August 26th, 2013

Hey Everyone,

I couldn't think of a decent subject for this week... so you get the lame cop-out subject.

But, this week has definitely been pretty exciting! I finally got to eat something decently weird - deep fried elk... It was super tasty!

Anyway, this week was pretty exciting... the first thing of note being that we got lost on the way to transfers! We ended up getting on the 40 instead of the 240... and it definitely made a huge difference in where we ended up! I've learned the importance of making sure your directions are accurate now ;)

Another cool thing that happened this week was more ironic than anything. We had been trying for about a week to catch one of the people we visit with, and had no luck thus far. So, on Tuesday we went and tried her again but, after knocking three time nobody answered. We wrote her a note, stuck it in her door and headed towards the car. We were in the car about to leave when - much to our surprise - she walked around the house from the back yard! She said that she had gone out the back door and ended up locking it behind her... so she had been outside while we were knocking. Luckily for us, she walked around just before we were leaving and we got to visit with her finally... then to top it all off she made it to church this week! It was super awesome!

In addition to that awesomeness, we got to start teaching this super awesome family! We had run into the father outside a few weeks ago, but with school starting and sports and such they had been super busy all the time. We finally caught them at home when they had a minute, and he was super interested! It's neat to see how Heavenly Father is always preparing people to hear His gospel, because his wife had grown up as a member, but when she turned 18 or so stopped going. So, it was neat to be able to hear her outlook on things as well, and it really helped him understand it more. 

On a random note... I was about 3 feet from a possum a couple days ago. It had ended up in a less active sister's trash can, and we got to have the fun experience of getting it out! It was exciting because it really didn't want to be forced out of the trash can for some reason... and so we eventually had to kind of throw it out by swinging the trash can back and forth.

Onto studies super fast -

• D&C 17:8
• Acts 9:15
• Acts 9:40
• Matthew 11:28-30
• Acts 10:20
• Acts 10:34
• 1 Nephi 22:3
• Matthew 12:12
• Matthew 12:25-26
• 2 Nephi 1:21
• 2 Nephi 2:11
• 2 Nephi 2:28
• D&C 22:2
• Matthew 13:26

I would put some thoughts with those... but I think this week you can ponder them yourselves ;) There should be something there for just about everyone... but one of the coolest things I've been learning has focused on the impact of Agency in Heavenly Father's plan for each of us, so as you're going through those scriptures try looking for agency! (They don't all have something to do with it, but you can try ;) )

So, that's the deets for the week! 'Til next time!

Love,

Elder Nielson

August 19th, 2013 - Another Transfer has gone...?!?!?

Hey Everyone!

This week has been super awesome! Just a few notable things for this week though, starting with Monday night.

So, Monday night we went to see the family of a guy that we had met about a month or two before, and since then he had gotten hurt pretty badly at work. His legs were burned pretty severely, but the awesome thing was that just about a month after it happened he was already walking! It was a miracle, because instead of having to spend a month or so in rehab he was already back home, it was super neat! 

Another cool thing that happened this week was trainer's meeting... but for our companions. So, half our district is training next transfer (Elders Glad, Roundy, and Rasmuson) so on Wednesday they headed to the trainer's meeting down in the city. That meant the other 3 of us (Elders Prewitt and Spafford, along with me) got to work up here in Ponca City and Blackwell. It was neat, because I got to meet some of the people they're working with and one of them stuck out to me. We got to go visit with a fellow in a rehab center (for like drugs and such) and he's super awesome. His wife is meeting with the missionaries down in the city, and he's super prepared. He's been reading the Book of Mormon everyday, and even been introducing some of the other people there to it! It's neat to see how it changes people's perspective on life, because he's gone from seeing his time there as a prison of sorts to instead seeing it as a chance to change and prepare to be a better person. He's planning on getting baptized once he gets out! 

