Tuesday, January 21, 2014

"My city's flithy"

Macklemore has a song about Seattle and he says that line which I only think is appropriate considering our beloved Seahawks are going to the Superbowl baby!!! I don't want to talk about it too much because that's how Satan gets to me and I'll get sad and homesick and what not.



Oh and one more sports recognition I'd like to make before I leave the topic... My boy KD had 54 points this week!? That's what I'm talking about.



Well how is it goin over there? Is it nice and cold? I wish I was there. It's getting warmer which I am not happy about, especially if this is preparing us for what it is going to be like all summer…

No thank you.

So, I know last weeks letter was ridiculously ridiculous, but it being Martin Luther King Jr Day (power to the people) emailing is crazy, there are people waiting to use the computers and I had to use a different format of Gmail which is weird... so sorry if this is another lame one.

Well...biking barely happened this week. Both of our bikes needed repairing (thank you Brother McKee) so we were on "foot" until Friday night. I say "foot" because we bummed rides off of everyone. And by everyone I mean mostly the McKee's and the Ludvigson's (senior couple in the ward)…

I can't tell you how much I appreciate them and love them. It's people like them that change your life.

So with all of that nonsense, Sister Boden and I were still able to hit standard this week! WAHOO!! Pretty exciting if you ask me.

It's lookin like another run of baptisms coming up. Yesterday Loralee (I have been spelling her name wrong... whoops) was baptized by Brother Boyes.



It was the best baptism I have ever been to. Not only were there lots of people, but the spirit was SO strong.

I kid you not  e v e r y o n e  was crying at some point.

The baptism talks might have been my favorite part. A few weeks ago Brother Boyes pulled me aside before we talked to Lora about her baptism program. He told me to suggest that Sister Boyes give the baptism talk, but in reality, he had a special family member who would actually be doing it. I knew exactly who he was talking about and almost started crying on the spot.

During the baptism, Brother McKee announced that Sister Boyes would be giving the talk and then Brother Boyes stood up instead. He grabbed his iPad and said "There is actually going to be a change in the program. Sister Boyes won't be giving the talk."

Then he put his iPad on an easel and pressed play.

I wish you could all have been there because this is not going to do it justice. As soon as he pressed play you heard Lora gasp and grab her face and start crying. Elder Boyes (Tucker is his name, he is best friends with Lora and is the one who introduced her to the church) had videotaped himself giving the talk on baptism.

It was SOO cool. Lora had no idea, complete surprise (which is my favorite thing ever). He did awesome. It was such a beautiful experience for us all to be there. He taught simply and powerfully and filled the room with the Spirit without even being there.

I loved it.

The rest of the baptism was great. Sister Boden and I tried something new that President had recommended we start doing at baptisms. While Lora was changing we taught the Restoration to the audience.

Now I have probably taught it 100 times, but not like this. We taught it in a little over 5 minutes so it was very simple.

Sister Boden taught/testified powerfully of Christ and the love that he has for each one of us.

I was blessed to be able to recite the first vision. I can't tell you how many times I have done that and every time the Spirit testifies to me that Joseph truly did see God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. But this time was different and I think it was for a lot of people there. I was pretty emotional as I said it and I honestly don't think that I have ever felt the Spirit so strong in one setting.

If there is one thing that I have not one doubt about, it is that Heavenly Father loves every single one of us more than we can imagine. He loves us so much that He Sent His only begotten son to earth to die so that we could become clean and perfect like Him.

But, He also came to earth to establish the gospel so that we would know the path we need to take to return to live with our Father in heaven once again.

I know that God does hear and answer our prayers, just as He did to 14 year old Joseph. We may not have the blessing of a vision quite like he did, but we can know for ourselves that He does live and that He leads and guides this church.

I know that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the exact same gospel that Christ himself established while He was on earth. I know that is has been restored and will remain on earth until the second coming of the Messiah.

I extended the invitation to all who were at the baptism and I do the same to all of you, to know for yourselves if these things are true. I promise you, as does Moroni, that if you ponder these things in your hearts and pray with sincere desire to know if they are true that the Holy Ghost will testify that they are. That through the Spirit you will know that Christ is the Savior and Redeemer of the world and that He is at the head of the church today and leads and guides us through a living prophet of God.

As a representative of Christ, I testify that these things are true and I do it because I love you and I want you to feel of the happiness this gospel brings.

I miss you all.

BIG hugs and little kisses,

Sister Nelson






Monday, January 13, 2014

Welcome to the biker gang!

When I first came into the mission and President said that Sister Pack was going to be my new companion, she jumped up, ran over to me with arms open wide saying "welcome to the biker gang!

That was the first time I found out I was on bike. 

Transfers were yesterday and Sister Boden and I are staying! We are SO happy. However, we are getting our car taken away and will be on bikes! Straight crazy. We are also moving to much nicer apartments that are a lot closer to our area which will be nice, but the other sisters aren't moving with us. :( 

This week was another good one! Except, Sister Boden was really sick. :( None of the missionaries got the flu shot so  e v e r y o n e  is getting sick. And being sick is not really convenient for missionaries, especially when you're STL's who procrastinate and have 3 nights in a row of exchanges. 

