Skip to main content

Elder Nelson - October 14, 2018

Dear Family,

Week 2 in the office: I spent much of the week organizing the work to a way I can understand. I am putting most of the work on the computer and not in paper. I am also scheduling the work in Excel so I can see what needs to be done. By Christmas I hope to have this 95% down. By March I think I will be able to do everything that I know about in 4 to 6 hours per day. Of course, there are things that come up that are not on the schedule, but I don’t think this is a 8 hour a day job.

When I get things down, I will have Mom cross train me on her finance stuff. Then I will cross train her on my responsibilities. We can help each other, and the work will be more fun to do together.
I non-member called this week. She said that her brother was a member but was in jail because he killed his parents. (For sure is excommunicated.) She asked if her brother could ever be exalted in the celestial kingdom? Is there any reason he should try to repent, if he is never going to “make it”.

I told her several things:
1. We are not to judge anyone. We are to forgive and let the Lord judge.

2. The power of the Atonement of Christ is sufficient to cover all sins except denying the witness of the Holy Ghost.

3. Her brother should try to repent and rely on the mercy of the Savior. There is still hope for him. He may have to “pay” for this sin, but he can be pardoned.

I believe that is doctrinally correct. But…I have researched it some and there are some mitigating circumstances and various considerations. In any case it is always good to trust in the Lord’s love and mercy and repent.
We went to Arlington National Cemetery yesterday. The day was beautiful and the visit was very nice. It is sobering to contemplate the sacrifice made by millions to maintain our freedoms. We saw the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier, the eternal flame at JFK’s grave and the Iwo Gima Monument. It is about a half hour to the north east of us.

Rumor has is the late Elder A. Theodor Tuttle was one of the soldiers that raise the flag.

I will send some more pictures later.

Mom is at a training meeting for those recording histories for wards and the mission.

Later tonight we will go with Elder and Sister Nielson (office missionaries) to the visitor’s center at the Washington DCTemple to see a performance of a dramatic reading.

Derek and Jessica are moving to Florida in January. I hope we can find some good airfares in the coming years.

Kent saw BYU beat Hawaii in football last night from some great seats. McKay did too.

The weather has turned a little cooler. It should be in the 60’s next week.

Love you all,
Dad

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Elder Nelson - Family Day and History Symposium

Dear Family, Mission News Monday Elder Larsen and I went to the Japanese restaurant where David works. We are still trying to get him to come to Church, but he did not make it today. He has a substance abuse problem that we would like to help him with. On Tuesday and Wednesday I went to Woodbridge and Annandale zone interviews. While the president was interviewing the elders, I was going over device audit procedures with the elders who were waiting. I learned/observed a couple of things: I need to come up with a plan to pull mission owned devices out of the field. The missionaries will use the devices they have purchased and brought into the field. There are a couple of issues with this. First it is not obvious how to store all of the data on the phone to an area safe place in the “cloud”. 90% of the data is stored on the area book which is a cloud software. The remaining 10% is not so easily saved so new missionaries coming into the area can have it. Second, on exchanges missi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Elder Nelson - New Senior Missionaries and a Party on the Farm

Dear Family, Mission News I spent a fair amount of time preparing for the arrival of two senior couples. They have assignments that are very vague. They don’t really have anyone that supervises their work. The mission president is too busy with the junior missionaries to even know what they are doing. The stake presidents and bishops are likewise preoccupied their high priority responsibilities. Much is left up to the senior missionaries to find and create good things to do. The last two couples that came floundered for a couple of months before they engaged productively in the work. It was very frustrating for them. I am working with the stake presidents under the direction of President Caplin to make sure there is direction and responsibilities for these couples when they arrive. I want them to hit the ground running. I spent about 5-6 hours sending a bike home for an elder that had to go home early. Picking up the bike, helmet and lights from three different location...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sister Nelson - Baptism

Dear Family, We send our love and support to Amanda and Lance and family. We were sorry to hear of Amanda’s grandmother Kenney on Saturday. She will be happier being with her eternal companion, but she will still me missed a great deal by her family. Know that we love you and are praying for you. It seems that we stay pretty busy, but looking back over the week it’s hard to figure out what took up so much of the time. We got to the office on Monday a little earlier than usual and that gave me a little bit of quiet time to concentrate. Then I spent the entire day trying to get some of the vendors who had changed addresses or had sold their properties to someone else approved and updated. I do the vendor approval so rarely that I still am not comfortable with the process of getting them set up and approved and then set up for payments in IMOS. I also had more calls from the missionaries about when they would be funded than I have had since I got here combined. They would ask if t...
Post a Comment
Read more