Another Week in West Hills

So first off, I'm going to answer all of Dad's questions in the email he sent me.  How do I like Canoga Park in the West hills ward?  It's an awesome area and I love working in it!  I don't like the ward as much as Seco Canyon, but that's probably just because I was there for 6 months.  How does it compare with Valencia?  Its so different from Valencia because there are people everywhere on the streets!  All you have to do is go outside to talk to people, where as in Valencia you have to knock doors to contact people.  Finding people to teach here is a lot easier than Valencia, but the people you teach here aren't as solid as they are in Valencia.  They don't keep commitments and appointments and its harder to get in contact with them.  Nobody is on the streets in Valencia.  How do I enjoy lving and working with my new companion?  My new companion Elder Smith is awesome!  He's from Mapleton Utah and has been out a transfer longer than me.  He's a hard worker and he's focused.  We work and teach pretty well together seeing as we've only been together for two weeks.  We get along really well.  How has it been riding a bicycle everywhere?  It's so much better than driving in a car everywhere!  We get to talk to so many more people and I love biking!  It keeps me energized!  I have my bike that I loaned to that missionary a while ago and its running pretty good.  There have been some problems with the brakes rubbing, but I fixed that.  It's now running smoothly.  Do we ever plan mountain bike rides for P-day?  Answer is no.  I'm sure that President would have a problem with that and in the missionary handbook  says not to do anything that could potentially put your safety at risk.  Our ward mission leader Borther Radstone has taken missionaries mountain biking in the past, but as much as I want to go, I want to be obedient even more.  "Obedience is the first law of heaven."  (Preach My Gospel)  Have I seen any gang members?  I have not yet, but I've been told to not go to particular areas after dark, as that is where they usually are.  Gang Activity? None yet.  Are there any gangbangers in my area?  Maybe, probably.  I think I talked to one yesterday actually, now that I think about it.  He was on his way to do a drug deal, and he was all tatted up.  He was carrying a bag full of pills and what not, and he told us he was "going to do what [he] does best."  It was interesting.  I am teaching a former gangbanger from Florida named Denorris.  He's not gangbangin no mo.  Do I see them when I go to district meeting?  No.  Where is district meeting?  At the church.  I hope that answers your questions Dad!  

Anyways, here is an overview of the week.

