WHAT A WILD WEEK!

Sooooo you're all going to pee your pants when you read this I think. So take a break and go to the bathroom and then come back and read it because you're going to die laughing/crying.

So it was a long week! Tuesday was really just a normal day, other than the zone conference we had. It was really cool, the area president (Elder Gonzalez) came and talked to us and we had 3 zones together at the same time for the conference. So I got to see some mission buddies! After the conference nothing really happened, we found a couple new investigators and taught a couple lessons. That was really it. Lots of our plans fell through so we just ended up contacting and trying to visit less actives.

Wednesday is when things got crazy. We had been working a couple days in an area called Rio Piedras which is like a little town outside of the normal city of San Juan. We've gone out there a few times to work and it's always been a pain because we have to take the bus and it's really unpredictable and stuff. But that's not it. We were out working and all was cool. We went to visit a contact we had made the week before, and out comes some 65 year old guy that we hadn't seen before. So we ask him "hey is Tatia here?" AND BOOM the dude just started going off on us for 15 minutes about how he founded a church 40 years ago and he baptized Tatia in his church and she doesn't want anything to do with other religions and then started to quote bible verses. It was really funny because all the verses he quoted were like against him. He says "it's not my words that will save me!" but yet he's there yelling and two young men about how he already knows everything there is to know about the gospel. So me and Elder Colon just stood there on the sidewalk staring at him. The dude literally looked nuts! He was like drooling because he didn't ever stop talking! We just stared at him and never even got a word in.

Wednesday part 2: We were contacting in that same area and we were talking to a lady and then out of the blue comes a crazy lady! BUT LITERALLY CRAZY I kid you not. She had a guitar resting on one shoulder and a tree branch in the other hand, and her head wrapped in some weird scarf. We could hear her from down the street yelling at people. So then she gets to where Elder Colon and I are talking to the lady and the comes up like right between us and starts yelling stuff about Columbians and blue eyes and police and Obama and her mom and more Columbians and all kinds of weird stuff, honestly it was one of the weirdest things I've ever heard in Spanish. But yelling and I mean yelling at the top of her lungs. And the lady we were talking to just stood there in the doorway of her house like what the heck is going on here. So Elder Colon got smart and took a few steps away from the lady but I just stood there and we all just listened to her rant. Then out of nowhere she takes the stick/tree branch that she had in her hand and WHACKED ME ACROSS THE CHEST. And obviously me being superman, the stick broke into 3 pieces! (I kid you not). But then it gets even better! Seconds later, she spit in my face! It looked like the lady had rabies or something, hahahahaha and the lady in her doorway just took a few steps back and said "yeah I'm going to leave now". IT WAS NUTS. I've never felt so weird in my life. I had no idea what to do. So we start walking away and the lady continues down the street yelling at people and we turn around to see her yelling at an old lady and then the old lady pulls out a broom and starts to wail on the crazy lady! Then her whole family came running out of the house and there were 5 people whacking the crazy lady with brooms!

So we continue down the street and we found a police officer and we were like, hey dude there's some old ladies wailing on some crazy chick down the street. And the freaking police officer just says "yeah she's normal around here, she gets arrested but the government doesn't have money to keep her locked up" hahahahaha.

Wednesday part 3: We went to visit another contact we had made. A family of like 6. We get there and the pregnant mom was out on the porch with some friends and the first things she says is "be careful! My friend wants to violate you guys!" And like of everything that had happened this day, that was not one of the things I was expecting. So we kept walking.

Wednesday part 4: 7pm waiting for the bus- a Chinese guy walks by wearing plastic garbage bags (I would assume to be able to sweat more) and Elder Colon begins to contact him. The dude said that he doesn't think Christ will come again because it's been 2000 years of people saying that he'll come and he hasn't come. Like dude tranquilo have some faith. Read the Bible. Pray. We walked with him like half a mile to be able to talk with him because the dude wouldn't stop to talk to us!

Thursday was normal, nobody invited us to eat on Thanksgiving so we contacted hopelessly the whole day. Then some old lady in the street invited us to eat with her and her family.

