July 28th, 2014 - New People?!?

Hey Everyone!

Well transfers happened this last week, which meant the first couple days were spent saying goodbye to people with Elder Lyman, and then these last few days have been spent working to get Elder Hansen used to the area and meet as many people as possible. It's been awesome to get to work with new people this week, as every companionship in our district was changed in some way. But anyway, some spiritual thoughts first!

This week I spent some time studying Alma chapter 38, which is Alma's advice to his son Shiblon, who is a pretty cool kid. I particularly found verses 10-12 interesting as it is some very pointed things that he counsels Shiblon to do or stay away from. I also read a sweet talk by Elder Packer about the Language of the spirit - y'all should check it out! A couple other scriptures stood out to me this week: 1 Nephi 1:12; 2 Nephi 3:12; Mosiah 4:9-10; Enos 1:8-9;1 Nephi 3-4. Plus, we watched a sweet video in ward council yesterday that talked about teaching and learning in the home and at church, y'all should check it out!

Video 1: https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2014-06-001-learning-and-teaching-in-the-home-and-the-church-the-home?category=auxiliary-training-videos/2014-auxiliary-training&lang=eng

Video 2: https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2014-06-002-learning-and-teaching-in-the-home-and-the-church-the-church?category=auxiliary-training-videos/2014-auxiliary-training&lang=eng

Alright, some quick highlights this week! On Tuesday, we got to see a ton of people and eat a load of food - some members had a party at Denny's for the missionaries who would be leaving, and then later we had dinner with an awesome family before another couple took us out to dinner at Café Alley. Wednesday was pretty exciting since it was transfers day and some incredible members were willing to drive us up to the city and stay up there until we were ready to head back - which ended up being a lot longer than usual since one of the new missionaries had to buy a bike while we were up there. Another sweet highlight was church on Sunday, where we had an awesome sacrament meeting, a good sunday school lesson, and then a super spiritual priesthood hour where the Elder's quorum presidency was reorganized and we got to watch a sweet talk from President Uchtdorf! 

Sorry it's short today, but such is life sometimes! Have a fantastic week! Love y'all!

'Til Next Time,
Elder Jordan Nielson

July 21st, 2014 - Transfer week!

Hey Everyone!

It's transfer week again, and I'll be staying here in Ardmore! Sadly, Elder Lyman is headed off to the middle of nowhere in Elk City, but he should have fun out there. Anyway, this week has been pretty sweet with some cool miracles and other good stuffs happening, but for some reason I don't particularly feel like emailing today... perhaps it's because I'm working on family history at Familysearch.org (I may or may not have caught the fever of enjoying it...), so that might be occupying my email time today... so this might end up a little short... sorry!

Some quick highlights from my studies this week, super fast!

• Ephesians 1:17
• John 16:33
• Helaman 6:3
• Jacob 4:7
• 1 Nephi 8:12-15
• Alma 45:4-8
• 1 Kings 6,30;7:1

Anyway, some quick highlights this week were Tuesday, just the entire day, Wednesday, the vast majority of the day, Friday, because of exchanges, and Sunday, the entire day... so... I'll have to be brief today since there was just too much cool stuff. So, some short stories... On Tuesday we got to go on Splits, which was pretty exciting. I went with Brother Robie, who is like 82 years old, and is just a blast to be with. He's a pretty awesome old guy, and we got to talk to a couple families that night that he did a pretty great job connecting with. Then on Wednesday we got to help a member demo some stuff in a building he's got that he's remodeling into some apartments that he plans to rent a couple to missionaries. So, that was super fun, and we ended up quite dirty (see pictures 1 and 2). Friday was a highlight since we took some district pictures, one of which is attached as well, and I got to go on an exchange with Elder Crosby which was a blast. Then on Sunday we got to visit a ton of members and eat a ton of food, and just had an awesome time at church especially since Elder Wheelwright is leaving for his mission this Wednesday and had his farewell talk and dinner.

That's all I feel like emailing today... hope y'all have a fantastic week! Love ya!

'Til Next Time,

Elder Nielson

P.S. Part of the reason I included pictures is since they're theoretically worth 1000 words... words I didn't feel like typing today

 
 

July 14th, 2014 - Connie's Baptism!

Hey Everyone!

This week has been another noteworthy week, but sadly I don't have time to go through all the cool things that have been happening around here! First off though, a few scriptures I found interesting in my studies this week:

• Alma 12:14
• Psalms 23:7
• D&C 121:35
• Enos 1:4,9
• Alma 41:4-6
• 2 Nephi 4:16
• Acts 5:38-39
• Joshua 24:15
• Matthew 6:24

Also, related to my studies, I've recently started focusing my studies more on being question-based, and so if y'all have any questions - simple, deep, profound, or whatever it is, I'd like to have em since it's always more fun to study to try and help someone else than just to fulfill my own curiousity. So, send your questions my way and if I start getting really adventurous I might start mentioning who the questions are from in my email. This week I focused a lot on what makes standards and goals work to help motivate us to act and achieve great things, it was pretty neat. 

