Stupid Cold!

Part of Riley's letter to me:

James and Bryan are doing good.  James the dirty renter better than Bryan.  Bryan informed us the other day that it wasn’t what he thought it was.  But James he’s doing good!! Met with him again the other day and taught the plan of salvation. His place is super nice, the place he was renting was bad.  When we first met him it was my door to talk so we did the usual and he’s like ah guys I’m super busy with this house and told us what went down in it. I was like well if you don’t have time to sit down and listen can we give you a hand?  As we are in white shirts and ties ha-ha but he brought that up in our first meeting at his home and said that it really showed him that we cared and it shocked him that these 2 guys would offer to help him after what he described the house to be like.

So yeah kind of cool.  

 

Dec 11, 2017

Well another week has come and gone here in Regina!  

About didn't think we were going to make it a couple days back, it got stupid cold for a couple days.

It was only - 20 but it felt like - 35, and as usual we are stuck tracting for most the day when it’s cold out.  But hey we survived it and I still got my feet and Black still has his hands! 

Not a whole lot went down this week, mostly just lots of tracting and doing stuff for the Christmas party that happened on Saturday.  

Man the play they did was pretty funny, mostly because it had Black, Mills, Baker, myself, and the sunrise sisters in it as angels... We were all goofing around backstage in our costumes and Mills puts his sash around his head like a headband and starts acting like a sushi chef or something and we are all laughing being dumb, then they call for the angels and we are all laughing trying to get all serious as we walk out there; yeah it was bad.... but hey we got our self under control before we got out in front of everyone.   They did a different version of the Christmas story, it was called the fourth Wiseman and it went through kind of focused on this 4th Wiseman and how he got left behind by the other wise men when he stopped to help a man that was sick, and the others kept on riding to see the baby Jesus.  So he had spent all his life after the birth of the savior trying to find him so he could worship him. 

Found a guy a few nights ago named Samwell. We needed to do tracting at the end of the day so we said a prayer to know where to go and got the thought to go to this street Rothwell, so we did.  We got there, got out and were deciding on where to start and there was 1 house at the end that was kind of on its own and Black wasn't going to knock it but I half-jokingly was like hey what if that's the person we are sent here to find?! So we walked down there and knocked the door.   This guy opens the door and we tell him who we are and he surprisingly let us in!! We talked to him for about 10-15 min about the restoration and answered his questions about the church.  He told us later that he really wanted to meet with us, but it wouldn't be till after Christmas or until he had his days off for Christmas.  But either way he was going to set a few days aside to listen to us!  Sounded like he was even going to come to church this week but either he got lost or just couldn't make it.  I'll email him after I get done talking to you guys and see what he’s up to.

 Love ya guys! 

The Lord Does Answer Prayers

December 4,2017

tidbit from a letter home:

This week has been good, says Elder Black says lots of good things are going on here in the sunrise area since I came.

We pray every time we are going to start tracting some place to find someone who’s prepared to talk to us and every time without fail we find at least 1 person.

The lord does answer prayers and I know he is always listening to yours.

I saw a prime example of that the other week with those kids, he knows the feelings and troubles we are having and if we ask for his help He WILL answer.

 

This week has been fairly productive for Elder Black and I, we found 2 new investigators this week.  James, the dirty renter and Bryan the 60 yr. old Lutheran who loves Mormons.

James, the dirty renter got his nickname because we found him tracting the other week and when we found him he was cleaning out one of his rentals that I guess he had to evict the lady out of. She had 18 animals in there.... I can’t remember the number of each animal but she had cats, dogs, and birds! I guess the place had a good 2 inches of crap on the floor and the one room she must have locked the cats in he says cause it’s all torn apart on the walls like something was trying to claw through it. Thus the name James the dirty renter.  Super nice guy! 

We met with him last night for 2 hrs. talking about us and him n the church.  At the end we committed him to read the B of M just the first chapter, and when he saw how not so big the chapter was he said "guys I can do more than that!  You have my interest peaked on this book and I want to read it!" So we said at least read the first chapter, but you can read more if you want! Set up another appointment with him for Thursday this week.

