Hey
Familia! May
24, 2014
Things are going great
in my new area. I´ll have more time to write you all, apart from maybe today.
I´m happy and healthy haha. Right now I am in the Tahuantinsuyo Stake, the
stake closest to the center of the mission, and so I´ve been able to see a lot
of my friends a lot more often. I guess I didn´t realize just how isolated
Collique was until I left. The reason for the shorter letter this week is that
I am actually heading back to Collique (with permission of course) to attend a
baptism of an investigator we were teaching. Viviana is 12 years old, and I
guess even though I know Melissa´s older, she reminds me of her. Viviana´s
family moved to Lima from Tumbes about 6 years ago and in the process stopped
going to church. Well, Wilson (dad) is working in Chorrillos, about 2 hours
away and one night his wife Raquel, was praying for the missionaries or someone
from the church to come by, because really she didn’t want to lose anyone in
her family. Well, she left her house to go to the pharmacy with her other daughter,
and there we were climbing the stairs to go to another investigators house. We
were the direct answer to her prayer, and we have been working with the family
to bring them all back to church ever since. I´m going back today to baptize Viviana,
and I hope that her confirmation will be the first time that her whole family
comes to church and not just her with her mom.
On a different front, I
had mentioned I’ve been able to see some friends here in Tahua. Elder Dansie
(redhead from Magnolias...se acuerdan?) came today with a very very special guest
of President Erickson: Brother Dansie. Elder Dansie had shared with me a lot of
his personal history with the church and the thing that he wanted most and the
thing he mentions to me in every p-day or multi-zone that we find each other is
that he wants to baptize his dad. Well, today was the day, and I was privileged
to be there to see it. His dad and stepmom flew in from Las Vegas to let Elder
Dansie baptize his dad. I felt the spirit and the family joy soooo strongly. I
got chills as Elder Dansie said the ordinance in English, and then when his dad
went under the water, I just couldn’t stop smiling. It´s an experience that’s
pretty emotionally charged to be honest, a missionary son baptizing his dad,
and President Erickson commented that as President he has helped other
missionaries get sealed in the temple to their parents as well as baptized the
parents of missionaries serving in other parts of the world.
A giant
congratulations to Aubrey (Sintay) and to Brendan and his (future) wife. Life
events keep happening, but really it’s hard to imagine anything being all that
different when I get home...and then I see pictures of Melissa...that’s weird.
But a good weird, don´t worry Melis, love ya!
As for the tourney,
the gringos lost, but we didn’t lose bad as some of the other south American
teams (ps I was playing defense), so I guess you could say that they won because
they put us into three different teams right? Nah, really the best thing was
being there with the whole mission. The assistants did a great job organizing
the tourney and it was good to see Elder Gaibor before he had to go home. Note:
the advice I give to Kolby on the goblet is to use very few points and assume
curves are perfect. With mine, Yani used 4 points on a grid and got 3 percent
error when Carrie and I were using like 20 points and getting 20% error. Simple
is better :) That’s kind of how life is too. Even though it’s more and more
complicated every passing year, we can trust in the simplicity of the gospel.
If we trust that the atonement works and that we can repent no matter how lost
we are, then Christ promises us all the blessings of our Heavenly Father. It´s just
so simple, but it´s the hardest thing that we will ever do. Just some food for
thought there :)
Remind me of the most
important questions next week and I’ll try to answer them!
I love you all, I´m great,
and already getting used to my new area. I´ll try to describe it next week. I
hope this week you all keep having successes, and that you trust in the
simplicity of the gospel!
Love,
Elder Nelson
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