Hello Again

Amy Hanstad's Baptism

Mother's Day!

Hello, everyone another hot week in Cali!

This week was a little slower but had some great highlights! 

The first is we had the opportunity to teach a man by the name of Chaolian Zhong! He had self-referred himself after watching many Mormon messages. He said he felt good inside and needed to meet with someone! His lesson went really well and he took a baptismal date for June 10th! He said he has a large desire to follow his Savior and be a better person! 

Another major highlight of this week had to be Mothers Day obviously! But before I talk about the Skype call. We had a baptism!!! 

I had the opportunity of baptizing Amy Hanstad on Sunday! She has been a true light to me over these past few months. As we have taught her she has truly repented and changed to come closer to her Savior. She gives the most sincere prayers I have ever heard! My favorite is sitting at the end of her lessons in dead silence for 10 mins so she can think about what she wants to say. I feel the spirit so strongly when I am with her. Miracles have truly not ceased and I don't know what I would do if I couldn't play a part in her life.

Then after the baptism, we had the opportunity to Skype our families! We skyped at Hank's home ( a recent convert of mine). It was great to see everyone and how quick they have grown up. The time always goes so fast but it truly does help. That was my last Skype call which is super weird to think about! Time is surely flying but I am having a blast! Love the work and the people I get to serve.

Have a great week everyone! 

Elder Nelson 孙长老

Mother's Day...My Favorite Missionary Holiday

What an AMAZING day it is when I get to talk to my boy! His HUGE smile, his laugh, his voice, his wit, his sense of humor, his interest in his siblings, the 💓love💓 that emulates from his whole being, his stories, his beautiful TESTIMONY of our Savior....My Ben for 1 whole hour made for a WONDERFUL Mother's Day! 
It was easier this time around knowing that he was on the downhill and would be coming home THIS YEAR! The thought of that makes me so giddy and excited inside. Benjamin has a way of lighting up a room with his peaceful personality, love, and compassion and I cannot wait for our family to be complete again when he comes home in November.  
But until then he is enjoying his time sharing the gospel with the Chinese people in California and attending the "school for the eternities". I am so thankful for his love, example and sacrifice to serve the Lord. 

Ben's Testimony in Chinese

Child Of God You Are, Forget That You Must Not-Yoda

May the 4th Be With You Package

Hedgehogs, Chinese and Heat!
Hello everyone, yes that is a weird title but I will explain! 

This week has been super super busy. We have been teaching about 3 or 4 lessons daily! Which has made time just fly by.... We are working with some great people at the moment and I am loving every moment of it. It has also randomly jumped into the high 90's! So I have been sweating a ton since we walk and bike all day! But such is life as a missionary. 

Some highlights from this week come from some amazing lessons! 

We put about 4 new people on date this week for baptism which puts us at about 8 investigators on date for baptism! WHOOT WHOOT! 

We are working with a student by the name of Yihang Yuan. He is a great kid with a true desire to come closer to his Savior! We finished all the commandment lessons with him this week and he is looking good for baptism! He confirmed his date from May 20th, and he said he is more than willing! 

We also are working with a man by the name of Chen Zhanghang. He is currently working at UCR and we love working with him. He set his own appt twice this week to meet with us! He expressed how he feels the devil is pounding on him. We shared how him reading, praying and coming to Church can help him overcome those temptations. He has been doing all of those things and loves church! We are excited for him and he is planning to be baptized on May 27th! The Lord has truly blessed us and I am so grateful for it! 

One more neat little thing. We were at a luncheon this week and they had 2 hedgehogs! They asked me if I wanted to hold them so of course, I said yes! I realized very quickly that it is super painful and NOT fun to hold them! I will drop some pictures of my smile/ pain! 

Love all of you guys, hope you have a great week! 

Elder Nelson 孙长老

That Smile!😂

Cool Chalk Art Tag Pic

Elder Nelson the Geek & 

Ben with Gracie eating the food she made

The 3 Musketeers

Trust in him. Proverbs 3: 5-6
只要信他。箴言书 3:5-6

Good Afternoon everyone! 

This week has been quite the eventful change for my mission! I am now back to my area I started my mission in and I love it here! 

First, to help you understand what we do out here as Chinese Missionaries, we walk a college campus by the name of UCR and look for Chinese people. We look for something or someway we can stop and talk to them as they are headed to classes and such. I have to say it has been a lot more fun this 2nd time around, now that I can actually communicate with the students and get to know them on a more personal level. I have already made some fantastic friends and we are working with some great people at the moment. But before I get to that let me tell you about my companions.