So Tuesday, we went on exchanges with Elder Quizon and Elder Smith, (black Smith).  Elder Smith and Elder Smith went to our area, while I went with Elder Quizon to their area.  We had a good time!  I've never been cussed at so much in one day!  It was funny and sad.  We just talked to a lot of crazy people I guess.  Elder Quizon is originally from the Phillipines but his family now lives in Virginia.  He's a great missionary and he's been out for four and a half months.  We just contacted potentials the whole day and talked to people.  It's so nice because he actually knows some spanish!  All I can say is that we're missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  We share a message about Jesus Christ and family.  I know the message we share can bless your family.  Can we send some other missionaries who speak spanish to your house?  Thats it.  25% of the time it works!  Spanish people are so nice and they're so open.  With Elder Quizon, we got a ton of spanish refferals to send off.  That night, we taught their investigator Angelina and her two daughters about prayer, scripture study and keeping the Sabbath.  They are so awesome!  The lesson was great and was so spiritual!  The last time they taught her, she asked them for pass along cards to give to people on the street.  They gave her about 50 and she passed them all out to people and she asked them for more!  She's so awesome!  She's getting baptized soon.  Investigators are better missionaries than members a lot of the time.  Selvin told us that the Monday after he got baptized, he gave 2 Books of Mormon to his friends.  So cool right?  If investigators can do it, members can do it!  But they don't.  Anyways, Wednesday we exchanged back and we contacted some potentials.  Elder Smith and Elder Smith had a fun time on their exchange too.  We just contacted all day on Wednesday.  Thursday we had a super cool miracle, we were going to a less active to teach him, but he didn't answer, so we decided to contact around the area.  There weren't a lot of people on the street in the area we were in, and we eventually came to a corner.  If we went straight or left we would go out onto the busy street where the people are, but if we went right, we would hit a dead end.  There was no one on the street to the right, but we got the impression to go right so we did.  We found ourselves at an apartment complex with no gate and felt like we should go in.  We said a prayer for guidance before we walked in.  We go in and walk up some stairs and knock on apartment 19.  This black lady answers the door and we talk to her about the restoration and about a modern day prophet.  She then invites us to sit down on her porch and tell her about it.  She was so interested and we taught the Restoration lesson and she said that it made sense that God would call another prophet.  It was so cool.  Her name is Elena.  We ran into her on the street yesterday and she was drunk out of her mind.  She told us that she had been reading the Book of Mormon though!  That's good!  We'll work with her on drinking though.  Friday was amazing and horrible as well.  I'll start with the horrible.  We had a lesson to go to with an investigator named DeNorris, and we needed to get a member to come.  We called a ton of people and finally we got Bro. Baca to come.  He's a former bishop, so you think he would be good right?  No.  We got in their and DeNorris told us about how he was a gangbanger in Florida and how he was in jail and that he has a girlfriend with 2 kids in Massachusets and one on the way.  Bro. Baca took over and talked about repentance the whole time and made him feel chastized without chastizing him.  It was horrible.  We're going over there later today though and we feel good about the lesson we've planned for him.  Later on in the day, we had a lesson with a potential named Samantha.  We brought an awesome member, Bro Taylor, with us.  Samantha and her older brother Carlos and younger sister Stephanie sat in and it was a great lesson!  Their parents weren't there, so hopefully they'll get onboard too.  They're Catholic and they all committed to read and pray about the Book of Mormon together.  They're super cool.  Saturday we met with an investigator named Debbie.  She's in her 50's.  We taught her last week with the Sisters and this week we got there and she just broke down crying like 5 times.  She says she has empty nesters syndrome and that she has no one to talk to.  She told us that she's Catholic and doesn't want to change, but that she loves it when we pray and read scriptures.  She's been going through a real hard time and needs friends.  We called members for an hour to get one to come to the lesson, but no one could.  She needs members to befriend her. We invited her to church and she said no because she's Catholic, but later on that night, she called us crying and told us to pray with her.  We did and she said she felt better.  She then texted us and and said that she talked with her Sister in Virginia who told her that she had been praying and God told her to go to the Mormon church.  We invited her to come again, but she said that church was to early and that she has sleeping problems.  She said she didn't have any of her "pumpkin powder to put in warm milk, natures sleep aid."  Ya, she's kinda crazy, but she still has potential.  Sunday we had no investigators at church for all 3 sets of missionaries.  All of Sunday we just contacted potential investigators.  This week was a good one.  Full of miracles.  Thanks for the package!  It was awesome!  I love you all!

Elder Nelson    

Pics from the Field

 Missionaries serving with Josh in his first area:  Valencia, California.

 P-Day fun with his first companion and trainer, Elder Ehninger

 So excited to go to the temple in Los Angeles!

 Josh and his second companion, Elder Davidson on a temple trip.

Thanks Jordan for the Leatherman!

Pictures from the MTC . . . . finally!

Best friends who got to see each other every night in the MTC.

Wow!  Josh is suddenly tall!

Josh's MTC district

MTC Buddies

Elder Beardall & Elder Nelson

Comforting to see a friend!

