Baptism, blessings and mail

Holla!

So this week was much, much better than last week! 

I'm pretty sure I told you that we are focusing on getting more investigators on date right? Well, on top of inviting everyone to baptism and doing harvesting blessings, we are also focusing on getting all of our investigators to church... 

Well this week we had 6 investigators at church! The most in the zone. It's fine, NBD.

Haha, but seriously, we were enormously blessed this week, it was insane!

This is the most exciting thing.... HECTOR IS GETTING BAPTIZED ON THE 24TH!!! 

WAHOOOO! YEAH! YEAH! YEAH!

We met with him again on Saturday and talked more about baptism. He still feels like he doesn't know enough and that he needs to be more spiritual. Of course, we explained that we are always constantly learning, but to get baptized you just need to have a testimony of the gospel and commit to keeping certain commandments for the rest of your life.

He said "really?" 

So we asked him if he wanted to hear what the questions for baptism were.  I told him I would go through them with him, but he didn't need to answer them. As I asked him the questions, he kept nodding his head saying "yes." 

After we finished, he said "wait...that's it?" and we said "yes!" and he said "okay, so what day can I get baptized?" :)

We tried for this Saturday, but since we can only meet with him once a week we thought that next Saturday might be better.

He went to church yesterday and LOVED it! Dakota and Brother Edwards were awesome and really took him under their wing. (I love that family so much.)

The other huge blessing this week was meeting a sweet, short, old man named Jerry. Thursday night Bishop Louden received a call from a Stake President in Utah saying that he had a good friend that just moved into the ward and that he has had 3 discussions and wanted to know if he could get the missionaries over there ASAP. 

Well Bishop Louden is AWESOME and was already out doing visits and decided to stop by right then. He ended up talking to Jerry for 2 hours and told Jerry that he would send us over. 

We went over Saturday night and boy is he a hoot! He is the sweetest, most talkative man. He just told us his whole life story and his relationship with the Savior and then he turned to me and said (40 minutes later) "Can I tell you how I see this thing going?" 

"Of course" I said "please do" 

He said "I think that as you girls come over her every day that the spirit will work on me. That I will know that this is the path that I am supposed to be on and you will help me take my relationship with the Savior to the next level" 

Naturally I asked him what day he wanted to be baptized :) He is going to pray about a date and tell us tomorrow what he decides. He has major surgeries coming up in a few weeks so I think we are going to get him on the 24th as well. :)

He went to church yesterday and everyone loved him! We had multiple people thank us for working with him...so excited to see where life takes him.

Marna (Jamaican) and Amarna (her granddaughter) came to church and so did the Jenkins family (part member, LOVE them).

One person I was really hoping would come, but didn't, is Kevin. He is a boy who just graduated from high school and has had a crazy life, but is searching for purpose. He is very open to everything and feels the spirit every time we are there and he knows what we are teaching him is true. We are meeting with him 3 times this week and hopefully getting him to church and on date. He would be an awesome missionary.

Oh my gosh I can't believe I almost forgot to tell you, and this is probably the best news of the whole week...

DAKOTA IS GOING ON A MISSION!!!!!!

He just told us on Saturday and said that he had been praying about whether he should go or not. He was going to go out on a team up with us, but then it got cancelled so I guess he said "Okay Heavenly Father, if I am supposed to go on a mission, they will ask me again to go on team ups with them." 

I never recommend doing that, but Heavenly Father knows what each of us needs. We texted him an hour later asking him to go to another lesson. :) SO excited for him. He will be THE BEST missionary. :)

My time is running out, but thank you all for your packages and letters!!!! Besides baptism, there is nothing that warms the heart of a missionary more than mail. :)

Love and pray for you always,

Sister Nelson

(email received August 12, 2013)

"When we ride bikes we get really sweaty and my hair is pasted to my head. Sups cute."

"So grateful for her"