I first met Elder Johnson on Monday when I came into the area, I will be finishing his training these next 6 weeks! He is a great person with a very large desire to do the work. He is fearless in contacting and working very hard to learn the Chinese language.

I then met Elder Maxwell on Wednesday at the trainer meeting. He originally had come out a little after me and I had met him in the MTC! However, he went to Taiwan for about 4 months then got a nasty stomach virus that had him home for about 11 months. It was great to get to know him better and I am so excited to work with him! 

I am excited to train these 2 missionaries and help them both prepare for their missions in Taiwan! 

Now moving on to the rest of the week.  We had the opportunity to teach a student by the name of Qinsong. He is a great guy with a very large desire to be a good person. We are still working with him and hope to help him understand that God does exist and loves him very much! 

On Sunday I got to witness a miracle!!!! Sara Guo made the decision to be baptized and follow her Savior! I have taught Sara for about 8 months now and we had invited her and her husband on many occasions to be baptized. We had been rejected and given many reasons as to why they could not do that. However, Sara decided that this is what she needed to do and is setting the example for her family! She said in her testimony "One of the children asked me why I wasn't baptized at 8? I responded at that time in my life I was lost, but now I have found my Heavenly father and going down the path he has set for me". I am so happy to have played a small part in her conversion process over these past 8 months. She is a light and has helped me grow immensely! 

I love the work and I am excited for the new week! 

LOVE YAAA

pics:

Elder Maxwell is the redhead, Elder Johnson is not the redhead haha

Elder Nelson 孙长老

Back to UCR with Elder Johnson & Elder Maxwell

Goofy Elders!

Sara Guo's Baptism

Back To The Old Stomping Grounds

So this week was quite an eventful one which I will explain below!

A few highlights would have to be first Sara Guo had her baptismal interview and is ready to go for this Sunday! She is super excited as are we. I have been teaching her since last September and we are excited that she is willing to follow her Savior! 

We also taught Mr.Wang and Mrs. Zhang this week. They are doing super good they have been keeping commitments and took a baptismal date for 5/13! They said, "We need unshakable faith and we know by doing this we can obtain that". They have been progressing very quickly and came to church on Sunday. They loved it and always contribute to the lessons! 

We also taught Amy again. We taught her Tithing, Fasting and the 10 Commandments. She is doing great too. We followed up if she was still willing to be baptized on April 29th and she agreed! We will be having her baptismal interview this week! She and Sara will be baptized at the same service WHOOT WHOOT.

For sake of time, the last very surprising thing and why I wrote that in my title is I am leaving Eastvale! I have been here just under a year and have not moved the whole time. It has become my home and I guess it's time to change. I received a call from our Mission President on Saturday. He called me back to UCR campus where I will be training 2 new Chinese missionaries. They are both Visa waiters going to Taiwan. I am very interested to see how it goes, this is my first time training and I will be pretty much doing most of the speaking. I am excited about the new adventure and hope to set an example the Lord expects me to set.

We also said goodbye to some great missionaries who I will miss dearly.

I have to go love all of you! 

Elder Nelson 孙长老

Had a wonderful opportunity to go with Shannon Yang to the temple for her first time today! Fantastic experience! She is an amazing person and it has been such a blessing to see her grow in such a short time. We truly love her and she is a light in our life. 😊
D&C 18:15-16!

Ben with a dog😁

Ben sent this picture with no caption. I don't know why I think this it is so funny, but I do. Lol It may be the way he is posing, or the look on the dogs face, or maybe just the fact that he has a random picture with a dog on a couch. But without a caption or story from Ben....it is hilarious to me. 😁😁

I have mentioned before that Benjamin made some AMAZING friends in the MTC and formed some bonds that will last a lifetime. I am convinced that all these wonderful Elders/Sisters he served with those first 9 weeks gave him the confidence, positive outlook, and trust in the Lord that he could DO THIS! 

Knowing he was having to learn one of THE hardest languages, while still learning and growing in the Gospel himself seemed at times rather intimidating. Having these companions and friends to go through all the same emotions with, at times was a great comfort.

Ben knows how important that FIRST part of your mission, (the MTC and then right out into the field), is to set the tone for the emotions and trials to come over the next 2 years. He expressed how excited he is to be with Elder Johnson and Elder Maxwell, but worries about shouldering the responsibility of "setting that tone". He wants them to be successful and knows that a mission, at times, can be hard but wants to show how blessed and life-changing it can be. 

