Southern Alberta Boys Meet Up!

Well another week has come and gone out here in the Can Win mission! Was a decent week for the most part.  Got to see who my trainee is finally!!! His name is Elder Hart, from Grand G Colorado, loves water sports and thats all i know really haha  i suck at gettin to know people as you can tell.  Got to see Keston and Morgan/ Elder Nelson and Berry during transfers!! that was nice.  Sounds like me and elder Nelson were both wishing president Craig was going to put us together for training, but the first thing pres Craig said was " alright im going to get the suspense here out of the way, now Elder Nelson here has his cousin Elder Nelson in this mission and he's right there on the computer screen, but they wont be serving together, yet."  But I got to see him later that say so that was good.

SO the first day for Hart we went and set up a lesson with Ed and Marilyn on saturday.  I knocked on the door and then stepped aside like i usually do, so when Ed came to the door he couldnt see me, all he could see what Hart and he doesnt know Hart yet haha I heard the door handle move like the door was gonna open but then it stopped.  So i put my head around the corner to see what was up, and there was Ed looking like he was ready to through Hart off his property!!  Then Ed saw me and he opened the door laughing.  He said he was gonna tell us to go away untill he saw me there haha   Hart almost got rejected by our investigators! So I thought that was kinda funny. 

 
Taught sunday school again this week.  did it on eternal family's, and from what i could tell it went pretty good!
Drove up to Dauphin last night like we usually do.  had our sunday night AwaHin poker tournament again, and i won, again haha   Not sure if thats a good thing or not....

And thats about it for the week.  Nothin to exciting.

love ya all, talk to you next week!

  This is what I call dedication! And a awesome wife!

Nelson and Nelson...I Hope!

Well I don’t have much for you this week.  But I do have some news on T-mail, I’m training again! If luck plays out right it might be Elder Nelson and Elder Nelson.

Work kind of slowed down here this week, but it’s still been good. Had 37 people at church yesterday in our Apt.... it was pretty full.  We even started up the YW and YM’s program now in the unit!  So we are growing slowly!Other than that nothing else has really gone on for us here in the AwaHin district.  No climbing out of windows or jumping rivers with a shopping cart. 

Guess I'll talk to you all next week! Love ya!

The Worth Of Souls Is Great

Well not too much different went on this week.  Did the usual, lots a walking n tracting. Found 3 new I's this week! We have to have one of the members with us though when we teach 2 of them since they don’t speak English very well, they understand it decent though.  

So being in Neepawa we have to come to Dauphin for pdays since we have district meeting Tuesdays, then we go home Tuesday afternoon usually.  Well last pday we had quite the adventures...  started out with trying to pull a tree down in a park with the 100' rope we had, took us a while to pull it over but we got'er!  Now you’re probably wondering now why we had 100' rope in the first place, well we saw a shopping cart last week in the river that we wanted to get out but it’s in the middle and we can’t "swim", so Hirschi got a rope and a big hook that we were going to use to pull this cart out with.  We lasted out 10min before we decided to give up on the cart, it wasn’t going anywhere.   So we started back for the car and as usual we aren't on the trail, and we came across another cart in the river!! SO we drop down to the bottom of the river’s edge and we start working this cart out of the water.  We eventually got it out!  SO now we got this cart out and we don’t know what to do with it and us being boys we think of something dumb to do with it.... we threw it back out into the water and we are in the middle of the river on a little island.  We tossed everything that would help us get across to the other side, and the plan was we had to use the cart to get back across.  Dumb I know.  Doolen is the first to try the idea out, and his feet are all wet from stepping in the water to get to the cart so he’s sliding all over the place on this cart trying to find the best way to jump off it.  He gets ready to jump, and he failed!  He belly flopped into the river ha-ha now it was Hircschis turn, he get up there and he’s sliding around to but he finds a good edge and only got his feet a little wet.  Now for me... I got up there and I found a good edge too and made it across only getting my feet a little wet.  Then Thomasson has his shot ha-ha we were all pretty excited for this one, because he’s got no balance.  So we pull cameras out and start videoing this.  He was on that cart for a good 5min just fiddling around! Eventually he finally jumped, and to our disappointment he didn’t fall in....:/   but it was still pretty funny. But just wait that’s not all for pday... later that night we used that 100' rope to escape the Apt once it got dark.  We tied it to a bed and we tossed it out the window, then we all climbed down the rope to the ground ha-ha now this rope was the cheapest crap we could find since we are poor missionary's so it stretches a lot, and on top that the rope was wet from earlier!  Definitely not for climbing out windows in the dark.  We should have just jumped the 15' out the window, probably woulda had less rope burn.  For some reason we do all this stuff, we are thinking of videoing it and starting a YouTube channel ha-ha Last night we played Russian roulette with a mouse trap and a few other things under paper towel and we had to all come in one at a time and put our hand down on something till one of us got snapped!  Why are we so dumb, I don’t know?   But it makes for a good story.

