September 1, 2021

 Selling the Church for Free?!

The people have spoken and you guys will be getting weekly emails even while I am in the Home MTC. I will try my best to keep them entertaining and fun to read. Today is September 1st which means I fly out to Colombia this month! Don't be fooled, I still have 4 weeks left in the Home MTC, but September 28th I should be on a plane out of here. 80 hours of zoom down, only 160 left!

I don't have a lot of content for this week but things are going really well. I love my district and we have a lot of fun in classes together. I mentioned last week that both of my teachers are still learning English. Multiple times a day they ask us what a word in English is or how to pronounce it. I want to have some fun and teach them a fake English word. If you have any ideas for what it should be feel free to write me back with any suggestions. We try to keep the shenanigans in class to a minimum but it makes class go by fast and the day better. 

I played a lot of tennis and pickleball after class this week. Unfortunately, I lost every game I played but that is only because my focus is solely on the mission work of course. If you would like the opportunity to beat me in either Pickleball or Tennis I seem to be on a losing streak and will be around for 4 more weeks so hit me up if you want to play after 6pm any day. 

As for the title of my email, let me explain. In the MTC you practice teaching the Preach My Gospel lessons to "investigators". They are almost always volunteer members that speak the language but the practice is still valuable. However, I learned this week that in the Colombia MTC they want us to find real Spanish speaking investigators and invite them to our zoom call during our scheduled time to teach lessons. To say this was incredibly intimidating to hear less than 2 weeks into my mission would be an understatement. Investigators would be provided for us if we didn't find any but our teachers really pushed finding our own people to teach. We were all really confused as to how we would find and contact people in Cali Colombia. Our teachers told us that Facebook groups are the best way. After an hour of searching through Facebook groups in the city of Cali, I found one group that showed promise. The translation of the group is "Buy and Sell In Cali." Basically I joined a local yard sale page with 18,000 Colombians. So this morning in my meager attempt to find my first investigator I made a post to this group that I was selling my favorite book for free and anyone could have a copy! As a courtesy I even offered to throw in free lessons with missionaries if people wanted to learn more. I would be very surprised if anything comes of it and there's a decent chance I get kicked out of the group but at least I tried! More to come next week in my search for Colombians interested in a free book. 

I would be a bad missionary if I spiritually nourish you guys real quick while I have you here. In my comp study this week I read Helaman 14:13. It says "And if ye believe on his name ye will repent of all your sins, that thereby ye may have a remission of them through his merits." I love the simplicity of this scripture. If we believe in Christ and repent we can be forgiven of our sins "through his merits". I love that important distinction made in this verse. Through Christ's merits, his Atonement, we have the ability and opportunity to repent and live with our Father in Heaven again!

Love you all, 

Elder Nixon 

Pictures of my Facebook post, getting ice cream to ease the wounds of losing in pickleball, at the Draper Temple, lunch with fellow missionaries, and introducing my comp to a truly amazing movie.