Elder Holland (February 20, 2011)

Well I met Elder Holland and shook his hand so it was a pretty good week. I feel like nothing else can compare to that so I don't have much to talk about.

It was way fun to have a mission conference. Because our mission is so spread out I think that will be the first and the last time I get to do it but we will see. It took some missionaries 5 hours to get to Nagoya. It only took me three and that is by express train. If we would have taken regualar it would take forever but it was way fun. On the way to Nagoya we talked to this lady and gave her a Book of Mormon. It was way cool. We talked to her for like one hour and the conversation started with her complementing my eyelashes and that is how a lot of my conversations start. She has a lot of potential but does not live in our mission boundaries so I will not be able to see her progress. It is way cool having experiences like that all the time.

In our mission conference there was Elder Holland and 3 members of the 70 so there were a lot of important people there. They all gave great talks but of course Elder Holland's was my favorite. He got right down in front of us and was yelling at us and stuff...it was sweet. First he talked about if we ever go less active he would hunt us down and drag us kicking and screaming to church. He is like you can't beg people to go to church and then go home and not go. He said it was ridiculous. One interesting thing he said is that Preach My Gospel was written to convert the missionaries not the people investigating the church. I never thought of it like that.

He also talked about the tremendous responsibility that we as missionaries have. He told us we didn't understand but that God trusted us and needs us. Of course he talked about his mission and how much it meant to him. He told us how different his life was before his mission and how great was the change because of it. He wants our mission to mean as much to us as it does to him. He is very passionate about missionary work.

He gave us three most important things that missionaries need to improve which are better studiers...better planners and more powerful teachers so we are going to work on that. Another interesting thing he told us is avoid knocking on doors. He said contact all the less actives in Japan. He said Japan really needs help activating less actives. He also said we have an advantage with less actives because they have felt the spirit before. So I am very excited to apply what I learned this week.



Love

Elder Nelson