Alright lets get a little spiritual now.  I was reading the scripture Matt 20: 1-16 and that’s about the laborers in the vineyard.  You’ll have to read it, because I don’t have time to type it all out for ya. But what I got out of it was that we all have one goal in common, and that is to make it back to our Heavenly Father.  But the one thing that makes it harder for one of us then the other is when we find the path to the lord or get "hired" in this sense.  There’s some that get hired early in life, and there’s others who spend their days looking for someone to hire them and give them that chance to make something of them self's.  I see the first hired people as the members born into the church, who have it all set for them and they don’t really need to worry about what’s going on, they have a job and all they need to do is show up and put the work in.  Then there’s the master of the vineyard who is the lord, and then the servants who go and find people obviously missionary's.  They go out and find those looking for a job wanting to do something good but don’t know where to find it, and bring them into the vineyard and they can now get what they were looking for. 
Now there’s some who will come and work for a bit and think it’s too hard to live this way or do the work and they might leave the vineyard!  It is our job as members and missionary's to go back out to the streets and find those who have left us and those who are searching and bring them back.
We need to have enough love for our brothers and sisters out there in the world to put ourselves aside and look outward instead of inward all the time.  I promise that if you start looking for ways to serve your brothers and sisters, you will see a difference in your life and the way you view those around you.
Even if you feel you are lost and there is no hope in coming back to church and trying to change your life, know this; your heavenly father loves you and he wants you to come back to him, not matter your condition.  You will always be welcome in his home and the members of his church will help you every step of the way.  Come home.
Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God;    And if it so be that you should labor all your days in crying repentance unto this people, and bring, save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my Father!  And now, if your joy will be great with one soul that you have brought unto me into the kingdom of my Father, how great will be your joy if you should bring many souls unto me!

Can you believe I’ve been out 6 months already?!


Love you all and I’ll talk to you next week!

 

Teaching Sunday School

Well not too much is going down here in Neepawa.  Sure do miss the stories I got up in the Flon, made things a bit more interesting for me to send out to you guys.
Had interviews here this week in our Apt since it’s the "church".  President said that I most likely won’t be in the Brandon zone my whole mission, or in the outlying areas forever.  Says I have to be in the city at some point.... Also told me that I might possibly be with Thomasson for another transfer.  Says he needs me to brake in this bronco a bit more ha-ha
Taught Sunday school yesterday, it went pretty good id have to say, must have been the 6hr prep I did for it.  I taught on the atonement.  I made my own lesson on the atonement, taking stuff from the talks the meaning of the atonement, and his grace is sufficient.  The spirit there in the lesson was pretty strong, strong enough that I almost cried while teaching... but it didn’t! Now you are probably wondering what was so good that I almost cried. I talked about how the atonement is like piano lessons.  Mom pays the lessons in full for us so we can learn.  We don’t pay mom back though through practice, nor do we pay the piano teacher through practice.  We pay through our appreciation of mom paying for our lessons, so that we can live our life on a higher level.  Just like Christ payed in full for our sins so that we could live our life on a higher level.  But we need to show our appreciation to him by using that gift he has given us.  Now I’m not saying that we shouldn’t practice.  If we don’t practice then we won’t be using that gift given to us, and we won’t be showing our appreciation for that sacrifice Christ or Mom has made for us to be better. We need to see our self's through Moms eyes every once in a while.  We need to see what she see in us and what she knows we can become, only if we would put the time and effort in.  It won’t be easy, and you’re going to hit a few wrong notes as you practice, but mom doesn’t say "oh you’re not good enough to keep practicing” when we hit those wrong notes.  She says “keep trying, you'll get it".  As hard as it may be to keep hitting those notes over and over again it will be worth it when you look back and see those blessings that came from your persistence and not giving up! 
The lord loves you just as much if not more than your mom does, and he wants you to succeed in this life, and he has given us a way we can do that.  All he asks is for practice, and to love and appreciate his sacrifice has made for you. We read in the scriptures “no unclean thing can enter into the kingdom of God".  But what unclean thing will want to enter into Gods kingdom? If we are not being heavenly then heaven will not be heavenly. 
When judgement day comes we will not be begging God "please let me in!'  If we were not doing well in this life.  Rather we will be saying "Get Me Out Of Here!"  We will not feel worthy to be in Gods presents.  But God and Jesus Christ will be pleading for us saying “please, use my atonement! Come home." We need to make sure that we are doing the best we can in this life!  We need to be ready to stand in front of god at judgement day knowing we did all we could to stay clean and unspotted from this world we are living in, and say "I am ready to come home." 
God loves us.  All we have to do its take advantage of his gift to us, and stop looking for someone to blame for our problems, rather we should be looking for someone to help us overcome those problems. 
I know god loves each and every one of us, and he wants us ALL to return to live with him.  Just practice!