Another cool thing was church yesterday. So, we usually have about 90 or so people there, but this week we had over 125! It was awesome to see the chapel almost full, and to almost need that extra water tray they always prepare. It was especially neat because both sides (East and West) had a decent amount of people there through their efforts. It was cool to see the fruits of obedience and hard work shown to the ward. The talks were on temples and the 3 basic aspects of the church - Missionary Work, Temple work, and the work of Keeping Members active and progressing. It was super awesome, because it pretty much explained a lot about eternal families and why the church is so awesome :)

Alright, so that's the main stuff from this week, aside from the awesome studies I've been having. I recently got some advice from another missionary on how he does his studies, and I really liked it and started applying it this week. So, first some scriptures:

• Acts 3:6 - You can only give what you have, and that's all that you're asked to do
• 1 Nephi 14:10 - There are only 2 churches
• Matthew 4:3,6 - The main temptation Satan gave Christ was related to his role as the Son of God
• Acts 4:20 - You should only talk about what you know or believe (seen and heard)
• 1 Nephi 16:29 - An outline for receiving revelation (see this month's Ensign for a cool article on it: http://www.lds.org/ensign/2013/08/a-new-writing?lang=eng )
• D&C 9:8-9 - More on revelation :)
• D&C 10:4 - Do all you can do, but it is not requisite that you should do more than you have strength given you
• 1 Nephi 17:51 - The Lord can do all things through faith (see 1 Nephi 7:12)
• Matthew 5:29-30 - What you see and do impacts all aspects of your life, and is something you need to watch carefully
• Matthew 6:19-21 - Treasure!
• D&C 14:9 - Christ introduced -> What is your introduction?
• Acts 8:17 - Laying on of Hands for the Gift of the Holy Ghost necessary
• 1 Nephi 20:1 vs Isaiah 48:1 - Importance of Baptism
• Matthew 9:2 - Be of Good cheer when you repent and receive forgiveness
• 3 Nephi 17:2-3 -> A way to learn more from the scriptures

Alright, so this week I spent a little more time in the New Testament than previous weeks, and it was super awesome. I really like the New Testament, because it really does show us how we need to live our lives. I also spent some time studying the Sermon on the Mount that Christ gives in Matthew 5-7. It's interesting to study that, because a lot of it is the new law, and it's cool to see the similarities and differences between Matthew 5-7 and 3 Nephi 12-14.

So, regarding the Sermon on the mount - a few cool things I noticed/learned:

• The new law emphasizes the importance of your thoughts and how those lead to words and actions, while the old law was action based
• There are some things that should be done in secret, because Heavenly Father sees everything, while men don't need to
• Laying up treasures in Heaven requires us to follow Christ, and some treasures are things that are Eternal such as Knowledge, the Word  of God, and Faith in Christ.
• Because the light of the body is the eye (Matt 6:22), and we learn from D&C 84:85 that: "For the word of the Lord is truth, and whatsoever is truth is light, and whatsoever is light is Spirit, even the Spirit of Jesus Christ." So, the light of our Body is our spirit, and also we learn the Word of the Lord (truth) through reading and studying it. It's pretty cool to think about how much our eyes really do impact our spirit...
• The Golden Rule in Matthew 7:12 is said to be "The law and the prophets." What I got from that was how important it is for disciples of Christ to treat people as Christ would, because as you do that you obey the law and follow the teachings of the Prophets to draw you closer to Heavenly Father

 Alright... so that's a lot longer than I thought it would be. Oh well!

That's all I got for this week, hopefully you enjoyed it a little bit :)

Love,

Elder Jordan Nielson

August 12th, 2013 - August... with October Weather?!?

Hey Everyone,
This is Spencer A. Nielson and here is Jordan's new blog! For those of you who are wondering how this happens Jordan emails me what he wants me to post and then I post it. It is pretty magical. Also there is food involved in this one as well. (I am noticing a trend here....) 
-Spencer A. Nielson
Hey Everyone!

So the talk of all the people here in Ponca City seems to be that the weather this summer has been absolutely gorgeous! We've had a summer that seems to have taken a page from Florida... as it's rained most days and that's kept it out of the triple digit heat for the majority of the summer. It's been super nice! Anyway, it's the second week of August and it's like 80 degrees outside right now... while last year it was about 110. So that's a nice difference :)

So this last week! It was pretty awesome week over all, even though our numbers didn't show it... people still get to make their own choices, and we just try to do all we can. But this last week a few really cool things happened!

For one, a family that we've been teaching for a while now finally let us inside their house! After being at the Sunday School lesson on service they decided to allow someone to help them clean their house who needed a little extra cash. So, they got their house clean for the first time since I've been here! It was a way different spirit being able to be inside away from the distractions of living on a busy street and being on the porch. We got to have family prayer and scripture study with them that night to get them started off, and they seem to be doing it most nights now! It's super awesome when people recognize the difference putting God first makes.