Anyway, there were some awesome things that we got to participate in this week, the most important of which was Connie Harper's baptism! I've attached a couple pictures from it, but it was just a super spiritual service and it was awesome to be able to be apart of that! She's a super awesome lady, and her son who got baptized in september of 2012 was able to come up to baptize and confirm her! It was a pretty neat experience, especially since it was the first time he had baptized someone, and it got to be his mother which was super special. Possibly the most entertaining thing of the week though happened after the baptism when the sister missionaries realized that they had locked their car keys in the trunk... it was kind of funny to see them freak out, and then it was super awesome to be able to happen to have an investigator who used to do that as part of his job (working at an impound lot), and so he was able to come and help them out. It was pretty dang exciting - especially since it was like 9pm. 

The cool part about that story above though is that we got to visit with his family yesterday because of it, and it was a super fun visit. We talked about the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ and then got to play pictionary with them, which was just a bundle of fun. Also this week, we got to visit with a couple people who recently got new phones and introduce them to the Gospel Library app... it's a pretty dang awesome app, along with the app that just has the Book of Mormon on it - they're both super useful since lots of people always have their phone on them but never want to carry a book around. So, it's been fun to have people add that on their phones - hopefully they remember to use it occasionally ;)

Another cool thing this last week is that we've been able to go out to Healdton, a small town in our area, a couple times and have met some awesome families out there. For one thing, we got to visit with Scott, a less active member who hasn't been to church since 2001, and his girlfriend (who isn't a member) for a bit. He happens to be the temporary police chief out there, which was pretty sweet, and he also knows quite a bit about the doctrine of the church still, which was neat to hear. It was a pretty awesome experience to have, plus his girlfriend Amy was super interested and curious as well.

Anyway, I've gotta get going, but I hope y'all have a fantastic week! Love y'all!

'Til Next Time,

Elder Jordan Nielson

July 7th, 2014 - July 4th and other fun days!

Hey Everyone! 

Another week has come and gone, and with it some new crazy experiences happened! Of course the most exciting day this week was the 4th of July, but the 5th and 6th were also pretty cool and the 2nd and 3rd weren't that far behind ;) Basically... it's just been an awesome week. But, like last week I'm going to start with my studies since nobody has complained about it yet, and I quite like it. 

So, for this week my studies were a little bit more varied than last week - I spent a bit more time in the Book of Mormon dissecting Moroni 7-10 (chapter 9 not so much, but the others were really good), plus listening to Dr. Madsen's lecture on the sermon on the mount - which is pretty dang good. So, a few scriptures from Moroni first: (turn to Moroni or else my +'s won't make sense...)

• Moroni 7:3 + Mormon states here that this chapter is addressed to the people of the church and points out what our hope should lead to - entering into the rest of the Lord
• Moroni 7:6-8 + These verses stood out to me in that it teaches clearly the principle that our intent and the desires of our heart matter - a lot - when it comes to the blessings the Lord is able to offer to us and how that will play out in the judgement 
• Moroni 7:12-13 +  Pretty simple... things that are Good = of God things that are evil aren't
• Moroni 7:28 + A dang good verse about the role Christ plays in our eternal salvation
• Moroni 7:30-31 + Explains the office angels hold, and I also found the statement that "the office of their ministry is to... prepare the way among the children of men, by declaring the word of Christ unto the chosen vessels of the Lord, that they may bear testimony of him." interesting as it's pretty clearly stated that prophets - the chosen vessels of the Lord - are there to bear testimony of Christ which word they receive by revelation (Galations 1:12).
• Moroni 7:44 + Faith, hope, and charity are all related... but that could get deep, so I'll leave it there.
• Moroni 8:3 + I don't have time to put pluses on all of these :(
• Moroni 8:10-12
• Moroni 8:24-26
• Moroni 9:6
• Moroni 10:22
• Moroni 10:32-33

So yeah... Moroni 7 is my favorite chapter in the Book of Mormon, but it takes a ton of effort to apply and learn to live so I'm definitely still working on that one! Well, time to move on to a quick review of the highlights of this week! 

First, is Taylor's baptism! She's a 15 year old who we've been teaching since I got here that the Young Women have just done a fantastic job fellowshipping and helping her come closer to Heavenly Father. It's been awesome to see the impact that they have as they've helped her get to activities and encouraged her to do all those things that you learn in young women's (I don't even know the half of them...), but it's been awesome! We had a pretty easy job - teach a few lessons and help her keep reading the Book of Mormon - since the young women did awesome work with the hard job of getting people to church and making friends there that encourage them to come back. So, there's a couple photos attached on here, one is her and brother Greenwood (the fellow she asked to baptize her) the other is us and the sisters since we've been teaming up to teach her lately. Anyways, that was definitely the highlight of this week! 

Aside from that, we've had a few fun service opportunities this week - like helping move some bouncehouses around, scraping up some linoleum for a sister in the ward, helping trim a couple trees for one of our investigators, moving stuff around for a member who hurt his ankle playing basketball with us earlier this week..., and then unloading chairs and tables after the ward party on Friday. So yeah... we did quite a bit of service, but it was a blast! On the 4th of July we had a ward party from 10-2 where we got to play some volleyball, eat food, and socialize and it was pretty great. Later that day we had dinner with some awesome families who were willing to spend their 4th of July with missionaries, so instead of trying to find somewhere to watch fireworks we went and played wiffleball and apples to apples with them which was a blast. 

That's all I got for this week! Have a fantastic week! Love y'all!

'Til Next Time,

Elder Jordan Nielson