Merry Christmas everyone. I hope everyone's Christmas was as awesome as mine. This past week and a half has been pretty great.
So on Tuesday last week all four of us missionaries up here in Geraldton traveled down to Perth for a special country zone conference (for all the missionaries serving in country areas) as well for a Christmas conference. We took the bus down which is a 6 hour ride, but about halfway down we got stopped for about an hour because of an accident ahead of us. We finally got to Perth and the assistants took us to the chapel for our country zone conference. It was pretty cool because it was the first time that all the country missionaries had ever been all together ever in mission history. Usually once you get transferred to a country area you don't get to go come down to Perth until you get transferred again. So it was a cool opportunity to see all the other missionaries. During the conference they shared about the four things that we can do as missionaries to be successful and I think they relate to all aspects of the gospel as well. They are desire, faith, obedience, and work. It requires all four to bring about miracles. After the conference we were dropped off at the Joondalup elders flat. They were in my last zone before I got transferred so I knew them pretty well. 
The next day on Wednesday we went with Joondalup elders and 4 other missionaries and did a service for one of the members moving boxes and pallets. Then afterwards we went to the mall and sang Christmas carols with a heap of other missionaries from the north coast zone. That was lots of fun. Then that afternoon we got to go to the temple. I love the temple and it was definitely the highlight of the trip. The Spirit is always so strong in the house of the Lord. 

Then on Thursday we went down to the Southern Christmas conference. There were two other zones there as well us country missionaries.during the first have of the conference the mission President and his wife discussed the birth and life of our saviour Jesus Christ. Afterwards they showed us Mr Krugers Christmas. And we had a massive lunch. After lunch we played this one game where there are 3 missionaries chosen and they are given a head band with the name of a church person on it like Eve, Abraham, or elder Holland and they have to guess who it is by asking yes or no questions. It was funny because they chose me and the person they gave me was Pres Nelson, because I'm elder Nelson of course. Then later they showed us a movie about the pioneers


Then at the very end of the conference like usual they had the departing testimonies of the missionaries that are going to be finishing their missions. It was crazy because the last sister still in the mission from my intake gave her testimony. The mission so far has gone by so fast. 
On Friday we packed up and headed back to Geraldton and got back to work. We were able to talk with a good number of people this and one of the experiences that stood out this week was on sunday. We went to follow up with a guy we had given the Book of Mormon to and since it had been a while I had forgotten what we had shared with him last time. So when we got there he answered and told us he hadn't read any of the Book of Mormon and wasn't interested any more. At that point I had no idea what to share with him but it was cool to see that as we relied on the spirit we were able address some of his concerns and questions. Even cooler was being able to see the spirit touch his heart. At the end of our conversation he told us he would like us to come back and would read the book of Mormon this time. The Spirit is everything in the work. 

On Christmas morning we did the call home then afterwards we went up to the Bells.(Sis Bell is the relief society Pres) we had a massive lunch. I really enjoyed this Christmas being able to reflect over the birth and life of our saviour Jesus Christ. I know that Jesus Christ loves each and everyone of us and because of His sacrifice we can overcome our mistakes and return to live with our heavenly Father forever. 

I invite everyone to take the special opportunity with this new year coming up to set goals and plans to become greater disciples of Jesus Christ. 
I hope everyone has a wonderful week. 

Love, 
Elder Nelson

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
 This has been a really good week. Last week when we had our zone conference with Elder Ardern of the seventy he challenged us to reach the goal of every companionship finding 2 new people to teach in the next week. That meant we were shooting for 106 new people as a mission. Recently in the mission we had been struggling to find people to teach. In the past 2 weeks we had only found 40ish people. So we had to exercise a lot of faith and work hard to reach our goal. In the end we found 161 new people to teach. I thought it was so cool to feel the urgency and desire to find as many people as we can to teach the gospel to. It reminds me of a quote from preach my gospel about setting goals....  "I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. ...
Read more
Image
This week was so awesome because we had exchanges, zone conference and general conference. So last p-day we went to a nature reserve to hike around. We met a group of older couples that were going on a tour and looking at all the flowers in the park. The guide asked if we wanted to come along so we were like sure. So we hike around and stop every few meters to look at really tiny flowers. It turns out the group is from new York which was exciting. We tried to talk to them more but they were more interested in the super tiny flowers. The entire time i was worried that i would step on a super rare Australian plant and get attacked by some old lady with a pair of binoculars. Just kidding.  Anyway on Tuesday we drove down to Katanning which is about an hour south of Narrogin. We visited some members and some potentials and then we did some tracting. So we were driving around looking for a place to tract and we passed a street and i felt like we needed to tract i...
Read more
Image
This week has been awesome. The Kalgoorlie area has been on fire. Mostly because it has been super-hot but also because we have been able to find a lot of people who are keen to hear the message. So on Monday we had a meeting with our ward mission a leader where we created a ward mission plan to present in ward council. It is really based on helping individuals and families create plans for ways they can share the gospel. On Wednesday we had another meeting with Hoje the man from China we are teaching. He is leaving this week to head back to China and we will definitely miss him. Being able to meet with him has really helped me realize how blessed we are to have always been able to attend church where ever we have lived. Some place in the world like China don't have as many members and it can be hard for them to meet together. Hopefully he will be able to get in contact with the members in China when he gets back. That evening we had dinner with a lot of the members of ...
Read more