Hello!

 

I'm okay with two emails, but it looks like today was a late day too :P  I got the birthday card though! It's lovely, thank you :3 I got IL Granma's card too, I will be sure to send her a thank you note. I think I will send one to both address for her and Paca, just in case. The Hatches also wrote me and told me they went to dinner with you. I bet that was fun :D Did you wear your hat? I'm sorry to hear about the peach tree. Are there really any branches left for them to break? They're in season out here and lots of members have trees too, so we've been able to have some. Zuchinni too; I've been impressing people with my bread-making skill. Hehe. The skirts fit lovely, by the by. ^_^ The greenish skirt has more blue in it than my green shirt, so I just bought a plain one at Walmart today. Once it gets cold I'll be able to match my cream shirt/sweater with it :D or the blue shirt with the sweater. Or something. I'll get creative. Haha! I'll print pictures at Walmart probably next week and send them off, since I'm probably not going to be able how to figure out how to get the pictures sent to you digitally. Meh. :)

 

So your bees are Italian and the queen was from Hawaii? Strange mix, that. Haha!

 

My birthday was awesome yesterday! My companion was such a cutie, she wrote little notes on colored paper and hid them all over the house (distractingly enough when my back was turned, haha). So it was like Easter in July. XD Also, Sister Pulsipher, the primary president, has a son out on a mission and his birthday was yesterday too! So she had me come in and get sung to, both for me and her son via proxy :P It was cute. I did a little dance and all the kids we saw the rest of the day remembered it was my birthday. We even had cake at the member's house that night, it was so nice of them :D I thanked them muchly. It was a really good day! I thought about you and hoped it was nice for you, too.

 

So for as empty as Rocklin's been for the past month, it's reportedly going to get worse. I don't know how that's possible, but we're busy enough trying to get things ready for our musical fireside at the end of the month. Hopefully it'll be relaxed enough that people will bring their friends so they can feel the spirit and want to learn more :) So we've got plenty to keep us going. It'd be nice to teach though, for sure. But y'know, time and season for all that, even people. Hehe.

 

Transfers are this week! I'm not going anywhere. Yay! Six more weeks in Rocklin 1st ^_^ who knows after that, but the address you have now will still be good. After this transfer it might change, so if you've given the specific address to anybody, it'll change at some point. Sending it to the mission office in Antelope will always get to me though, otherwise it might take forever to find where I've gone :P But anyway. For now, it's still valid.

 

This week I've been reading in Alma! I got up through Ammon, too. He's a stud. Haha! It was pointed out to me though that it's a really humble thing that Ammon did, cos after he cut off their arms he didn't take them back to King Lamoni on his own and say, "Look what I did, you should listen to me!" Instead, it was his faithfulness and diligence that impressed King Lamoni, not so much the fact that he killed a bunch of guys and lopped off multiple arms. I also thought it was interesting that when Ammon went to go protect the flock, he was thinking he'd be able to use the experience so he could persuade the other servants he was with - he wasn't even thinking about talking to the king at that time. Just goes to show that there's no saying how far our actions can take us. :)

 

Well since it's the last day of the transfer, our p-day activity is going to be bringing our journals so we can get addresses of the other Elders and Sisters in our zone. I bought a cute little one at Walmart this morning, it's got Mickey on it :D It makes me think of Dad :3 I'm hoping in the midst of that though we can do a whipped cream toss, just cos those are fun and I did that on my birthday last year. Haha! Yay! I'm thinking the Elders will be for it, they're always for food ;P

 

I love youuuu!! I hope everything is awesome! Chemo included! And if Craig could send me his mtc/mission address, that'd be great. It's just difficult to write without an address, hey? ;P

 

Hope to hear from you soon! I love you!!

 

Sister Nelson

This week was pretty good, although somehow harder than the others so far. The whole of Rocklin is still gone for summer; I can't wait for school to get back in on the 20th. Then tracting and contacting won't be so terribly empty. Bah. Although we did think of a way we could possibly get around the gated community! Well, through it. We're hoping to get some sisters (or brothers I guess too) to start walking with us in that area, so when we stop to talk to someone they won't think we hopped the fence or something. We're going to start that Friday so hopefully that'll go well! I told my companion about it and she said I was pretty creative for coming up with that and getting what I want, XD Our ward mission leader said I was sneaky too, but I don't think it's sneaky. I was trying to come up with a way to contact in there without being all sneaky and suspicious and that's what I came up with. ¯\[°_O]/¯ Haha!

