Backup- January 16, 2011

  So i dont really have a whole lot to report for this week, i just have a couple things that are kinda cool. First of all. this week was Presidents training. It was really amazing!!! I love president Macdonald. he is awesome. We learned about the doctrine of Christ and the role of the holy ghost in teaching. Powerful! We were doing role plays and one of the assistants wanted to talk to me so he pulled me aside, and we spoke for a bit, then he said "i hear good things about you elder." so i said "about me?!?!" and he said "yeah" so i said "well i dont know about that, or who your source is but you might want to double check that haha" and we both just laughed. His name is elder Groeskyrtes. or something like that, we all just call him elder "G" He is really awesome.
       Well yesterday we went to teach a young man named Nik Parazoo. He is 19 and has a 10 month old baby. He is getting baptized on the 29th. I was reading with him in 1 Nephi chapter 8 and we come to the part where lehi "exhorts laman and lemuel with all the feelings of a tender parent" I LOVE this scripture. As we were reading the spirit testified to me of a couple things. One is how painful it must have been for Lehi to have to speak to his sons about their wickedness. Knowing from a vision that if they didnt change he would not be able to live with them forever. I can only imagine the pain...(i'm glad that is not how our family is) and the next thing is the fact that our fathers plan is so beautiful. He gives us the council but doesnt force us to follow it. He gives us agency and the ability to choose for ourselves. He Loves us enough to make those decisions. So that is the part i spoke to nik about.
             After we read that i said to him "Now Nik you know that we love you. More importantly you know that your Father in Heaven loves you. He has some things that has asked us to do, and like Lehi's sons you can choose to follow them or not. We know that you want to be baptized so we expect you will follow them" (this was right after i discussed the law of chastity) he is great. It was a really powerful lesson, and he is progressing well. Also this saturday we have a baptism of a man named Patrick Robertson. He is awesome, he loves the church. He already pays tithing, he quit drinking coffee (he works at a bakery so he works at 1:45 a.m. to 10 a.m.) and he said he is going to break up with his girlfriend if she doesnt want to follow the same standards to get married in the temple. he is great. So i'll let ya know how that goes.
   That's it this week. Love you, Elder Haydn Nelson