West Hills

West Hills babay!  Yep I'm now in West Hills Area 3. . . a new area.  It's soooooooo different from Valencia!  There's people everywhere!  You just go out on the street and BAM!  People are everywhere and we get to talk to all of them!  I live on 8735 Independence, Canoga Park by the way.  Ya, Northridge is pretty much next door.  It's weird.  I'm pretty sure Northridge is in the Grenada Hills Stake but I could be wrong.  I'm in the Canoga Park Stake. My new companion is Elder Smith from Mapleton Utah.  He's been serving in the Mint Canyon ward in Santa Clarita for the past 7 and a half months.  He came out one transfer before me.  He's awesome!  He's got a powerful testimony and he knows how to use it.  He's a little quieter than my previous companions, but he's a great guy and we've had a great first week.  Like 80% of the people we talk to only speak Spanish, and we've sending off referrals like mad.  We barey know any Spanish, but that's ok because pretty much every latino person you talk to gives us their address and phone number.  We're able to fumble our way through a conversation, but we definatly need to get better.  We're the 3rd set of missionaries in the West Hills ward.  We have another set of Elders and a set of ASL (American Sign Language) sisters, as the West Hills ward is also the ASL branch for the mission.  We took parts of both of their areas.  We inherited a couple of not very solid investigators from them and the teaching records aren't up to date on some of them.  We've been trying to contact them this whole week.  We've only taught one of them, and she straight up told us that she doesn't want to change at all.  Her name s Debbie.  She's the only one we've met.  So far we haven't found any new investigators, even though we've talked to more people this week than I have in any other previous week.  We've been going by a lot of referrals and potentials, but none of them have panned out.  We have met some awesome people this week though, so hopefully we will be able to get in contact with them this week and teach them.  Elder Smith (black Smith) is my district leader.  He was in the MTC with me and served in Northridge with Elder Stucki, my previous zone leader.  The West Hills ward has a lot of less actives and the chapel was pretty scarce this Sunday.  We're going to change that!  Anyways, this week has been pretty stressful with opening a new area and not knowing anything about it.  It's been a lot of fun though!  Really all we've been doing everyday is finding.  Biking is so much fun! Well I don't have very much time to write this week.  We gotta go out and work, but I love you all! (Sorry this one is shorter than most!)

Elder Nelson 

Getting Transferred

Well another week has gone by full of miraculous fantastic exciting miracles!  Sadly, the transfer fairy chose me to leave to a bike area. . .somewhere.  I'll find out where tomorrow at transfer meeting.  I'm so sad to leave this area, but it is what it is.  I'm grateful for the amazing time I've had here in the Seco Canyon Area!  I did send the sd card finally.  Sorry it took so long.

Anyways, this week was a longer week than others, but it was amazing!  Here is a summary:

Tuesday we taught Chad again.  He is doing so much better!  He hasn't smoked or done drugs for the past month almost and he committed to come to church this Sunday!  He wanted to talk to us about the Bible and give him advice on it (Where to start reading etc.).  It was an ok lesson.  We basically just answered questions.  We're thinking of passing him off to the singles ward Sisters.  We told him about the singles ward and left the choice up to him.  He said he would think about it.  The rest of the day we knocked and knocked as usual.  We had dinner with the Ramirez family which was awesome!  Lucy makes the best fried rice I've ever had!  We taught the gospel of Christ afterwards and it was an amazing lesson.  The whole family has heard all of the lessons multiple times and they understand.  We asked Laura to be baptized with the rest of the family on March 8th, and we all just sat there in silence for like 2 minutes to let her think and let the spirit work.  Finally, Lucy broke the silence by saying, "Chris and James, do you want to be baptized with your mom?"  They both just nodded their heads and the spirit just took over and she said yes!  The whole family is being baptized on March 8th!  Sadly, I'm not going to be there.  I'm so glad I was able to teach that family.  They made me a card and gave it to me on Sunday.  Lucy started crying when she said bye to me.  Jose told me to come back after my mission so that he can take me to six flags!  That'd be sweet!  Anyways it was awesome!

