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
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