Another cool experience this week happened with food - again? Yep again. We got fed dinner Monday - Saturday, and even got fed lunch two of those days. It was super awesome... and saved us a ton of money as the food we bought last week is still good for this week :) It's been neat to see the members step up to having to feed twice as many missionaries and see them feed us more than they used to feed just one set of elders. 

Another interesting thing this week is moving. We've been helping a lot of people move recently, and something I've learned is just how much they appreciate it. One couple that we helped move had a lot of bigger furniture - like 2 couches, a couple big chairs, etc - and just the extra hands made those couple hours of moving so much more effective than they would have been. It is always neat to see the difference between when you get there and when you leave and how empty it is. It's also nice because they usually give us some food when we help them ;)

In other news, I got the weirdest food as of yet picked out. We finally got some deep fried food this week, and the guy deep fried Okra, Cucumbers, and Squash. It was all super tasty, as deep fried food usually is, but that's the most exotic food we've had yet ;)

Another cool thing this week was how often we randomly met with people versus how often we met with people we had appointments with. I think this is the first week where most of our appointments stayed good and we actually met with more people during scheduled times than we did just randomly catching them. It's been neat to see the impact keeping daily contact with people has, as that's something that we've been striving to do. I kind of like relating it to keeping in touch with your parents or boss at work or something. The more often you touch base with them, the more likely they are to respond quickly or let you know if something changes because that line of communication is already open. It's also like that with our Heavenly Father, because as we keep praying to him more often he's more able to talk to us and guide us to do what we need to.

Anyway, because I'm starting to get all spiritual on y'all we're going to move over to studies and what I've been learning this week!

Something I've really focused my studies on this week is prayer and examples. So, first some scriptures that I've based my studies off of this week:

-> Alma 37:36-37

-> Mosiah 2:19-21

-> Mosiah 26:39

-> Alma 23:7

-> Alma 27:27

-> Mosiah 4:30

-> D&C 4:5

Alright so basing off of those scriptures, some things I've learned. One of the coolest things I've learned is the importance of giving thanks through prayer. In a few of those scriptures it discusses what we give thanks to God for, and why it's so important so that's really something that I've been working on - giving thanks to God for all that he does for me, and being specific when doing so. I've also learned that examples are powerful tools. In Alma 23:7 it talks about laying down your weapons of war, and when you relate it to Alma 27:27 and what their example was later, it's pretty cool to see the impact that has. A key part of being an example though is being a good example, and Mosiah4:30 tells us pretty clearly what we need to do for that. It's neat to go through a verse and look up the footnotes and relate that to questions you may have, so give it a try with that verse. The footnotes are really awesome, so check em out.

Anyway, that's all I got for this week!

Love,

Elder Nielson

August 5th, 2013 - August... Where did summer go?!?

Hey Everyone,
Spencer here and here is another fantastic blog post from my brother. Enjoy reading!

Hey Everyone!

So it's already August... and kids here go back to school next week! I can't believe that summer break is already over... but such is life when you don't really have a break! I can relate a little bit more to those adults who work through the summer now... it's such a short time that they aren't in school that it doesn't even really make an impact in the long run to those of us without one...

Anyway, this week was pretty great! I'm going to go backwards this week... because yesterday was awesome and I wanna talk about it :P

So yesterday, Sunday, we had church and there were sooo many people there! The ward usually averages about 90, but there was 105 this week! It was awesome! The bishop was so shocked to see so many people that it was really quite impressive. There were 8 of our investigators there, which was super awesome because they all had a great time. It was neat to hear their thoughts on fast and testimony meeting - they all said they liked it for the most part, and luckily we didn't get any 20 minute testimonies this week! Then last night we got to visit with some of the awesome people we teach, and they were all making huge steps in the right direction! One couple decided they wanted to pray about the Book of Mormon to know if it's true - because they recognized it was important, and they told us they hadn't done so yet. Another couple, after we showed them they could listen to the Book of Mormon online (he's dyslexic) told us they would listen to it everyday! Then we got to watch Finding Faith in Christ (a super awesome video about the ministry of Christ - look it up if you haven't heard of it) with another family and they said it really helped them realize the importance of believing even if they can't see. It was neat, because he then asked us what he had to do before he could be baptized, so that was awesome!