 

Our district is gonna go bowling today for our p-day activity. I'm going to limit myself to one game so I don't hurt my arms too much, so hopefully we'll still be able to play and whatnot. We played volleyball last week, and I was so sore. It was so worth it though, even though I couldn't really walk or kneel or anything for three days afterwards ^^; (I wouldn't advise that.)

 

In other news I got the box on Wednesday!! The skirts are beautiful, mom! You have great taste :D I'll take pictures and send them home sometime, I think it's impossible to put pictures on the library's computer without a cord. Alas. Is Craig going to get a camera? Is he going to use it once he gets it? Hehe. Thanks for the brownies too! They're really good with the M&Ms on top :3 The music is great! We've got quite the variety for the car now. I think the other music I asked for is on my external harddrive, so that's probably why you didn't find it. You don't have to go digging in there, I'm okay with what I have. :)

 

The end of my first six weeks is next Sunday! (My birthday! Woo!) So far I don't think either of us are transferring, so we'll be in Rocklin for another six weeks before somebody goes. Although I've heard of other sisters in the mission who've been in their area for six months or more, so maybe I'll end up being one of those! I doubt it, but it could happen. We'll see!

 

My companion called me a "designated plunker" this week, XD She said that cos we've been trying to get things set in stone for our musical presentation thing for non-members next month, so we're trying to advertise and get our singers on board. We've been toying around with different music as well, so since I can sightread pretty well I "plunk" the melodies and parts and all that. Hence, a plunker. Haha! It's pretty funny. We're still looking for a bassoon though, although I'm not really sure that anybody really knows where to look for one. It's kind of a weird instrument to borrow. Hopefully one will turn up though! I have all these reeds now that need love! ;D

 

@Craig:  Anyway, are you going to send me your MTC and mission home address so I can write you? If you don't want me to write you that's cool too. At least you won't have to fly to your mission, you'll probably just end up taking a bus there. Haha :D Is your mission pres President Winn (sp?)? President Weston knows him, then! It's a small world, what can we say. Haha. Read PMG if you already have one! If you don't, read the BoM! Like for real though, that's where all your power will come from! But read PMG, that will teach you the how-to-do that. Experience helps too, but in the abscence of that it'll be good with PMG.

 

Something I learned this week from my studies was in Alma... I think chapter 2. Maybe 3. But there's a story in there about Amlici who wants to be a king so he goes to war with the Nephites. Alma (the younger) leads his people and end up fighting head-to-head with Amlici! We're told to liken ourselves to the scriptures, so I thought about if President Monson had to lead us to war and fight people with a sword. Haha! Super silly, but that's what I thought of. I think Alma was young at the time though, so that definitely helped. XD Anyway! They're fighting, and then Alma calls on the Lord and basically asks Him to help strengthen him to slay Amlici so his people would be preserved. It's only then that the Lord strengthens him and helps him beat Amlici. We have to always remember to call on the Lord to strengthen us; definitely not to slay people, that'd be bad. But if we pray for Him to help us with righteous desires (thinking outside ourselves, etc.) then there's nothing He won't help us with. :D

 

Anyway, I can't think of anything else so I better finish up. I love you all and I hope you have an awesome week! Write me about it! :)

 

LOVE,

Sister Nelson

Dear ones! Hellooo! <3

 

I'm sorry it's dry out there! :C Look at it this way, it's not going all crazy cos it knows you won't be able to take care of it. So it's just trying to survive so next summer when you're back to normal you'll be able to deal with the growth and stuff :D You're a trooper. ^_^ Also, I think I'm going to try going to Walmart and printing pictures off my camera so you can get those. I know my SD card is 4G, so hopefully it won't get full any time soon. I still have pictures from when me and the boys went to mythbusters, haha! Meant to get those off beforehand, heh. Oh well.

