Ice Cream Trucker

Well, it sounds like everyone was 10 minutes away from me again.  Weird!  Thanks for not looking for me, because you probably would have found me!  I think that would be quite hilarious actually!  Random fun fact for the week.  I bought my first ice cream from an ice cream truck this last week!  It was a delicious banana split made by the hands of a seasoned ice cream trucker from the southern countries.  Amazing!  There are so many ice cream tucks around here!  It's so annoying!  I mean the music is annoying.  It plays over and over and never stops!  It's like the ride at Disneyland, its a small world.  The Ice Cream is good though, and that's all that matters. 

 

Things are doing all right here in West Hills ward.  Its kind of the same old story.  We had most of our appointments fall through as usual, yet we had 5 people come to church this week!  It was awesome! It reminded me of my last area!  We had 5 people come to church every week with the Ramirez family!  James, (our super catholic mental friend) Mathew Jalsevec (our super alcoholic friend), Marissa and Isaiah (our super solid mother and son friends from new York), and Alvaro (our homeless 19 year old friend) all came to church!  Mathew left after Sacrament, but everyone else stayed for the full 3 hours!  The other Elders had a lot of success this week too.  The mother and daughter that they found last week that came to the baptism came to the first 15 minutes of Sacrament meeting.  Unfortunately, the daughter started to have seizures and we had to help the Elders carry her out to her car.  The rest of church was pretty good though.  yesterday we found this really old lady named Jan Smalley.  We taught her and it wasn't the best lesson, but at least we found a new investigator!  This week has been pretty slow.  We were only able to teach 4 total lessons this week to investigators.  We taught Marissa this week, and Bro. Maeza took over again.  She's been reading the Book of Mormon and had questions that could have been answered in 4-5 minutes, but Bro. Maeza took over and spent the whole lesson on them.  It wasn't the best, but weirdly enough, she is progressing.  We also taught James.  He is really hard to teach because he talks really slowly, mumbles, and goes off on tangents.  I think his mental disability limits him.  He doesn't understand what we say a lot of the time, even though he thinks he does.  He's been reading the Book of Mormon, but he tried to give it back to us this week.  He says he doesn't want to get involved with the LDS church, but he's willing to come to church and read. . . its interesting.  We also taught the Dawes girls again which was interesting.  They're always just off the walls, but the lesson went alright.  Mathew relapsed again this week.  he just went out and bought a bottle of Vodka and drank it.  Why asked him why and he said he didn't know why, he just did it.  At least he's telling us the truth.  With other missionaries in the past he would lie and tell them he was sober  even though he wasn't.  He'll get there one day.  We taught a less active this week named Joshua cobb, we've been visiting him for a while and we taught him the importance of the Sacrament.  he told us that he knows its super important, but he needs to be worthy before taking it.  We committed him to stop smoking and to attend the church ARP meetings.  He agreed.  it was an awesome lesson.  He's a great guy and reminds me a lot of Jack Black.  The rest of the week was filled with contacting and knocking.  Yes, we went knocking for a day here.  It was fun, but knocking makes the day so much longer!  I forgot how tiring knocking is.  I would much rather street contact than knock.  It's not as fruitful either.  We also stopped by this other less active named Frank Dagri.  He's Italian and a convert of 13 years.  He's been less active for the past 3 years and is now anti.  We tried to teach him the Restoration, but he just fought everything and denied everything.  he went off on so many tangents about how Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon and all this other crap.  After about 15 minutes I just told him straightup that I felt so sorry that he's lost sight of the testimony he once had.  I bore probably one of the most powerful testimonies of my mission.  It was so cool.  I felt like I Joseph Smith when he rebuked the guards in Liberty jail.  I rebuked him for his slander of a prophet of God and he couldn't deny what I said wasn't true and I invited him to start reading and praying again.  he said he would!  it was so cool!  The members here in the ward are still the same.  It doesn't matter though.  We're doing all we can and that's all that matters.  Love ya!  

 

Elder Nelson