What a great example my son is to me that he is not just training these 2 Elders in the logistics of a mission, but that he cares about their well being, not just right now, but for when they have moved on. He wants to instill that same excitement, trust, and love that he felt from all those friends in the MTC and that I'm sure has played a small part in helping him through some of those tough times out in the field.     

Good Things Come To Those Who Wait

Update on this week was quite crazy. We taught some great lessons, I'm going to focus on this weekend though. First, we had an exchange where Elder Crowther went into our area and I went to English land. He had the opportunity to teach Sarah and we have been working with Sarah since last September. We went in very bold actually, Elder Crowther went in very bold, and taught them about baptism.

Sarah agreed to a date for April 29th... it is a complete miracle!!! We have been working with them for so long and they have said no to baptism so many times but she testified that she knew this is true and will bless her family.

Second, we had the treat teaching a man by the name of William Troy this weekend. He is absolutely insane! We went over to teach him and he was spraying down the inside of his car and spraying the whole garage and getting everything soaking wet. We had met his wife previously and she does not like us so when we came over for the appointment she invited a pastor over. However, it backfired! The pastor was extremely polite. I had met him before and I am friends with him. He said, "These are good people and invite you to sit down with them and he left- so that was very funny. Then he turned on Chinese opera and started screaming at the top of his lungs. It was very entertaining to watch as he was running around his whole room dancing and screaming at us in Chinese singing Chinese opera. Very, very entertaining.

However, when he sat down he focused the whole time! He loved everything we taught and had no questions. So fun week full of MANY miracles!!

Elder Nelson 孙长老

Ben and his companions "Scared of Carwashes" LOL

Ben and his little lizard friend he met doing service

When You Get The Chance To Teach Master Oogway

Welcome Back Summer
Hello EVERYONE!

It has been another very very fast week out here in California.

The weather has completely done a 180 on us and I don't like it. It is currently around 94 degrees outside and I am not excited for the heat to be back, but such is life! 

This week was very fun and we had the opportunity of teaching some great people.

We first got to meet with Amy again who is doing really well, she has been praying and reading. She said she is still willing to be baptized and we are very hyped for her. However, she has been having some issues with her husband which I will not disclose. However, she kind of poured her heart out to us in Chinese with him right next to her! She was balling and they kind of were arguing in the lesson. We hope all goes well with them which we know it will, she is just going through a rough patch but has grown a ton! 

We then later that week had MLC which is Missionary Leadership Council, we discussed technology the whole time! We are hoping to have technology full blown by the end of April. We have already seen some amazing miracles that have come from it and are excited to continue to use it! 

Another crazy miracle this week was a man by the name of Own Zhu.  I met Owen on exchanges with Elder Beddes at a park walking around with his Grandparents. We got his information through WeChat! He then randomly messaged me half way through the day looking for a time we could meet to discuss more about our church. We tried to set up a time and he said he was only available on Saturdays, so we met with him the same day we met him! 

Owen is 21 years old, so pretty close to us, he was very interested. He has lots of questions, he said he had been searching for years to find Gods' true church on the earth. He said he had been attending another church but it didn't feel right to him. We taught him the Restoration and gave him a Book of Mormon and he was very interested. He was very willing to read and pray. He said our meeting was set up by God and he was super grateful for the opportunity to meet with us. We pray that he will seek out his answer through the Book of Mormon, truly a miracle and we are very excited for him.

Overall another very fast fun week love all y'all almost at 17 months! 

Elder Nelson 孙长老

Ben with his mission plaque

Ben told us a GREAT story this week of teaching a man by the name of Mr. Jung and a woman named Mrs. Jung. Mr. Jung is the Father-in-law of Mrs. Jung and Ben refers to him as "Master Oogway" (from Kung Fu Panda)😁 A wise old man that spits out knowledge all the time. They began teaching them about the Restoration-Joseph Smith, the Apostasy, the Book of Mormon, things that are unique to our church. As they start to explain some of these topics, Mr. Jung stops them as says, "Guys! Guys! Guys! Hold on. I already understand your history." Ben was like-"Wait...what? No, you don't. Even when people say that- they really don't understand our history. But he proceeds to tell us all about Joseph Smith and how he came to know God and all about the BOM, it was crazy!" He did say, "I have 1 question. What is the difference between the BOM and the Bible?" Ben says they try to describe the difference and how the 2 books go together. The 2 are very excited to learn more so we will see where that goes in the future! 

Ben is LOVING having the technology! One of the main reasons is that they can speak to so many Chinese people through WeChat! What a blessing this has been for them for the work to move forward!