 

This week was great! I don't know if you've ever heard of these before, but we helped organize what we've called a 40 day fast, where a family in the ward will take turns fasting every day for 40 days. That started yesterday and we've already started to see fantastic things! There was a man named Andrew who moved into our ward, and he had Mormon friends from where he came from, and they told him if he'd call the Bishop they'd send Elders to help him move in. So he called and said, "I heard you have Elders that'll help me move!" and Bishop said, "We have Sisters? We'll send some people though!" So the Elders Quorum went over to help and we went to go see him yesterday to go meet him and see what was up. He said he and his family were gonna drop by our church and see what it was like, but they had a mix-up of days (he thought yesterday was Saturday so they didn't get to go that day). But we offered service with moving in and asked him if we could teach his family and he said yes! We didn't set up an appointment though, he needed to double check with his wife what time and whatnot but they want to come to church next Sunday so hopefully we will see him then :D It was awesome! Fasting is so great. And the members are so awesome here, they're so willing to jump right in to the work and help us out. :D

 

I also gave a talk in church yesterday! It was fun. Although I was slightly disappointed when my Bishop texted me to ask if I would. It was kinda lame... like being asked out on a date over a text. Just lame! Don't ever do that, yick! Anyway, I talked about developing talents! I talked about mom and her flowers and bees :) There are several beekeepers in our ward, too. They keep asking me what kind of bees you have, and I go "... honey bees? I know she got her queen from Hawaii! :D?" and they just kinda look at me and go "Well sure, but there are several kinds of honey bees!" and I just give them a blank look and shrug. SO, what kind of bees did you have? Cos those were the kind that swarmed, right? XD Any idea what they are now?

 

Oh yeah! That belatedly reminds me, remember when I said 22 deacons? I lied; that's just one quorum. There's more like 40 in total. And there's nearly 95 Elders and High Priests. @.@ So big! Most of them are gone for summer though, so it feels like a slightly bigger version of our ward. I don't know that I'll still be here for when everyone gets back for school... Although I guess that's at the end of August, and I don't potentially transfer 'til the beginning of September. We'll see!

 

The days are so long it feels like ages have passed by the time I get to email you again. And, of course, by the time I do sit down at a computer, my brain shuts down and I've forgotten what it was I wanted to tell you. Curses!  Also, for everyone: In my district meeting this week (that's where all the Elders and Sisters in the area come together for training and teaching), we talked about obedience to commandments. They issued us a question to send home so we could hear experiences from everyone! So the question is this: how have you been blessed by obeying [x] commandment? Yes, there's not a specific one. You can pick. :D Let me know! I'd love to hear from y'all!

 

@my RG friends: I want you to know I've just found someone who types on the keyboard louder than I do. It's way worse than my taka-taka-taka, it sounds more like a typewriter: TA-CLICK-TA-CLICK-TA-CLICK. And she giggles at the end of every sentence. Just thought I'd share cos it's super hysterical. Haha!

 

I hope everything continues to be awesome for everyone. I gotta scoot, I'm running out of time and we still have to go to the store so we can get stuff for a peach cake that we got a recipe for. Yum.

 

I love you bunches! Thank you for your prayers, I see the blessings coming from them all the time! <3 <3

 

Sister Nelson

Aw shucks. We are some good looking Sisters, huh? :) I still say you should get an iphone. haha! Also, if y'all can figure out how, you should post the picture to my blog! I'm sure everyone would love to see it :D And that's so nice of the Holyoaks! I will for sure write them a letter!

I don't know of an Elder Tagget, but I'll be sure to keep an eye out for him! I only know the missionaries in my district in Rocklin and also the ones I came out with, plus a spattering of Zone Leaders. We had a trainer/trainee meeting on Friday and all the zone leaders were there before us so I met a lot of them. No Taggets though. Our area is suprisingly big. XD Sister Brown doesn't know him either. ¯\[°_O]/¯

Whenever I introduce myself, they always ask where I'm from and when I say Chicago, they always make mention of it being much hotter out there than it is here! It's a dry heat here but it's been about 100°, so we're doing our best to have a lot of appointments and things going on inside to beat the heat. Speaking of, though, I've seen so many blue hydrangeas! Dunno if I mentioned that before. It's the weirdest thing everrr, and when I tell them we can only get pink ones back home, they give me a funny look. Haha! There was a man in our ward where we're serving and he went to Chicago this week for work stuff, but he said hello to the temple for me while he was there. I thought that was fun, hehe.

