4-a-days 10/16/17

Dear America,

On Monday we went on a fun visit to the cultural center with Sister Cosgrave and Sister Schow. They showed us all of the best places to find culture. This week was a historic round of zone conferences. There are 11 zones in a mission the size of a state, so usually zone conferences take a few weeks to get through. Not this time. We did 8 zones in 2 days at the beginning of the week. It was crazy and awesome and a complete success. We have also entered crunch time for the area maps. Our deadline is to have them done and ready to print by the end of next week, so everything is pushing until then. I won't have time to sleep until I come home. The next three weeks are already booked with things and I'm sure we'll get loaded with more.

All the same, we were able to spread the gospel this week in many different places. When we went to the post office, there was a security woman there named Bernice who wanted us to teach her small. We pulled out a copy of the Book of Mormon and told her about it and it ended up being perfect for her. Not too much to lose her attention. She was really happy that we would teach her.

A big highlight of the week was stake conference. It was presided over by Elder M.T. Ben Davis, an area authority. He's from Ghana and has a really passionate personality. If you think that Elder Holland is passionate, then you haven't met very many Ghanaians. Elder Davis is very bold but not overbearing because he shows enough love to back it up. Sometimes I think it would be extremely difficult to be a leader here because everything you teach is taken through the filter of "traditions of their fathers". But he did a wonderful job of adding just enough pepper and just enough substance. One thought I had while he was teaching had to do with a combination of his instruction on the parable of the sower and Elder Bednar's teachings about testimony and conversion. In the parable, there are four categories of seeds: those by the wayside, those in stony places, those among thorns, and those in good ground. I determined that the ones in the wayside are people who refuse understanding and thus never gain a testimony or conversion to the gospel. They choose to be absolute party poopers on their mortal journey. Those in stony places gain some degree of understanding but do it to satisfy curiosity and never let that grow into a testimony, much less conversion. Those among thorns end up gaining a testimony, but that is not enough in this world. Gaining a witness from the Spirit doesn't really do much unless you choose to consistently act on it. Those in good ground have chosen to understand, gain a testimony, and become converted through continuing gospel living. And it can be noted that even they still bring forth differing yields of fruit.

THE biggest highlight of this week was by far was going to pick up Elder Walch and Elder Larson (who are going home) after the conference. On the way there, we stopped in Kronum and visited some of my old peeps from the days of my training. It was so amazing. We were able to see Rebecca (I've emailed about her before), Osei Bonsu (I've emailed about him before), and Sister Ahsar and Sister Owusuaa (I'm pretty sure I've emailed about them before). It made my whole mission worth it. I was so happy to see them and how strong they've grown in the gospel. I guess I have made a difference here! Life is awesome.

Elder Larson is the first of my TC group to go home. We came together from the MTC and he's going back a little early for school or something. It feels so strange.

Have a great week! Love,

Elder Nelson

* I'm pretty nervous to come home these days. I've mostly been happy about the thought on my mission, but now I'm not feeling excited about it at all.