13th of January Update

Hey!

How are you doing?

Man, this week has been so tiring. Me and Elder Farley really have to soldier on through daily planning when we get home. Ughh. But I guess this is missionary work? And I guess that those feelings of exhaustion and fatigue are what cause us to sleep with a smile on our face.

So, we have some news to announce.... Angela was baptised and confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints this weekend. I performed the baptism and Elder Farley the confirmation in which she received a wonderful blessing. The spirit was so powerful on Saturday to the point that Elder Mitchell and Nielsen's investigator concluded that they wanted to be baptised also. How great is that? The day did not come without its fair share of curve balls though, but it was nothing a Priesthood Blessing couldn't deflect. Angela then struggled to relax in the font as she has a slight fear of immersion, so I told her to 'trust me' and to 'just sit down'. This worked wonderfully J

Her sons were at the meeting and I finally saw them with their guard let down, they felt the Spirit and we are now teaching Naheim, Angela's 12 year old so please say a prayer for him!

It's so humbling to see how the Lord works and when I've observed how well his plan's come together I realise how minimal my part has been. And yet with this thought of being a very small instrument in the Master's hand, I still feel greatly blessed by the things that I have learnt and experienced as Angela has made her first covenant with Him.

Now onto the next one! Medhi is to be baptised on Saturday 12^th, he is preparing himself brilliantly and so please pray for him. And his girlfriend now wants to meet with us and they have already had dinner at the Bishops house! Whoop!

We had an amazing experience last Wednesday when we were walking home and came across a Lady who was walking home from a day's work. She had shopping bags and so we offered to help but she declined, we then asked her about her faith in God and she said it was everything to her. As she was speaking I felt strongly that she needed a blessing. I inquired about how she was feeling and then explained who we were and the Priesthood that we held. When we asked her if she would like a blessing, she answered 'yes' with all the expression of relief you can imagine. We were in quite a private are of the street and so Elder Farley anointed her and I sealed the blessing. When the blessing ended we lifted our hands to find a humble face laced with tears. As she opened her eyes she immediately asked, 'Can I come to your church?' She then began to express how she has been struggling with depression and how her health has been on the decline. She also told us of her struggles at work as we walked her home. We met her husband and taught him a little about the Gospel. We have exchanged details and will be seeing her this week. The Priesthood is not only the power to heal the physical pains of the world, it is the power given to us from heaven to heal broken spirits and to rescue wayward souls. Nancy felt the Power of God manifest in the hands of His young servants. Neither of which have the wisdom or understanding necessary to fully comprehend his glory, yet he loves us and trusts us enough to involve us in 'bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of man'.

In other news the Band is alive and kicking again, we had our first practice today. It has been modified to a manageable number of missionaries who can all fit in the mission van which will hopefully be driven by me! I got to see Elder Hein today which was fun and we are singing a song together called 'Be thou my vision'.

 Also last week we had Zone conference and it was great. I really love zone conference, man. Earlier in the week I had written in my Journal 'buy a ukulele' and then a couple of days later sister Jordan calls with an assignment to 'buy a ukulele', can someone explain? Haha. Anyway it transpired that the music shop was not in my area and so it was reassigned to another Elder. However, I still had to learn how to play the song 'How can I be?' This proved difficult without a ukulele at hand, but like Nephi I tried to come to the Father with solutions before I asked him for help and realised that the dimensions of my phone and the fret board of the ukulele were very similar and so practice commenced, and after listening the this song for the 100^th (exaggeration) I felt confident that I could transfer my skills from the phone to the real thing. Thankfully it worked and I, Elder David, Larsen and Adriano performed the song in zone conference! The video should be up on Sister Jordan's blog soon!

So it may seem that I'm enjoying myself a bit too much but being a missionary really is the best thing. The mission on a whole is very young and so it will be interesting to see us all grow and progress into the mission the Lord knows we can be.

I love you all and I am so thankful for all the letters and packages I've received, it really means so a lot.  

Hugs and Handshakes,

Elder Nolan