Dear Son,
Well Son, seeing how it was just Father´s Day yesterday, and seeing how I´m your father, I kind of feel like writing you a letter. I hope that I´ve been a good example to you throughout your life, and I hope that I will always be that shining example. I know that my Dad has always been my hero and example, so I hope that I can be the same to you.
This week was a pretty good one here in Argentina. I´ve been adjusting a lot better to life here in Argentina, and I´ve been doing my best to find the good in every single situation no matter how bleak and tough it may be. This week we had an investigator´s (Luca) baptismal date fall through because of his dad. Little 11 year old Luca was pretty upset. He wants to be baptized, but his dad is against the church. Luca said that he was going to fake his dad´s signature on the permission slip just so that he could be baptized. Pretty funny little guy :) We´re going to keep working with his dad so that he´ll soften up a bit and let his son receive heaven´s blessings.
I´ll be honest Son and say that I almost cried when we found out that he wasn´t going to get baptized. I started feeling useless here on my mission. I felt like I wasn´t doing my job as a missionary. I´ve been serving for just over 5 months now and I still haven´t baptized a single person. I started wondering if I would ever baptize someone. I´ve come to the conclusion that I can´t get down on myself when others use their own free agency in a different way then what I want. It´s not about me. It´s about them. I can´t have feelings of inadequacy when others don´t use their agency correctly! All I can do is help them! When you´re on your mission I don´t want you to get discouraged when others don´t make good decisions. It´s ok to feel sad and disappointed, but DON´T GET DOWN ON YOURSELF. All that you can do, Son, is try to open their eyes to the truth that lies in the gospel.
At the moment, we don´t have that many quality investigators, so we´re doing all we can to find new people and to teach them. I´m starting to learn how to love contacting people on the street. At first, I was scared and didn´t like doing them, but now I find them sort of fun. Getting rejected isn´t that bad really, and half the time you just laugh it off.
As I worked here in Argentina this week Son, I often thought of you for some reason. I´ve been trying really hard to adjust to 2 different types of lifestyles here: 1) the lifestyle of a missionary, and 2) the lifestyle of Argentina. Both of these lifestyles are both very unfamiliar to me and I´ve been struggling somewhat. I´ve had many times when I want to just quit and go home. Go back to what I know. Back to what is familiar to me. Back to what´s comfortable to me. It would be so easy to give up and go home, but I´m not going to do that. I´m not going to do that because of you Son.
At one point this week, I was feeling pretty low. I was thinking about my life and about what I´m doing here in Argentina. I thought about how my life would play out if I decided to end my mission and head back home. I was weighing things over in my head when I all of a sudden thought of you my boy. How could I ever encourage you to serve a mission if your own dad had given up on HIS mission? How could I ever tell you about what I blessing a mission is if your own dad had quit on HIS mission? I couldn´t. I want you to know, Son, that you´ve kept me going on my mission. You´ve kept me going when I want to collapse in the middle of the muddy road and just quit. You, Son, are the one who gets me out of bed in the morning even if I can see my own breath in the room because of the cold. You, Son, are the one who keeps me awake during studies during the morning when my body is telling me to just give in and go to sleep. You, Son, are the one who keeps me putting one foot in front of the other through the muddy streets when it´s raining. You are the one who keeps me finding people even after I´ve been rejected, ignored, called bad names, and mocked by others. You keep me teaching investigators even when baptismal dates fall through because of stubborn parents. You keep me on the path I need to be on.
I love you Son, and I hope that this has been an encouraging letter for you to read. I hope you know how much you mean to me, and I hope you know how much I appreciate you and what you do for me to help me keep going.
I love you!
Forward with faith and courage,
Elder Nilsen
P.S. I love you family :) Little bit of a different letter this week. It´ll be normal again next week I promise :)
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