Music to my ears!

G'day Mates!

Happy Halloween!! Sounds like you had a great weekend of fun! For Halloween we went to Kiri Perusco's house(she's in our ward) and she had her house all decorated and she had made us some dinner with a red velvet cake that had fake spiders all over it. We had a good time with them. We had some trick or treaters stop by as we were eating too so I took the opprotunity and gave the little kids some treats as they came to the door. Pass a long cards!!! haha jk I really gave them treats and I thought it was funny because they probably thought my proselyting clothes was just a costume. Aussies dont really celebrate halloween its lame as.

Transfers are here and I'm getting transferred toooo..... the South Island, New Zealand Mission!!! Can you believe it?? I guess they really need missionaries over there and I was first draft pick so ya know they just NEED ME...haha jokes! Mum you believed it eh? Gulible as. But transfers really have come and gone and it was sad to see Elder Stringam go. He was a great companion and I learned a lot from him. Great missionary. He went to the Samoan Ward in Campbelltown haha. He's gonna get MASSIVE! This is his first time serving in an Islander ward plus he's going home soon so they are gonna stuff him to the rafters. And he's not the skinniest missionary either. Poor guy. Bless his heart.(seriously he'll be in danger of a heart attack). I'm still in the Gong and my new companion is Elder Kerr from Las Vegas. So far so good. He knows his scriptures really well and he's a good teacher. I'm supposed to train him as a Zone Leader. Hopefully all goes well. He's been out 6 weeks less than me. I love new beginnings I have so many things that I want to improve on this transfer. Like I want to memorize more scriptures. Thats one of my main ones. I'm excited for this transfer.

So Johnathan is doing pretty well. We had a great lesson this past week. He's been praying a lot and he's been thinking a lot about quitting drinking and he decided that he is!(took him long enough) We've set another date with him for the 20th of November so hopefully all goes well. Pray for him please? He seems pretty set on it though. He works heaps too so we only get to see him once a week which is a bummer. We're really blessed to have the investigators we have right now. We're gonna do our best to get them to church and help them to progress so they can enter into the waters of baptism.

We had Zone Conference this past week. It was great! I learned a lot. President taught us about Planning by the spirit and also beginning our teaching with power and authority. Preach My Gospel style. By the way if the family could get in a habit of studying a bit from preach my gospel every other week or something I think that would be a good idea. Let me know what you think. Elder Iongi and I did a musical number for Zone Conf. too. So fun. I played guitar to Onward Christian Soldiers. Elder Iongi sang the first verse in Tongan, I sang the 2nd verse in English, we sang the 3rd verse in Tongan a capella while harmonizing because Elder Iongi is a fantastic singer and can just bust it out like that and then we repeated the "chorus" at the end and sang the last time in English and Tongan combined. Elder Iongi's family owns the biggest music company in Tonga and all of his family are amazing singers so I felt very priviledged to be able to sing with him. He's also a great missionary. I'm sad he moved areas. We had a lot of fun singing together. I also had the opprotunity to be the chorister for Zone Conference and that was a sweet experience as well. The spirit was so strong as we sang How Firm a Foundation as an army of God. Especially as we sang the 7th verse which reads "I'll Never NO Never No Never forsake." I got major chills up and down my spine as the missionaries sang that which great conviction and feeling. I love music. I've had so many spiritual experiences on my mission tied to music. I'm also so excited that Stephen (and I know Bryce has in the past) took the opprotunity to step out of his comfort zone to find another talent that the Lord has given him and practiced that talent. I cant wait until the day they we can all sing together. And I know that when that day comes we will also be singing praises to our Father in Heaven for his goodness and mercy.

I love you all and I thank Heavenly Father every day to be apart of this great work of saving souls.

"We'll sing and we'll shout with the armies of heaven, Hosanna, Hosanna to God and the Lamb."



Elder Nelson



Mum,

Sounds like Halloween was fun. That sounds pretty awesome that Dan and Darcie might be our neighbors how fun would that be! I'll look for some clothes to buy here. Hopefully I can find some cheap ones. Thank you for also sending your story of your dream. What an amazing dream to have. Almost as good as the Vision of the Tree of Life! Almost...as good. haha. Thanks for the pictures they were great. I just thinking about that last part of your email and the more I think about it the more I think I definitely needed to grow up where I did but maybe stephen and bryce really need to grow up there. It makes me so happy that they are having so many opprotunities to grow their talents too. You'll do great on that talk in Ogden. Just follow the spirit and BE YOURSELF!!! :). Well I better go. Love ya.