Friday I was on an exchange with Elder Eguino who's new here in PR. We had a killer day and made some solid contacts. Super cool dude from Bolivia.

Saturday we went and committed people to church and went to some follow up appointments which all turned out pretty cool!

Sunday we got 3 investigators in church which was really cool because they were 3 that we weren't expecting to show up.

Maria is awesome! She loves the church and I heard that yesterday she was interviewed for a calling in the Young Women's, so it's super cool to see her progression in the gospel!!

Really after being hit with a stick and spat on, it was one of the worst days of my life. We came home and we hadn't taught a single lesson, everything seemed to be going against us. But it was cool because all the guys in the house reminded me of the talk by Elder Holland about walking shoulder to shoulder with Jesus Christ and it really made me think that I really experienced a tiny part of what Christ went through. Even though what happened to me was super insignificant, it meant a lot to think that I was just that much closer to being like Christ and going through a little tiny bit of what He went through. He suffered for all of us and took on himself things like the crazy woman hitting me with a stick. The gospel is so true and even though things get hard, He's there for us and wants to help. I know it's true. I felt His love this week more than I really have in a while. I'm so thankful for the opportunity I have to be here on the mission, on His errand. I love this work.

Love you all!

Elder Nelson

Elder Nelson and Maria

#ElderNelsonAndElderColonRound2

Well, we worked our butts off this week. It was cool, we about filled up a page of contacts in the agenda, but didn't get a lot of new investigators. We have tons of contacts so hopefully in the next week we'll be able to make all those contacts into new investigators.

BUT HEY THE DISTRICT IS KILLING IT!

We had 2 more baptisms here in Hato Rey this week, the sisters and the Zone Leaders had a baptism a piece. Soooo that's pretty sick. And as a district we just have a ton of excitement for the work and it's really cool to see. It just makes you wanna work even harder when you know that everything is going well and there's success around you. It's like a self competition sometimes to just work harder and be better missionaries!

Elder Colon and I obviously get along just fine, since he's my son (he's forced to love me... haha). Sometimes it's kinda weird to see what he does... like I realize that I trained him like that. But then it's kinda cool because as missionaries we're always forced to evolve and it's cool to see how far we've both come in the little time we've been apart.

But there wasn't really much that happened here this week. It's been raining really hard. That's about it. The house is super fun with Elder Gil (a super tall and skinny Mexican), Elder Colon, and Elder Ourth. It's kinda crazy.

Sorry this is so short... I can't really remember if there was anything cool that happened this week.

But really I know this is His true church. It's been really cool to interview people lately who are preparing to be baptized. Their testimonies help me to strengthen mine! I know that this is His work and that this is the truth. There's no other way to make it back to His presence other than through full obedience to His commandments. The Lord needs us in His work. Ours in the commitment to help bring His children back to the fold. I love the gospel!

Love you all!

Elder Nelson

Last day with Munoz! (Nov 15, 2016)

 se fue Sueritosssssss

 Orr se va!

la familia Cuevas!

Wow! Coolest Week Ever!

WOW COOLEST WEEK EVER!

NO JOKE

IT WAS NUTS

PERO SOLO HAY QUE COGERLO SUAVE

This week was nuts. I can't even remember exactly how it all happened. But it was actually really stressful too. Being in a tri with a guy you don't know makes everything like 30x harder. It made teaching weird, walking weird, car rides weird, eating weird. Like everything you can think of about the daily routine that Munoz and I had got super weird because we had to work Elder Powell into it. He came from Dominica for the week before he went home. It was a headache in all honesty.

But holy cow we saw miracles! We got to Maria's house on Wednesday and we were talking to her and the family and she was talking and showed us how she moved into the other room in her house, away from the boyfriend. So she said that and literally a light bulb went off on top of my head! I was like boom baptism! So we talked a little more and turns out that she's going to be moving out of the house in about a week or two. So Munoz and I talked and I called President Boucher and explained the situation, that she doesn't want anything to do with the boyfriend, and he gave us permission to baptize her on Sunday! So boom we told Maria about the plan and she was all for it. Boom boom boom super fast work. So then it's Friday and we were out at some lessons with the bishop and being in a trio our teaching was weird and took longer so we were running behind and stuff and so we flew up to Maria's house in a different part of town. Got there at 8:30 with the bishop. She says "I thought you guys weren't going to show up!"

