Wow, it has been another week.
It blows my mind sometimes how that works. The times just flies and flies and sometimes even faster when you are just doing what you can do to survive. I wish again that I had something to report but it was a pretty normal to say the least. I guess the highlight was when I was on exchanges and we went to Pizza Hut. We bought pizza and that was fantastic but it ripped me up. It was too delicious and too greasy. Nothing like what I've eaten for a long time. We are doing it again for District Meeting so don't be surprised if you hear that the North District of the Suriname Zone was sick after their district meeting.
I've been thinking a lot about the reasons for trials in our lives this last little bit. I guess I've come to the decision that we have them to strengthen us and to humble us. I was thinking about this in relation to the OSU football team that just lost to Iowa State over the weekend. They thought of themselves as perfect and perhaps unbeatable. With this loss though they hopefully will accept the reality of their mortality and their utter reliance upon circumstances sometimes outside their control. So it is with our lives. We must rely upon God and his glory. It is pretty humbling.
Out of time but I love you all!
Elder Nathan John Nielson
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Monday, November 7, 2011
69th Week
Well Family and Friends,
It was a difficult week to be honest. Not a whole lot to say it was a rough week of things overall. Luckily, I made it through and life is still going on.
Story of the week:
My bike got stolen at the church in the city. It is a weird story to be honest and I feel a bit gulible but oh well. What happened is that Elder Sadler needed to use the bathroom and we were close to the church. As we pulled into the church's parking lot there was a man taking apart tables and taking them. I thought, "Why is he stealing our tables?" So I confronted him and he said they were his. So I called the wife of the branch president to verify his story and it mostly checked out. So I thought okay must be telling the truth. So I thought we'd be in the church for at the most 5 minutes and that turned into 15. When we got back out Elder Sadler goes around the corner first and says, "Your bike is missing!" I say whatever biggest joke in the world but lo a behold. It was gone. We walked to McDonald's got icecream and then waited for the Zone Leaders to come pick us up. Luckily they could and I'm using a loaner bike right now. Gotta get a new one but that'll happen.
To be honest, I'm glad this week is over and now we get to go on to the next.
I love you all and appreciate your prayers.
Love you,
Elder Nathan John Nielson
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
68 th Week
Well Hello My Family and Friends!
It has been another week and this one was painfully short. Take that as you will!
I hope you are all doing well as I'm certainly doing my best and that is all I can do right? We are currently working in the city of Paramaribo in the city center. Yes that is right, I get to work in the downtown. I've decided to work downtown Paramaribo you have to be slightly suicidal with the bike riding. One because your are weaving in and out of traffic onto the sidewalks and such, Two because you are doing this at slight high speeds (for a bike), and three because Surinamers don't seem to recognize street laws anyways. So you just never know what is going to happen. Saying that though, I haven't had a single close call yet so everything is going pretty well. I guess that is due to all of your prayers for me. I appreciate them greatly and I'm very thankful for them as well.
We are still trying to learn the area and that is quite the adventure. We are frequently lost then found but really just more lost then we realize. I guess the problem is that I'm directing this freight train and I've got no idea what I'm doing. So I just ride my bicycle with love and a smile and I wave to every that I see. It is a lot of fun.
This week we visited our Branch Mission Leader. It was pretty interesting and he happened to have a scale so I did the normal thing and I jumped on it. I official 240 lbs. That is 60 lbs or just under 30 KG. I'm not going to lie I really like that but it makes from some interesting situations. For example, when we flew to Trinidad last week the guard at the gate looked at my passport and then at me and then at my passport and had this look on his face like, I don't believe this is you. Luckily, he let me go through but it made me laugh for sure.
I've been thinking a lot about personal conversion for the last week or so. We say that we are converted to the church and what does that really mean? Are we converted to the church, as in the organization, or are we converted to the gospel? When I was in Nickerie we had a lot of members who were converted to the church. To weekly sacrament meetings and to activities every so often. We lacked people that were truly converted to the gospel and thus when trials came they were unable to handle them. President Gamiette really wants to see real growth here in the mission. By real growth, he implies permanent growth to the area that will lead members to the Temple and to eternal salvation. He has said that this will only occur, on the mission side, when the missionaries are converted to it and the members do the work. So we've been working a lot on converting ourselves to the work and to the mission. I noticed a changed last week when we couldn't email do to the internet being down and my thought was, "Oh well, I'll email next week then." It was burden to email on Tuesday. I didn't want to do it. I wanted to tract another street and teach another lesson. I've been really impressed by my own conversion and now I want to effect the same change into others. I think that comes through prayer, fasting, reading the standard works, but ultimately just developing that desire to want it so badly you'll cry for it. I promise though that it can come.
I've gotta go but I love you all.
Love,
Elder Nathan John Nielson
It has been another week and this one was painfully short. Take that as you will!
I hope you are all doing well as I'm certainly doing my best and that is all I can do right? We are currently working in the city of Paramaribo in the city center. Yes that is right, I get to work in the downtown. I've decided to work downtown Paramaribo you have to be slightly suicidal with the bike riding. One because your are weaving in and out of traffic onto the sidewalks and such, Two because you are doing this at slight high speeds (for a bike), and three because Surinamers don't seem to recognize street laws anyways. So you just never know what is going to happen. Saying that though, I haven't had a single close call yet so everything is going pretty well. I guess that is due to all of your prayers for me. I appreciate them greatly and I'm very thankful for them as well.
We are still trying to learn the area and that is quite the adventure. We are frequently lost then found but really just more lost then we realize. I guess the problem is that I'm directing this freight train and I've got no idea what I'm doing. So I just ride my bicycle with love and a smile and I wave to every that I see. It is a lot of fun.
This week we visited our Branch Mission Leader. It was pretty interesting and he happened to have a scale so I did the normal thing and I jumped on it. I official 240 lbs. That is 60 lbs or just under 30 KG. I'm not going to lie I really like that but it makes from some interesting situations. For example, when we flew to Trinidad last week the guard at the gate looked at my passport and then at me and then at my passport and had this look on his face like, I don't believe this is you. Luckily, he let me go through but it made me laugh for sure.
I've been thinking a lot about personal conversion for the last week or so. We say that we are converted to the church and what does that really mean? Are we converted to the church, as in the organization, or are we converted to the gospel? When I was in Nickerie we had a lot of members who were converted to the church. To weekly sacrament meetings and to activities every so often. We lacked people that were truly converted to the gospel and thus when trials came they were unable to handle them. President Gamiette really wants to see real growth here in the mission. By real growth, he implies permanent growth to the area that will lead members to the Temple and to eternal salvation. He has said that this will only occur, on the mission side, when the missionaries are converted to it and the members do the work. So we've been working a lot on converting ourselves to the work and to the mission. I noticed a changed last week when we couldn't email do to the internet being down and my thought was, "Oh well, I'll email next week then." It was burden to email on Tuesday. I didn't want to do it. I wanted to tract another street and teach another lesson. I've been really impressed by my own conversion and now I want to effect the same change into others. I think that comes through prayer, fasting, reading the standard works, but ultimately just developing that desire to want it so badly you'll cry for it. I promise though that it can come.
I've gotta go but I love you all.
Love,
Elder Nathan John Nielson
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