The rest of the week we knocked....all day every day!  It was long!  I feel like I've knocked my whole area like 3 times already.  Thursday we taught the Ramirez family again.  We had a great lesson on obedience, prayer, scripture study and the priesthood.  Friday we got a headquarters referal for an old lady that speaks Farsi and very little English.  We went to the old person home she lives in.  She's from Iran and was raised Muslim.  Her daughter was killed for converting to christianity.  She came to church on Sunday and told us that she's scared for her son in Iran because if they find out that she wants to convert to christianity, they'll kill her son.  She's like 85 and super lonely.  We talked to her for like 45 minutes and we could barely understand her.  She's super solid, but we're going to have to find a translator to teach her because of the language barrier.  

Sunday was super sad saying bye to the ward.  They had me stand up in Sacrament and give my testimony.  I love this ward so much!  They are so cool!  Currently I'm in a tripanionship with Elder Stucki my zone leader because Elder Larman my other former zone leader became assistant yesterday.  I'll get a new companion on Tuesday and I'll be biking everywhere! I'm so stoked!  It's gonna be awesome!  I love you all!  

Elder Nelson

Awesome Week

So this week was amazing!  We ended making a last ditch effort to teach Chad on Tuseday!  We were going to explain to him that we were going to drop him if he wouldn't keep his commitments and start coming to church.  As soon as he opened the door you could tell that he was so happy!  He let us in and told us that he'd stopped smoking for two weeks and that he's been off of drugs too!  He said he feels so good and happy!  It was so cool!  The Lord answered our prayers!  He told us that he would start reading and praying again and he committed to come to church this week since he was out of town yesterday!  he is so cool!  It was a miracle!  That night we taught the Ramirez family.  All we did was talk about baptism and one of the first things that Lucy said to us was that Chris had told her the night before that he wants to get baptized!  It was so cool!  After a lot of arguing between brothers and grandparents, we decided that the whole family would get baptized on March 8th.  Everyone has committed except for Laura, the mom.  However I think that she'll commit this week.  She is awesome, but a little more reserved than the rest of the family.  She'll come around!  She knows it's true, she's just afraid of the commitment.  I love that family!

Wednesday was awesome!  We knocked all day and met some awesome people!  We got a lot of potential investigators!  It got up to 95 at like 1:00 which is like the most non productive time of the day.  Nobody is ever home, but we knocked and knocked and knocked. . . then did some more knocking.  It was fun!  It's interesting.  I'm finding that the more I work, the greater desire I have the next day to do it again!  Faith starts with desire and my desire is increasing, so therefore, my faith is increasing also!  I love it!

Thursday we taught our new investigator named Sandra.  She is a friend of a member in our ward named Sister Collete.  Sister Collete gave her a book of mormon and has been inviting her to church for the past like month.  She had us over to her house to teach Sandra the Restoration.  Sandra is Catholic, but told us that she believed everything we said.  It was a good lesson.  There is a bit of a language barrier though.  I don't think she understands English very well so we might be passing her off to the spanish missionaries.  She is pretty solid though.  The rest of the day we knocked and did weekly planning.  

Friday we knocked and knocked all day!  We officially got kicked out of an gated apartment complex that we snuck into.  We sneak into it all the time.  We only knocked two buildings before we got kicked out.  It was fun!  there goes something off of my mission bucket list!  It was kind of lame how we got kicked out though.  There was no fight or any degree of chaos involved. They just drove up to us on a golf cart and told us that we can't knock in here.  So we left.  We taught the Ramirez family again that night.  We taught the Plan of Salvation for James since he had never heard it before.  it was a good lesson.  

Saturday we taught two of the most solid new investigators I've ever had.  The Ricaldi family.  They're a ref feral from bishop.  They live in the house of som members who moved out to Utah.  Those members gave them a Book of Mormon and told them a little about the church.  Greg and Michelle Ricaldi have three kids and they have been going to Real Life Church for the past couple years, but stopped going because one of the child workers was arrested for child molestation.  They are now looking for a new church.  They had so many awesome questions and were super interested!  The thing is, they act exactly like members already!  They are so cool!  The only concern they have is church being at nine.  They loved the Restoration lesson and they asked us if we could come back.  usually we have to ask them!  It was so cool!  They're so solid!  I just hope I don't get transferred so I can teach them some more!  We then knocked the rest of the day as usual.  

