台風 (Typhoon) (September 4, 2011)

Well...the big news for this week is that we had a taifuu (typhoon (almost pronounced the same)) but anyway. friday, saturday and sunday activities all got cancelled. It was kind of boring. We tried to work but it was rough. It is actually still raining. I heard we got hit worse than the middle of the typhoon because it didn't really rain there but it still is raining here. We actually got like 4 calls from members telling us not to leave the apartment...so we obeyed but that was only on Saturday. On Sunday and Friday we tried but it was still pretty difficult. On Saturday we decided to make prayer lists for every member in our ward. It was a pretty fun task. Well it isn't that hard seeing how there are like 25 active members but it was a good experience. Everyone in our ward has at least 4 people to pray for so I think it will be a great experience for our branch. I also think it will help our investigators and our potential investigators. President Baird asked us to do this but he said if every member is doing this, we can't imagine the power that we have...so I'm excited to see this work.

So because we are having our members pray for our investigators I have been praying for them every day. It actually has been a great experience. But I don't just say their name and then say please bless this person. I more go along the lines ...Please help Branch President Aihara. He is a hard worker. He is a very great dad. He loves this branch and will do anything to help them. Please help him receive revelation for this branch. Please help him know how to invite his friends to the activity. Please bless him to be a great example to his friends. Please help him hear the promptings of the spirit and when he hears them to not be afraid to act on those promptings. I love him. Please help me find ways to seve him...then I would go onto his wife, then after I finish the branch I go to investigators and family and friends and so forth. So as you can imagine it takes some time but I have learned so much from this. I really have grown to love them even more so then I did. I always wondered how Enos prayed all day but I am now starting to realize that I probably could too but I have to get out and work.

I also attended one of the greatest fast meetings of my life last week. It was so awesome. There was a less active 17 year old who got up. Until about a month ago he wasn't coming to church. He didn't want to go to efy but he ended up going. Before efy the few times I have talked to him he was cool but really had no interest in serving a mission. He came back and gave a powerful testimony and said in two years he would be going on a mission. The spirit was really strong and then after that my comp sang a solo "a poor wayefaring man of grief" then by that time almost everyone was in tears and this really sweet sister go up and bore her testimony. And she did really well too. I wanted to go up but I was afraid I would ruin the sweet spirit that every one was feeling. It was really cool.

Take care. Continue in the faith. Hold to the Rod.

Love
Elder Nelson