Redemption Email

So it appears my email last week got lost in the digital nether-so sorry about that. Biggest news from last week, Elders can no longer teach single women and sisters can no longer teach single men. It's only families or people of your own gender. Elder Bunn and I are actually pretty good about it because we hardly ever talk to women while on the streets anyways and now we basically get all of the sisters area 永和 as part of our area!

On to this week...

I taught possibly my last children's English class this week. As the advanced class teacher, Elder Morgan hated teaching his class and so I said I would switch. The kids are super crazy so I'm not too sad about it but it was kind of fun. So far, just in the prep, advanced class seems like a lot more work since I'm not preparing the same class as my companion but hopefully I can make it fun since supposedly the advanced students basically just like discussing stuff. 

Sunday was really cool. We had one of our friends who is in the 永和 (Yonghe)ward come  to Sacrement Meeting for the second time even though we have only really met with him once. At the end he even expressed curiosity to know what the second two hours are like! Then in our ward, 中和一, a random guy shows up during Sacrement. Turns out he is not a member but just some random guy who is retired and likes to go to churches. He even stays for gospel principles and we set up another meeting for Thursday. Super random, but then at our dinner appointment and later with the 中和二 (Zhonghe 2) Elders, we discovered this guy has met with missionaries before but cannot be baptised because he has 3 wives, living in 3 different countries!

I have been reading in 1 Nephi recently having just restarted the Book of Mormon in personal study. I read the other day the part where Nephi gets the commandment of the Lord to build a ship and Nephi's very first reaction is to ask the Lord where he can go to find ore. I think this is a really great scripture story because Nephi gets called to do something that based on human knowledge (such as Laman and Lemuels) he shouldn't be able to do, but Nephi has enough trust in the Lord's plan to know that as long as he tries it will work out. We don't know from the scriptures Nephi's background but I would assume he has some sort of experience with ore or tools since that's the very first thing he thinks to ask, but Nephi applying his experience, and his ideas to the Lord's commandment, reminds me of our need to trust in the Lord when he calls us to do hard things. Even if we don't have the exact skill set or experience we think we would need to fulfill the Lord's commands. As long as we bring what we got and give it our all, miracles happen! That's certainly true for missionary work! So, trust in the Lord, it will all work out. 

Hope you all have a good week. 

Elder Neilson 

Pictures of Elder Bunn and I eating shaved ice and our last English Class.