Hello everyone!
This week,
President Weston called us letting us know that he wants us to split up the
area between the 2 sets of elders. We met and cut the area down one of the
major roads, and now we have a much smaller area! Our original area was made up
of about 4 subsections, and we got 1 area while the other elders got the other
3. The area we got is really busy with work though, and there are a lot of
apartment complexes there too.
We are teaching a
guy named Chris, and he is super solid. He got out of prison a couple months
ago, and he was in there for about 8 years. He is engaged to a member of the
Church who is somewhat less-active. They have been living together for a little
bit, so we taught them the Law of Chastity last night, and Chris committed to
live it! They said they are planning on getting married ASAP, and they are
hoping they can get married this week! Our ward mission leader told us that as
ministers of the Gospel, we are technically authorized to perform a marriage.
It would be super sweet to be able to say I performed a marriage while on my
mission! The Bishop will probably end up performing it though, so it will be
super cool. We had taught him on Saturday as well, and he told us that he
wanted to be baptized. It kind of caught us off guard, because we weren't even
talking about baptism right then. Since he just recently got out of prison he
will probably have to wait until he is off parole, but he has a really strong
desire to be baptized! It is going to be super cool, because I might be able to
go to the Temple when they get sealed together. Going to the temple to see a
family that I taught get sealed together is one of my goals on my mission, and
hopefully this is it!
I went on
exchanges on Tuesday with Elder Larsen. We made sure to do a good job at
planning, and making sure we were specific in our prayers. We have had a tough
time setting up lessons recently, but since we were praying more specifically
in order to set up lessons we were able to set 3 up! It was a really neat
experience showing me how much Heavenly Father recognizes even our little
efforts. It kind of relates to what someone had said to our district a couple
of weeks ago. They said, "It is the Lord's work, so let Him do some of
it." It definitely helps to include our Father in Heaven as we are trying
to serve Him and His children.
Love you guys so
much!
Elder Nielsen
Playing basketball with the neighbors (Ethan on the hoop) |
A photo taken by a ward member. He loves the ward he is serving in (so does his mom!). |