is going to be crazy!  We have 3 exchanges this week, and i'm leaving my area twice in a row.  On Thrusday, we have a general authority coming to the mission for Zone conferance on Thursday.  it's elder kapishki from the mission department.  Rumors are flying around that they're going to make this mission a no tracting mission, get facebook, ipads, or something crazy like that which would be Sweet!  having an ipad would be so nice!  Well I hope everyone is doing good at home!  I love you all!  Write me some letters!  

 

Elder Nelson