On Saturday we got to visit with someone I hadn't seen for a few weeks, which was really awesome. We got to read 1 Nephi 13 with him, and he made a ton of really neat observations about it. It was cool to listen to him figure out what it was talking about himself and not really have to explain it to him! That might just be me... but I really like it when people learn for themselves :P

Friday was a blur, as we basically worked the entire day! We had one of the awesome zone leaders with us, and it was great to hear his testimony and watch how he interacted with people and learn from him. I learned a ton about how important it is to really focus on the people we're visiting with and not worry about getting through a lesson or anything. It was also neat to be able to see a few people that we hadn't really been able to visit with for a few weeks - including a few less active members - and see their testimonies grow.

The miracle for Thursday was the miracle of the couch. So, on Monday a couple that was being taught down in Stillwater moved up here to Ponca. But, we hadn't been able to visit with them as of yet. But Thursday afternoon, we went and saw one of our awesome investigators who is sadly moving to New Mexico at the end of the month, and he told us to find someone who needed a couch as he was giving his away (he's only taking what he can drive down with in his little car). After that, we were able to catch the couple that recently moved in, and when we asked them how we could help them - after a brief moment of hesitation - they asked about furniture. We brought up that we had just had someone offer a couch, and they were super excited! It was neat to see that the Lord works to make sure all of his children are taken care of.

On Wednesday, we had pretty much all of our afternoon appointments fall thorugh, so we were pretty discouraged... but, after having dinner with one of the most awesome families in our ward we headed back out with the motivation we needed to make sure the rest of our week was successful! It was cool to have the chance to visit with them and share a message to help build their faith which in turn built our confidence in what we were striving to do. That evening, even though we didn't really get to visit with anyone, we were able to set up the appointments we needed for the rest of the week!

On Tuesday... we had temple conference! It was super awesome to finally be able to go to the temple again! Foremost, I'd encourage all of those who can to go do an endowment session this week - there was a new video released last week (at least here in OKC), so I'd assume it's released everywhere now. It was really awesome, so go check it out! It really helped make the session make more sense to me, so that's always good. For temple conference, we also got to receive training from our mission President and his assistants, which was really insightful. The mission has set a goal to go from the average of 25 baptisms a month (which is what we've been doing so far) to helping 100 people make that covenant with their Heavenly Father this month. It's a pretty big jump, so we received a ton of training on how important miracles are to this work.

Anyway, that pretty much covers the week.... So some things I've been studying/learning this week! First, check out this talk:

http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2012/10/where-is-the-pavilion?lang=eng

It's a super awesome one by President Eyring that I've really been studying this week. I'd encourage all of you to go read it or watch it. In addition to that, I've been focusing my studies a little more this week on the New Testament so I'll share some thoughts from that.

First, Matthew 16 is a really awesome chapter. It discusses quite a few things, but I'd just like to point out a few. First, in verse 17 Christ tells us that the only way we can know that he is our Savior is to receive that knowledge from heavenly Father through the Holy Ghost. So, revelation is the only way to know that he was indeed our Savior. My thought with that is mainly that just as Peter learned for himself, we each need to find out for ourselves who Jesus Christ is and what impact that has on our lives. We find that out the same way we come to know if the Book of Mormon is true - by praying to Heavenly Father with a sincere heart, real intent, and faith in Christ. So, I'd encourage you to find out for yourself regarding both the Book of Mormon and Jesus Christ, because they really do go hand in hand.

Another thing I've been learning about is related to Acts 3-4. In these chapters Peter and John heal a man who had been lame from birth and each day was taken to the temple to ask alms. In chapter 4 verse 22 it tells us that this man was over 40 years old, and we learned in verse 2 of chapter 3 that each day he was taken to the temple. So, a member of the bishopric last week pointed out that would mean that Christ passed by him numerous times... but this miracle was reserved for Peter and John to build their faith. Much like that, there are many things that are reserved for each of us that we have been foreordained to accomplish here in this life. Along that same line of thought though, that doesn't mean we're supposed to leave people suffering so that someone else can help them. We are still commanded to help those who we come into contact with in whatever way we can, so this doesn't get you off the hook because you don't know what you've specifically been foreordained to do. Anyway, think about it.

But, that's about it for this week! I hope you all have a fabulous week!

Love,

Elder Jordan Nielson