Sunday was one of the best Sunday's ever!  The Ramirez family came to church and Selvin gave a talk!  He told us his conversion story which is so cool!  Also our Elders quorum president Brother Baker gave a talk on family and marriage and the temple that was super good!  Lucy and Laura were bawling!  I think Laura is starting to realize that she should be baptized with her family!  Gospel Principles was really good for once too!  We talked about the fall and everything was super simple.  Every weird comment that was made, Bro. Howard shot down.  Also Jason Crosby got the Melchezidek Priesthood in Elders Quorum which was so awesome! The sisters investigator Linda got her answer that the church was true in Relief Society too.  It was an amazing church meeting.  After church we studied and visited a couple potentials.  We visited this old couple, Don and Joane who let us in.  Both of them are Catholic and they're interested in learning about mormons because their granddaughter is marrying an RM in Vegas and is starting to read the Book of Mormon.  We taught them the Restoration, and they told us that they had no intention of joining the Mormon church. (That'll change.)  They said they would read and pray about the Book of Mormon.  We explained to them that either we're lying to their face or we're telling the truth.  They told us that they thought we were telling the truth.  It was pretty cool.  They are so nice!  Both of them lost their previous spouses to cancer and they have only been married for 3 years.  It was fun teaching them.  They had a lot of questions.  

Anyways, that was my week!  It was amazing and full of miracles!  Elder Davidson and I have been experimenting with food for the past couple of weeks.  We don't get much interesting food here in California, so every week we go to the canned food isle and buy something really interesting.  We've tried canned raw crap that we thought was cooked in Mac and Cheese (Yellow Death) and Sardines and a couple of other things.  We're going for anchovies or xavier or something this week.  We experiment a lot and so far none have been very good.  There has been one good experiment though.  Put siracha sauce on a PB&J to make a sweet and spicy PB and J!  It's interesting!  P-days we do fun stuff like Ultimate frisbee with the zone.  Last week we had a nerd war with the whole zone in the gym of our church.  It was epic!  We had bishops permission so don't worry!  Know that I'm praying for all of you!  Thanks for everything you do!  I love you all!

Your favorite missionary

Elder Nelson

Long Driveways

So hey well here's another letter!

This week was interesting.  It was looooong!  Probably because we weren't able to do much teaching this week.  We haven't been able to teach anybody except for the Ramirez family this week.  All of our investigators besides the Ramirez family have been dropped this week since we haven't really been able to actually teach them.  It's kind of sad, but it's ok.  They're all amazing people and they'll come around one day.  We taught the Ramirez family Tuesday night and we basically just held a family council talking about baptism and when everyone wants to get baptized.  Lucy and Jose decided to get baptized on Feb. 22nd and originally they were the only two who wanted to commit to a date.  The last lesson we taught them, we left them with a committment to pray about baptism as a family, but they didn't.  They had all prayed about baptism individually.  We asked how James, the 9 year old felt about it and he said he felt good and that he had been praying about it.  We asked him if he would commit to a date and he told us he would, but that he wouldn't do it on the same day as Jose and Lucy because he wants to do it alone.  It was pretty funny.  He said he was thinking sometime in march, so we committed him to March 8th.  As for Chris and Laura, they told us they want to be baptized, but that they will wait until Summer.  They're all such a golden family.  I love it and I'm so grateful that I've been able to teach them.  They're progressing so well!