We ended up only doing one exchange with Sisters Gowans and Hall in Moreno Valley which was so fun. I was originally supposed to stay in Corona, but since Sister Boden was still sick, I had the privilege of going to Moreno Valley. 

I loved it.

I was praying that I'd run into one of the O'Connor's, but I didn't. :( Still praying that I'll "die" there so I can go on splits with Kaitlin and Paige. :) :)

Even though Sister Boden was out for half of the week, we were still able to teach 20 lessons which was pretty impressive. I went on splits with a girl named Puna from the ward. I love her so much. She is about to leave for her mission to Houston, Texas - Spanish speaking and she will train in the MTC in Mexico. 

She's very excited, but nervous. She's adorable though. She gave her farewell talk on Sunday and the Bishopric asked her mom and me to speak with her! That was fun because of course, we all spoke about missionary work. :)

I was going around greeting people before sacrament meeting and then noticed Bishop making his way up to the stand so I decided to grab Puna to head up with me, but I sort of scared her haha. I walked up behind her, squeezed her neck and said with a straight face "it's time." 

Haha she has a good sense of humor. As soon as we sat down she leaned over to me and said "were you always this outgoing or did it come on the mission?

I said "don't worryit comes naturally to missionaries." :)

It truly does. I can't wait until I get home and can embarrass mom with all of the strangers I go up and talk to. After talking to at least 10 people on the street every day for 18 months, I imagine that will be a hard habit to break.  

I love being a missionary. It's seriously the best.  

Puna will rock it out there. Her talk was awesome. If you want to hear mine you can just look up Elder Holland's "The First Great Commandment" talk from October 2012 General Conference. I practically just read the whole thing. It's my very favorite.


This week Travis and Amy and their two children came to church!! :)  I can't remember if I've told you about them (I tried to look it up on my blog, but it looks like it hasn't been updated for a while mother.) They were all so cute! They came in all cordinating wearing black and blue. I think it went well. They seemed really happy.

We have been working really close with our ward mission leader, Brother Mckee. I love him and his whole family. Seriously, they are the BEST.  Friends for life let me tell ya. They are such great examples of Christlike people. I wish you all could meet them. I was going to tell you that we use Brother McKee's sons (Brian and Johnny they're like 38 and 36) ALL the time and we had them visit Travis and Amy, but I'm out of time so I'll have to update you next week.

So sorry! :(

Love you all,

Sister Nelson

New Year Boo Year (not really)

Ello Mates!

Well, I feel like it's been one lame week after the next. Not really, but my emails have been getting more and more lame. I think it's the whole transfer stage. The year is/was ending, the transfer is ending (calls are this Saturday) and everyone and their dog is sick so, it's just been rough all around.

I am going to try my best to give you a work filled email, but I am going to warn you now... no pictures. So sorry.

Last week I mentioned how sick I felt, well it only got worse. I was out until Thursday night. We literally stayed in the apartment ALL dayALL night.  It. Was. A. Killer.

For New Year's Eve we had to be in by 6 PM and then on New Year's Day it's a mission wide deep cleaning day so we can't leave to go out until 1 PM. Since we were ALL sick we were in much longer than that. 

On New Year's Eve we put together a 1000 piece puzzle (picture coming next week, we are half way done with the second one) and watched tons of movies. 

Mom, have you seen Ephrium's Rescue? It's the sequel or something like that to 17 miracles. We watched it New Year's Eve and I LOVED it. I don't know if it's because I've been on my mission and haven't seen a quality movie in a while, but I seriously loved the whole entire thing. 

The priesthood has been restored. The church is true.

New Year's morning we all got up and cleaned as long as we could, but we got pretty dizzy and ended up passing out after a few hours. We are all feeling much better now though! Thank goodness too because an apartement full of sick missionaries who haven't been able to work for a couple of days is no bueno let me tell ya.

Fortunately, we were able to get up and get some work done this weekend! Let me tell you about our investigators...

LAURA: Well...she is still on for the 19th!! The huge hold up with her was that she had been terrified to talk to her mom. She doesn't need her mom's permission, but since she lives with her and she loves her and wants her approval. 

Well she finally told her…over text haha. She didn't want to do it that way, but she set a goal of talking to her mom by Sunday and she hadn't been able to sit down and talk with her and it was Saturday night so she had no choice, but to text her. 

Her mom didn't seem mad at all. She thought that Laura was getting baptized yesterday (and doing it behind her back) so all she said was "I wish you were doing it when I could be there" which was really great because now she can be! :)

I LOVE Laura. She is so sweet and loves the gospel so much! She bore her testimony on Sunday and was adorable. She did it like a true Mormon, with tears and all. :) Her baptism will be beautiful.

