Mormon Missionary & Cancer Survivor!: Elder Nelson! (New Trainee!) and Softening a hard heart...

Subject:	Elder Nelson!
Date:	Mon, 12 Feb 2018 17:51:22 -0600
From:	Brett Hogg

Hello Family!

It's been a fun week! My new companion/son is Elder Nelson! He's from Holladay, Utah. He went to Utah State for a little bit before the mission. He's really committed to learning Spanish. I didn't realize how much Spanish I actually knew, before trying to help someone else learn spanish. I also learned how much I don't know! Anyway, he's cool.

The work here is going well! Nothing monumental yet but we've had pretty good luck just finding people who are at least willing to listen. We also saw The Lord soften someone's heart right before of our eyes! We went to go stop by this name we didn't recognize on the Branch directory. When we couldn't see any addresses because it was way out in the middle of nowhere, Elder Nelson suggested we park on the street and walk down a bit. When we knock on the door a lady answers and she starts kind of going off about how we shouldn't be coming by and when missionaries taught her son, they would meet at parks and stuff because her husband didn't like us, and how last time the missionaries came they parked in the driveway, and talking really fast, and all.

Then her husband pulls up and gets in front of her and leans on the door trying to be all intimidating, and says we shouldn't be knocking on people's doors after dark, and trying to give us a hard time and how last time missionaries came they drive into his driveway and broke his water meter or something, and in general just being a pain. Anyway, we're just cool and keep talking to him and say things like "well we do this full time, all the way up until 9pm!" and "well we parked in the road!"

Turns out the guy on the records was his wife's son, and he's like 12 (the wife is an inactive member too). So we tell him we can come by at another time, and ask for his number so we can call and set up another time to come by. Well he gives it to us! Then we talk a tiny bit more and eventually he asks if we want to come in! So we come in and he starts talking about religion and stuff and we ask if maybe one day we can come share something with him, he said he was hungry and his wife was making dinner and stuff, but then he invited us to eat with them!

Now mind you, we just got back from dinner, and that day we got a big lunch (a member gave us some money for dinner earlier in the week, but we didn't get a chance to use it that night), but if you want Hispanics to like you, you eat their food. Dinner has a two plate rule. Even if you don't ask for seconds. So we eat, I eat seconds (Elder Nelson hasn't learned yet, but believe me, I warned him), and we're joking around with him and he lets us share a scripture! We share 2 Nephi 25:26 and he lets us give him a Restoration Pamphlet. He was really cool with us by the end and seemed open to us coming back! I think his wife was surprised as well.