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
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