STEPHANIE: Sister Todd actually OYM'd her on my birthday while we were on exchanges. She is really interested and very humble. She is the only one in her house that speaks english so lucky us. :) 

We left her a harvest blessing and taught her about the spirit and The Book of Mormon and committed her to baptism. She is a little nervous about how fast it all seems, but agreed to the 12th. Well she didn't go to church the next day (the 22nd) so we met with her again, taught her the whole restoration and changed her date to the 26th and told her that we would bring someone to pick her up this week and guess what she agreed to it all and came to church!! 

We felt bad because during sacrament we promised we would sit with a less active family that is scared to come back to church and then for 2nd hour the teacher of the senior Sunday school class asked me to come in and speak for a little bit about the role of the spirit in missionary work and then we went to ym/yw instead of Relief Society because the yw president asked us to speak on the new theme and how to invite others to come unto Christ! 

But, I think it was good because the ward missionaries took care of her which provided solid fellowship. Sister Boden and I aren't going to be here forever right? :)

(Side note: yesterday when we got to church just about everyone that we wanted to come did! Including less active families/members that haven't been to church in over a year! Pretty cool if you ask me…amen to the new year!)

There is a boy in the ward named Wusu (I can't remember if I've talked about him before or not) but he is the best missionary. He walked into church with someone I've never seen before so I hurried over to talk to them. His name is James and he lives next to Wusu and so Wusu invited him to church and he accepted. 

We didn't get to talk to him much because we were running around a lot, but after church Wusu was running after us saying "stop Sisters!" He was so excited to tell us that James said that he wants to BE BAPTIZED and he gave us his number to contact him!

We called James last night and he had a few questions about baptism. He said that he has been thinking that he needs to be baptized lately and asked what the difference is between our baptism and other Christian faiths. I told him that we are baptized just as Christ was with the priesthood, immersion, covenants and all and he said "well, that all sounds like what I want!

So, we are meeting with him again tonight and hoping to put him on date for the 19th. :) 

GOOD TIMES!

I am out of time, but I love you all so so so much!!

Sister Nelson

(email received January 6, 2014)

Sorry for party rockin'

I am sorry for "partying" so hard this week. I woke up really sick yesterday and it's just getting worse. I think I have the flu :(

This week was good! BUSY, but good. Tuesday was Christmas Eve and the whole mission got together for a big talent show. We did more of a silly one, then they fed us lunch and then had a spiritual talent show.

It was a blast and a half! I loved seeing all of my sista friends. :)

"Lil Mama"

"Sister Jenkins, Sister Fia and Sister Anderson"

"Hermana Ruiz"

"Sister Niihau"

"My Jinny Jin"

"My fav hermanas (minus Hermana Ruiz) Luccion and Oswald"

"Elder Schoonmaker"
We came home and decided we'd all sleep in the same room and build a fort :) Yeah it was pretty dang cool. We were having all sorts of fun under there and decided we were going to leave it up until transfers (the 11th) and that lasted a hot second. We took it down the next morning.

"World's. Greatest. Fort."
Christmas Day is our only day off which was super exciting because that meant that we got to sleep in! 

It didn't happen though. 

Our bodies are too used to getting up early and so we were all up and laughing by 6:45 AM. So Sister Tucker decided to play Santa and we each opened one present at a time. 

"Sister Tucker aka Santa"
For my first Christmas away from home it wasn't too shabby.

The first present I opened was the picture frame with the cutesy picture of the family. It was my favorite gift I've EVER received. I was dying over it. So were the other sisters... Thanks mom. :)

Then of course, I LOVED talking to the fam!!!! Seriously, I miss you so much. I could have talked to you all for another 3 hours. Good thing I didn't though because I was a tad homesick after.  I'm fine now. :)

Funny noteall of the ward members asked us about calling home and they asked if we only talked for an hour and my reply was always "well, I talked to my mom for an hour!" Love you mom. ;)

The rest of the week was kind of weird, but we did pick up a new investigator. Her name is Stephanie and she is 23. We left her a harvest blessing and then committed her to be baptized on the 12th and she said yes. She didn't come to church yesterday, so we will have to move that, but I think she'll get baptized the following week. :)

Laura is still on for the 19th. She's excited and I am too. I love her so much.

We went on exchanges which was awesome because I was able to go to spanish land which only made my desire to be switched to spanish even greater... I think I'll mention something to President in my email. :)

I don't know if I can write much more. It's making my head hurt worse and I am getting more nauseous. 

I hate being sick. It's so annoying. Very inconvienient.

Love you all! I recieved so many Christmas and birthday packages/cards and I am going to try to write you all back today! If you don't hear from me this week I will try to write next week.

With all of my aloha (they say something like that right?)

Sister Nelson

PS. President approved 3 movies for us to watch on Christmas, one of them being "It's a Wonderful Life." I had NEVER seen it, but I may have seen it 3 times now... I love me some George Bailey. :) Haha welcome to the life of a sister missionary.

(Email received December 30, 2014)