Love you all and I’ll talk to you next week!

 PS I’m not reading over the whole email again so hopefully it makes sense.

What he said when we told him about his horse:

I bet it does!  treat'er good now;)  I cried more leaving her then I did the fam ha-ha

Super Short Letter!!!

Well this week has been killer hot, super humid up here... feels more like Mexico then Canada. Did lots of tracting, taught quite a few lessons this week so that was nice! Not too much to tell this week, just another day in the mission.  Hmmm I can’t even think of anything to write about right now.  Everything is starting to be the same out here.

 Love you all.

On Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 10:51 AM, Andrea Nelson <nelson532@live.ca> wrote:
Riley, this is the shortest letter you've ever written!!! Are you missing all the craziness of Flin Flon?

 Yeah it was pretty short.... not a whole lot to write about this week.  My journal writing is getting shorter too, but it has all the good stuff in it so you’ll have to read it when I get home.  Emailing is just kind of a pain now, but I’ll keep writing, even if it’s something like this week.

 Me and Thomasson

 Elain’s garden in Gladstone, she’s 80 and does all that on her own!!!

 

He loves Dogs

Well this week has been pretty good.  Still doing lots of tracting up here.  I about killed Thomasson this week with tracting from 1-8:30 he wanted to go home at 8 and eat, but me being me I was like well were here so we better make the most of it! and I kept telling him okay this is the last block, then we'd get done that block and I’d be like ahh lets go one more ha-ha he wasn’t to impressed with me for a while but later that night he thanked me for pushing him even though he was going to kill me.

This week we had another run in with a dog.... Thomasson about got eaten by it ha-ha! We went up to this house and I was a little ahead of Thomasson.  I saw a dog chain but no dog so I went on up not thinking anything of it, when all the sudden I hear Thomasson behind me going "oh a dog!!"  He loves dogs.... so I turn around like, what? there’s no dog there.  lo and behold there’s a dog staring up at him from under this car.  Right when I saw it I knew he was going to kill Thomasson, it blew out from under that car right at him and started to try and take him down.  I just stood there like well I can’t do too much here so I’ll let him deal with it ha-ha and eventually he gets out of the dogs radius.  About that time I realize I’m still in the radius..... So I start booking it to get out of there, and this dog takes after me!! Luckily I was faster than it and got away.  But the lady inside the house saw me running and dust flying around, so she comes out wondering what’s up.  But yeah that was our dog experience this week!  Ha-ha the lady didn’t know what was up with her dog, she said she never has done that before.  I think it’s the white shirts and name tag personally ha-ha

One of the new missionary's here said he’s seen me before the mission.  His name is elder rich and he said he was looking up some stuff about the mission and came across my blog I guess and read some of it, so he thought that was pretty cool that he got to meet the guy he read about before his mission.  So I guess I’m famous.
We went to a street party this week here in Neepawa, it was pretty sweet! It was against racism to the Filipinos.  Someone on Canada day did welcome to the lad of the Asians on the welcome to Neepawa sign ha-ha so we went and did a walk down main street with them and then had a big pot luck and singing and  dancing after.  
For ZC this week we did the district 4... We all got together and made videos of us teaching and contacting people, it was pretty terrible but kind of fun.  Still got some work to do before we are as god as district 1 and 2.
Elder berry sent me a bday pack with a planner, black label Mtn. Dew, a tie, and of course para cord ha-ha! Love that guy!

Love you all!!!  Be home before you know it!  Going on 5 months, crazy huh?!

  Well that’s pretty well the week for us. 
If I don’t get back to all of you with the individual emails its cause I only have and hr. on this computer before it kicks me off.  I’ll do my best though.

Talk to you all next week! Love ya!