So we get into it. We tried to get her daughter to make the decision to be baptized with her. The bishop was pulling out super awesome scriptures and it was a sweet lesson. But in the end only Maria committed to baptism.

Saturday: Maria had her interview and passed with flying colors. Tight. Baptism secured.

Sunday: Maria got baptized and it was one of the most special moments of my mission. She got baptized and came out smiling a super big smile. Then she dried off and came and sat down. The bishop said some words and then invited the 3 that got baptized to share their testimonies. At first none of them wanted to. But then Maria got up and bore a SUPER strong testimony. She started bawling and saying that she knows it's true and she's so thankful for the gospel. Man I hadn't felt the spirit that strong in a long long time. She's super great.

The other parts of the week was just contacting! We found some cool new areas to contact that are just gold mines. So hopefully we can explode those areas this transfer.

Saturday was super stressful. Because we had 3 baptisms in the district, and the zone had 6 baptisms, we had to do interviews all over the San Juan area. So we had to do weird splits and stuff in order to cover all the interviews. I was sooooo stressed about getting everything done. But we did it with a little bit of thinking.

I got to baptize the little 11 year old girl. She was a reference that we sent to the sisters. Her name is Neidalis Quinones Rodriguez and we contacted into her grandma one day who's less active. She said "hey teach my granddaughter" and so her and I like instantly clicked playing little games with her. So she asked me to baptize her. Super special girl.

The Zone Leaders had a real miracle too! They had this investigator named Cristian. He was kinda like slowly going through  the lessons but then on Wednesday they went and he asked if he could be baptized on the 20th. Then Elder Orr says "you can be baptized on the 13th if you want!" And he was all for it. So they taught him all the lessons and then it turns out he's actually been listening to the missionaries for 6 years!!!!!! When I did the interview on Saturday the dude new EVERYTHING. Super prepared.

BOOM so as a ward we baptized 3 and everyone was extremely happy.

Then we got the transfer calls. I'm going to be staying here in San Juan. But the weirdest part is that I'm going to be companions with Elder Colon. I trained him 3 months ago. I'm going to be with my hijo again! Super weird, but it's cool!

I think that's all that happened this week. It was nuts. If I missed anything, I apologize.

But seriously this week was just a testimony to me that the Lord has plans for us! He guides us in everything that we do and even though lots of times we don't quite understand, He does. This is His true church. The only true church. I love this work. Wouldn't trade it for the world.

Love you all!

Elder Nelson

Neidalis and I before her baptism.  Neidalis Quinones Rodriguez- we found her contacting, and the sisters taught her and I was able to baptize her!

 Groupie.  3 baptisms in the ward! All 3 companionships in a ward in PR baptize the same week - Wow!

Maria and I before her baptism, Elder Munoz got to baptize her

This week we got stuck in a trio (Elder Powell with us for the week).  We took a cool picture sitting on the escalator in the train station.      

 Got to see Maria Pineda and Zoe from Caguas!  They were up in San Juan and took us to get pizza.

 San Juan graffiti

 means "take it easy"

Rough week

For some reason no blog email from Zack today.  Here's part of a short email we did get --

Our baptism didn't go through, the girl got cold feet and said that she doesn't feel mature enough to be baptized. And then there was a whole mess of things going on and we really didn't even get to talk with her about it. Which is really sad. But we'll see if this coming weekend we can get her to make the decision. Things have just been really frustrating for us lately. Lots of people not taking action and stuff like that. We had a really rough week finding and we weren't able to bring anyone to church nor did we have any baptismal dates. So this week we gotta hit it hard. Just a really humbling week I think.

Elder Nelson