January 17, 2022

 Baptizing the Pizza Delivery Guy?!?

The week was absolutely crazy and I tried writing this email about 3 different ways but there was just way too much and too many side stories and details. Apologies if this feels all over the place, just a tiny look into my brain right now.

This week I want to tell you about our new friend Victor. Victor is a cute 76-year-old man that lives in a big house all by himself. Picture the stereotypical old man’s house that lives by himself and is on the border of being a hoarder; that is exactly what his house looked like. It was awesome. He had the coolest, oldest, and most random things just laying around his house. We got to the end of the lesson, and I finished explaining to him what the Book of Mormon is, how it came to pass, what it teaches, and how we have it today through Joseph Smith. To gage his understanding I asked him, "To your understanding, what is the Book of Mormon?" He sat and thought for a minute and then hit me with this gem, "Well the Book of Mormon is a guide for us in this life." I was speechless haha. I told him he was exactly right. We asked him to say the closing prayer and he gave a beautiful prayer. In it he thanked God for sending him two young men who are teaching him the things he needs to do in this life. He promised God that he would read this book and then asked that he would be able to know it is true. He then showed around his house with all the many random things he has which was quite entertaining.

If you remember last week, I wrote about our friend Laura who was starting to progress in the church again. An incredibly long story short we had a lesson planned with a baptismal invitation for her that went horribly awry because she had all of her friends and family over and it turned into a "let's try to stump the missionaries" Q and A lesson. It was actually a good opportunity to answer questions and introduce ourselves to her family, but we weren't able to progress with her and extend the baptismal question. However, on Sunday she came to church again and we got to give talks in Sacrament meeting. While Elder Cisneros was talking about his previous converts and the blessings of baptism, Laura leaned over to me and said very timidly "I think I want to get baptized" I told her that was an awesome decision and then set an appointment to talk more and set an official date for her baptism but we're planning on the 29th of this month! After church we asked her if she had been able to read since we last talked and she said she read 10 chapters! And she said that her sister-in-law and niece are super interested in hearing our message. The niece assisted church too and enrolled in seminary even! 

Other highlights and stories I left out include having to explain why women can't have the priesthood to Laura's family and the pizza delivery man who stayed to join the conversation, preparing a 15 minute talk in 20 minutes and then having to give it in 5 minutes, and explaining why we practiced plural marriage at a time to Laura because our Gospel doctrine teacher thought it would be a good idea to make a joke about that when we had 5 investigators at church 😐

I would like to finish with a quick testimony of the Book of Mormon as I truly saw this week the impact it has. As my buddy Victor said, it truly is our guide in this crazy life we're living. If any of you are seeking answers, I promise they can be found through the Book of Mormon and prayer. As missionaries, it is our strongest tool in conversion, and I would add it is the strongest tool for retention in this Gospel as well. 

Anyways this week was so good, and the work is definitely starting to pick up here in Popayán. Hope you all are enjoying life and reading your scriptures, it's good for the soul.

- Elder Nixon 

Check out the dog that comes to church every week in a diaper and tie 






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

September 22, 2021

Image
 I'm a Dog Whisperer?! I said last week's email was going to be short and boring and this one will probably beat last weeks in both departments. Good news is that my next email will be from the beautiful city of Cali Colombia, and I can share all of my fun first week and travel stories. But as for this week you get the boring stuff. Bear with me as I try to make this entertaining.   This week mostly consisted of scrambling to get everything I need for Colombia. Between a few Walmart trips and probably the world's largest Amazon order I think I am close to having everything. Now I get to pack this week so super looking forward to that. (I'm dreading it if you didn't pick up on that).  As for class this week we had a good time as always. Thanks to a suggestion from my Grandpa, we got my teacher to try and say the word "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" from Marry Poppins. He had to have seen the movie before because he did a decent job but boy did my d...
Read more

September 8, 2021

Image
 My Teacher Said the F-Word?! I will start my email off this week with an update from my last email. Unfortunately, my attempt at selling a Book of Mormon for free on Facebook marketplace was a failure. However, my plan to teach my Colombian teachers fake English words was a huge success. Thanks to a suggestion from a replied email, I decided that rather than teaching them fake words, I would teach them English slang. During class one day Hermano Galeano gave us a 15 minute lecture on why the dating app Mutual was evil to use. After a thorough conversation on the topic I told him that he was "spitting fire." He had clearly never heard the term before but after I gave him the direct Spanish translation and definition he understood the concept pretty well and said, "Ohh, like when Elder Holland speaks." Not trying to add fuel to the fire but I think it's safe to say he understands what spitting fire means pretty well. A few other slang words we taught him were ...
Read more

August 25, 2021

Image
 Week 1 HMTC I debated writing an email this first week because not a lot happens when you are on zoom for 40 hours a week but I thought the people would want to hear from me after the first week. Maybe don't expect a weekly email while I'm in the Home MTC. We will see how much content I have for each week.   My companion's name is Elder Nielson. He lives in Heber and is awesome. We get along really well and have a good time together. My daily schedule for this last week and the next five is zoom classes from 8-12 and then more classes from 2-6. I am at the Colombia virtual MTC so all of my teachers and instructors are native Colombians. It's super helpful to be taught by native speakers but it is also a struggle as they are all learning English and it shows. One of my teachers can never remember the difference between reading and writing and she will ask us to write scriptures when she actually wants us to read them for the class. I get a good laugh out of things lik...
Read more