Bryan this guy is super cool to but he’s not really in it to change, he’s more in it to learn about our beliefs.  We knocked on his door and he was super up front and kind of loud.  He said oh it’s you guys!!  Don’t you know this place is black boxed!? You aren’t supposed to come to this place! Black and I both are going oh great another guy that has a restraining order on us.... turns out he was just joking.  He said the missionaries used to come by all the time and meet with him, but one day they just stopped; that was 11 yrs. ago.  But he let us right in and we got his number and set a day to come back and yeah super nice guy! So we went back the next day I believe it was and we were there for a hr. and a half talking. He asked us a lot of questions and we think we did a pretty good job of answering them, and so did he.  He asked us if we thought right now we would go to heaven, and if we did then why we thought that.  We both told him we didn’t know for sure but that it was up to God really with what happened there.  But we sure hoped that we would be!  We said a bit more than that, but that's essentially what we said to him.  He also asked if we had a testimony of this gospel and how strong was it.  SO that led us to sharing our testimonies with him, and he just thought that was the best thing ever, like Christmas had come early for him, he thought they were great.  

The spirit in both our lessons with these guys was pretty amazing, you could feel things changing as we talked about Christ and tell that we weren't all that different from each other.  If there's one thing that everyone in the world has in common, it’s a belief in a higher power and that’s the common ground you can find with anyone.  Once you find that thing you have in common with someone you don’t really know things just open up.  Religion is one of the best ways to have people open up, cause it’s something they love and something that brings us closer to our God, whoever it may be.  

 That’s our week for ya really, well the highlights anyway.  

Haven’t have any snow here on the ground for the past 2 weeks!! As of last night we now have 6 inches or so... 

Hope everyone has a good week.

Love ya all!     

 

 Another bit from the letter he sent me:

Well I’m glad to hear its going good for ya!  It was kind of hard for me to open my mouth when I first started but now it’s just a time we get to share the insights we had on what we read and then as we discuss those things we learn more from each other and our knowledge grows and so does our testimony.  

 

All We Can Do Is Pray

The weather has felt like spring, it’s been in the 3-8 degree range all week, sunny for the most part, and we have almost no snow!!! 

This week we did quite a bit of finding and stopping by people trying to get in to teach them, been kind of tough though with the amount of Km's we have per day.  We have 29 k's a day... and we have gone over the last couple days by 10 I think.  So we have done a lot of walking to try and save our butts. 
So I’ll give a quick summary of the cop story Sister Dalsing mentioned last week. 
So me and Black were tracting in the place we call little India cause of all the East Indians there, we had been there for a few hrs. Knocking and not really found anyone and it was pretty darn cold but we kept going. We got to this one door with a bunch of stuff outside of it kind of like they might be moving, so we knock and we didn’t get an answer but as we start to walk away a girl opens up the top window and asks what we want- we tell her and she told us to come back at 5.  We tract for a bit till then and go back.  We go in and its 3 kids all about our age sitting in the dark.  We start talking with them and getting to know them, they are super nice kids, with some bad family problems.  We start teaching them and about 5 maybe 6 minutes in the girl stands up and starts to hyperventilate saying cops or someone is here! Cops came to the door and called for her, so they talked to her and the boys stayed inside with us. The lady cop kept saying either you or all of you are going to jail I don’t care! Meanwhile the boys are telling us how they had been praying for help and someone to come to them and that day we showed up. They saw that God had answered their prayers and they were so happy they were crying.  It was a really cool experience.  They asked why all of this was happening when they were trying to live well and do good things.  They said they couldn’t even stay at the house during the night for fear of someone coming in and doing something to them.  So every night they waited till dark and then locked the doors and went out the back door to go some place else to sleep for the night. We feel so bad for them, but we don't have the power to change what was happening or to really even help them other than to tell them God loves them and knows what is happening and in the end they will be okay. We called the kids a few days later to see if they were okay and found a place to go.  They were okay but hadn’t found a place to go yet. All we can do for them really is pray they will be okay, so that’s what we've been doing.
Not too much has been going on this week other then we move a lot of people, do lots of finding, but its good!

 

Well I’ll talk to you all next week! Love ya

 

Hope the story makes sense.

 

Regina, Sask

Hello Elder Nelsons family and friends! This is Sister Dalsing Typing. Elder Nelson didn't want to email you, but I told him that he has to email yall so now I’m writing it for him.

This week has been good! Elder Nelson is in Sunrise ward. The members are nice. The work is going good! Elder Black, his companion is awesome. They almost got arrested by a lady cop.

The winter is getting colder and it's weird being in a big city. I miss going fishing and hunting and riding my horse.

Elder Nelson loves you all! Have a great week!!!

So yeah that pretty much my week!  If I had some more time I’d tell you more about the cops and all that good stuff, but we are heading off here soon to go bowling.

Elder black is pretty great.  He’s from Logan Utah, and yes he’s the same elder black that trained Elder K. Nelson.  He reminds me a lot of my Uncle David ha-ha he says a lot of the same things David does.