Tuesday morning, we went to Pep boys to change our battery in our car.  We had to get jumped twice on Monday.  We also had to get jumped in the pep boys parking lot just to drive it around back.  It was funny.  The pep boys mechanic people ended up calling Elder Phillips our car coordinator person and asked if he wanted them to fix up everything, and he said yes, so we were at pep boys for 5 hours that day.  We got new tires, oil change, battery etc.  It was so long!  Afterwards we went to the mission office, and gave Elder Phillips the receipt.  In return he gave us a brand new car!  For reals this thing was brand spanking new!  He drove it off the lot that morning I'm pretty sure!  It was a 2014 Ford Fusion!  It's so nice and is the newest car I've ever driven.  It only had 40 miles on it.  It's honestly scary to drive because its so new!  New car smell and everything!  It is beautiful!  I gotta say though, it was sad saying goodbye to good old Vivian the Vibe (The old car). 

Wednesday was full of knocking and knocking and more knocking.  We knocked on a couple doors in our complex and we were walking on the street of the complex when one of the people that works in the office drove up to us on a golf cart and asked us if we'd seen any salesman knocking in the complex.  Even though we were pretty sure we were the "salesman" we told her no.  We then went and knocked somewhere else.  Well from that we can deduce that you have to be sneaky when you decide to knock in the complex you live in.  You don't want to get kicked out of the complex you live in!  Anyways, lesson learned.  My stealth ninja knocking skills must be developed more before we knock in our complex again.  We found a couple potentials on Wednesday also, so that was good.  We've dropped most of them already though which is sad, but its ok because we're just going to find more more solid people instead!   

Thrusday was filled with weekly planning and a really cool story!  So a couple days ago we got a refferal from the Korean Sisters.  They live in the same complex as we do and they knocked out their building.  They gave us a potential (Who we haven't been able to contact yet) and a less-active they knocked into named Eddy.  The ward doesn't have any records indicating that an Eddy lived there, but we went by Thursday night.  He invited us in and basically told us his whole life story.  He is so cool!  He's in his 40's I think and hasn't been to chruch in like 3 years.  He was divorced three years ago and disfellowshipped a little bit after that.  Anyways, I could go on and on about his life, but he told us that he has been going through a real hard time in his life and that he'd prayed for strength to get him through and the next morning after he prayed, the Korean sisters knocked on his door!  So cool!  He told us that he didn't know whether to take it as an answer or not, but either way, its so cool!  We're going to be stopping by this week.  He told us he still has a testimony and everything, but that he just stopped going to church.  Anyways he's awesome and we're going to help him.

Friday we had zone training meeting for 3 hours which was great.  After the meeting we went on exchanges with the Copper Hill Elders.  I went with Elder Holdaway into his area which was a lot of fun!  It's a bike area and I love biking instead of driving around in a car!  It's way more fun!  We did a lot of knocking and we also helped this family  chase their dog off of a mountain.  It was funny.  All of the kids were crying because the dog had ran away off into this mountain, so we chased after it and herded it back towards them so they could pick it up.  Once they got their dog back they thanked us and the kids asked us, "Who are you guys?"  We responded with a resounding, "were the missionaries!"  We set up a time to come back and teach them this week.  It was funny and a lot of fun. 

Saturday was unusually slow after we exchanged back.  It was looooong.  We had a couple of appointments, but they all fell through.

Sunday the Ramirez family came to church as usual.  The rest of the Sunday we tried to visit some potentials and former investigators with no luck.  We also knocked a little bit.  My comp let me choose the last house to knock before we went home for the night, and there was this house with a long driveway on the street we were on and I told him we should knock that one.  He told me that the last house we knocked with a long driveway yelled at us, so I responded with "it's fun to get yelled at!"  We ended up knocking on the door and this latino guy answered the door and started yelling "Respect me!  You don't try to convert me, and I don't try to convert you!"  We were then like "Is there anything we can do for you?"  He responds with "Respect me!"  It was hilarious!  I guess walking up peoples long driveways makes them mad.  All well!  The ways we get rejected are so interesting sometimes haha! 

Well thats all folks!  Until next week!  I love you all!

Elder Nelson