Broken umbrella

Dear Family,

Aw man, you guys are gonna have to tell me how the old springville house is!!!!!!! I can't believe that that was like....8 years ago.....I can't believe I'm just 18....I can't believe I've been gone for 8 months....I can't believe I was only baptized 10 years ago. That's a weird thought haha!!! A whole lotta unbelief today ;)

 

This week was good!! The weather was crazy though!!! Wednesday POURED all day, it even broke a couple of records between wednesday and thursday on rainfall received in 24-48 hours!!! It was pretty fun to walk in. Except for my $11 mens wearhouse umbrella finally broke :( goodbye my weather beaten friend :(

Not too much happened this week. We taught alot of lessons to just regular members. I don't know why, but for the past couple of weeks I've just felt like we're falling so behind, like before this week we hadn't been able to find any new investigators in like three weeks, and I didn't feel like we'd been seeing any of the members or anything. It was really weird...But!! We found two new investigators this week, and it was a really really really cool experience!! Their names are Mariano and Carmen!! So we got a referral from the sisters named Fran several weeks ago, and we've been trying to track him down for like a month. We found out that Thursday is his only day off, so we tried by his house on thursday night. Mariano answered the door, cause they all live together, and Fran ended up not being home, but without even knowing who we were, Mariano was kinda just like "come on in guys". It was pretty sweet. So we got in, and Mariano was cooking this soup/greul stuff, and so we talked with him, introduced ourselves, talked with his 3 year old daughter, Kaylie, and then a little while in, his wife, Carmen, came in and talked with us too!! So we just talked for awhile, got to know them, and then just shared a short message about Jesus Christ in the last 10-15 minutes. There's this really cool lesson that i'd never seen before, where you fold up a piece of paper a certain way and then tear it once, and you tell a story while you do it, so it ends introducing the Book of Mormon and introducing our main message of Jesus Christ. The pieces of paper also spel "amor" (spanish for love) so it's a really sweet lesson haha!! The spirit was way strong, and they were intrigued by the message!!!!! We're going back tonight to teach them the Restoration!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Side note on them, they are the only members of the Salvation Army church that I have ever met haha!!!

Also on thursday we taught our only investy with a baptismal date, Donaldo. We taught about the importance of coming to church, and then we invited him to come to church, and his response was that he couldn't come cause he had a soccer game!!!!!!! E Lattuga was kinda ticked haha! He said "Hermano, we just finished talking about how and why to keep the sabbath day holy, and now you aren't going to come to church because you have a soccer game?!?!" It was pretty funny ;) Unfortunately, he didn't come to church, so we have to push his baptismal date back....

E lattuga has the Living Scriptures DVD in spanish, so that's what we watch sometimes for language study. It brings back some pretty good memories of watching those on VHS right before church because that was the only thing we could watch on sundays ;) 

I had another cool experience on saturday!! E lattuga had DL Council, so E Packer and I walked around Dover for a couple of hours with two other english missionaries contacting people. This white guy named Darrell actually contacted us. He's an agnostic scientist. His first line was this: "so what's the good word on Darwin?" what a nerd ;) But we talked to him for like an hour. It didn't really change his opinions at all, but we gave him a book of mormon and committed him to read the intro and pray, and he said he would!! But the thing I gained the most from that was a stronger testimony, because everything he said gave a reason of why not to believe in God, or why it could be false. He was a very intelligent and very logical guy, but to me, it just doesn't make sense on how there couldn't be a God. Like who in their right mind could believe that everything came from nothing?!!??! It just doesn't make sense!!!!! The thought that came strongest to my mind while we were talking to him was that our faith in Jesus Christ and in Heavenly Father give us a hope to live a good life now to achieve a better one later. I feel bad for people who don't have that hope, because they really don't have a purpose to even live. The gospel is true, doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith!!!!

The Maughans went home today, that was crazy. I was here when they started their mission, and I'm still here when they ended it. They just served a 6 month mission, but I got really close to them!!! I cried yesterday saying goodbye to them at church haha!! I love the Maughans!!!

Hey, can't wait to see you guys on sunday!! :) Good luck on your talk mom!! Love you guys!! :)

Love,

Elder Tanner Nelson :)