The weather here is way colder than MB!! It’s so cold at night, but it’s been good.  The big city isn’t too bad so far.

The area is good I like it so far. I’m going to get so lost in here though, I don’t even know where we are going half the time on the roads.

Love you all!

 

 

 

Elder Smith

First snow in Manitoba.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Goodbye Neepawa

Well goodbye Neepawa.  Kind of sad to leave it but not really.  I’m going to the Sunrise area in Regina with Elder Black and I’m the DL still... not too sure how I feel about that but.

I had a few things I was going to say this week but now I don’t know what it was, so this is going to be another short email.

Got lots of snow this week.  Got down to -20 one day!  

Almost have a baptism date with Marilyn!! Still have a few things to get over with her but she’s coming along!  

Umm yeah that’s really all that went down this week...

Love ya all sorry it’s kind of short again this week

 

 

I may have given Riley a butt kicken over email about the lack of info in his letters.

His response:

I know I’m slacking on letters but idk what else to put really!!? It’s all the same every week, it’s cold, we tracted, got lunched by an investigator, talked to Ed and Marilyn, and had church" that’s our week almost every time. If I had more to write I would. 

Today was kind of  flipped my day around... it’s kind of killing me inside to leave these guys and to go be DL for people I don't even know. Lots going on right now.  Lots a big change. Don’t worry I can do it, just give me a bit of time to get things figured out.

Love ya mom.  I’ll try to do better in the coming weeks.

 

 

 

He Almost Killed Us!

Well you can all stop worrying now! I am not dead, the internet was down this morning in the library here in Neepawa and you know what that means when I’m emailing in Neepawa, only an hr. to talk.  So again if I don’t get to you I’ll try to this next week.

So not too much exciting this week.  We did some tracting and had exchanges with dauphin down here in Neepawa on Wednesday.  We also had ZC on Thursday that was long but good!  Oh Elder Doolen just about killed me and him Wednesday on the way to Gladstone to stop by some members.  It had been snowing all day and it was kind of warm out so the snow was melting as it hit the ground, but later in the day it turned to ice...  and later in the day was when we went to GS.  So we were driving down the road talking about going to his home place AZ after the mission and he’s like well all we got to do is go like this! He grabs the steering wheel and yanks it towards him!! We go fishtailing all over the road with the roads all iced up! Somehow I managed to keep us on the road and got the car back under control.  I gave him a little bit a crap for that one needless to say ha-ha it’s like he’s never drove on bad roads before!  (Cause he hasn’t)

Went to a Ukrainian Catholic church on Sunday, that way different!  We were out driving around late Saturday night looking for people we could help move snow for and we saw this guy clearing his church walk way, so we stopped and helped him and after we got done he invited us to church! So we went! I’m so glad our church doesn’t burn candles during it or get up and down every 2 min!

And that our week!   Well a quick rundown of it.  I’ll tell you more when I get home ha-ha

Love ya all! Talk to you next week!

Battle of the Pounds

Well this week was a cold one, finally got snow up in here... not to much though so that was alright.Was enough though to turn Neepawa into a frozen waist land.  it’s pretty funny to see all the Filipinos walking around with just their eyes showing ha-ha guess they think it’s a little colder than I do. 

Had exchanges with dauphin this week so we were up there for the start of the week doing stuff with them.  Met a guy they are teaching named Zack.  He’s a Satanist atheist, kind of different I know.  Super nice guy that loves to talk and ask question.  Told us that there is a certain beauty behind some of the Satanist beliefs, like the skull for instance.  It’s a symbol of death and how we need to live every moment of our lives to the fullest, cause death is always around the corner.  Pretty interesting huh
Found a new investigator Mark here in Neepawa a few days ago!  He’s working 2 jobs so he’s never home but we caught him home the other day so we got lucky.  He is trying to get his family here from the Philippines, and he likes to explore religions!  So we might get him to church!!
Something the AwaHin district started this week was the AwaHin Battle of the Pounds for one week.  its where me and elder woodruff are trying to lose the most weight in one week VS Elder Doolen trying to gain the most weight in one week.  Elder Smith didn’t want in on it so he’s kind of the judge.  And at the end of the week we all get together with or weights and see which one won ha-ha stupid I know, but we got nothing else to do but that and mission work.  Me and elder woodruff have lost 10-11lbs since Tuesday night and elder Doolen so far has gained 11.  So that’s been our excitement out here in the middle of nowhere for the past week.

And that’s the week for ya really. 

Love ya all, and talk to you next week!