I'm glad you're sleeping lots! I'm with you on that, if that's the only thing you have to deal with you're sitting pretty. And you are. :P @Craig: Woo! Starting early, eh? ;D @Matt: We learn according to the amount of light we have, y'know? So it's why we keep reading the BoM over and over again, each time we read it there'll be more things for us to learn. Same with all things spiritual, really. Study study study! If you're looking for answers it'll never be "just reading". And sleeping, in my case. If I'm not looking for anything I'll conk right out. *brick'd*

Anyway! So like I said earlier, I went to a training thing on Friday! It was up in Gridley, about an hour and a half away from Rocklin. I got to see all my Elders from my MTC district, it was good times :) I missed them! We are awesome! I'll be sure to send pictures once I figure out how! We studied the doctrine of Christ with President, specifically in 2N 31 and 3N 11. It was so great! The doctrine of Christ is basically the missionary purpose: to invite others to come unto Christ by receiving the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and his Atonement, repentance, baptism, recieving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. It's more than just getting people to get baptized, although that's definitely a part of it. It's recognizing the need for Christ in our lives, and once we have that faith in him and all that he's done for us, we're invited to act on that knowledge - that's where the baptism comes in. It's so much more than "gaining membership", we really want people to come unto Christ. That's the purpose. It was a great meeting!

We had two brothers get baptized on Saturday! Andrew and Josh's parents were inactive for the past ten years, so their sons never got to be baptized (they're 17 and 14 now). But now they're back! They already had an interview with the bishop on Sunday and their next step, the priesthood, is just around the corner. We're going to go teach them this week about it! Well, they're going to teach us what they know first, since we think they already know a lot about it so we'll just fill in the holes ;) Thank goodness for manuals though, I know what the priesthood is and what it does, but not well enough to explain it. Derp. But yeah, it was an awesome experience! Some of the members were being silly and talking to me that I'd only been in the field for 3 weeks and already had 2 baptisms, XD but I really don't feel like I did much, other than walk right into it. It was still awesome!

I'm running out of time, drat. The coolest thing I know about missionaries is we're allowed to believe and expect miracles to happen and they will! Maybe that's cos we're set apart for that, I don't know. But if you have the faith that it will happen in some way, and then work as hard as you can to get it to happen, Heavenly Father will bend over backwards to get it to work out for us! We just always need to remember he's in charge and takes care of us, and everything we do is for Him, not for us. The more we realize our divine lineage and relationship, the more we can remember that and be great tools for Him to invite people to come unto Christ!

That's all for now. I love you all so much and I really feel your prayers! They are awesome, and so are you!

LOVE,
Sister Nelson

Yay! Emails! And yes, I did get that letter this week, thank you :) I figured it must've bounced since they didn't know where I was and my name wasn't assigned to the mailbox yet. I got the 2nd one though!  I was going to bring my thing to get the address to you so you can send it directly there, but it sounds like you already have one. Transfers are every six weeks, but I think I'm going to be here for 12 weeks with my trainer since that's how long the training program is.

 

For the 4th our ward is having a pancake breakfast, hoorah! It'll be awesome. The chilluns are going to have a bike parade too, so that'll distract them while mom and dad have food :P Should be awesome! We even saw fireworks this weekend, there was a big show put on over by our church so we caught the tailend of it (we live on the 3rd floor and see over all the houses). It was neat!

 

All the ward members (oh, and I discovered there's more like 40 deacons) are super nice. We have dinner plans every night and if something falls through then there's a good list of people who are adamant that we call them if we need food. I always feel kinda embarrassed asking, but Sister Brown is already friends with most of them so she doesn't find it as weird as I do. Guess that's my pride or something coming through? I don't know. XD

 

Oh, and we're not teaching very many people right now, but Rocklin is a pretty afluent area so EVERYONE is gone cos it's summer. It's really weird. Also, everyone is crazy into baseball so tracting on Saturdays (which is normally a good prosylting day cos people are supposed to be home) is useless cos everyone's out playing or watching or... whatever. So we try to keep ourselves busy with service and everything. We do have a family we're trying to get a date for though! But the dad doesn't really believe in organized religion so that's hard for them. They were trying to wait to see if he'd change his mind, but it isn't looking like it. :( Maybe someday when he's impressed by what the church is doing for his kids. They're the Cole family. It gets kinda confusing sometimes though cos there's already a Cole family that're members, and then these that're not just yet. Haha!

We have a baptism on Saturday! There was another family in the ward, the Penny's, and they went inactive for tenish years, and then their kids decided to start taking the lessons. One's 17 and the other's 14, so that's fun. n_n

 

You didn't tell me President Weston called you!! I told him thanks and he said you guys were awesome :3 Mom mentioned sending the bassoon in her letter, I'd call him and talk to him about it. I was actually thinking about that last week and was invisioning that conversation... "Hi President! Want to hang onto a bassoon for 18 months? :D?" Haha. He might go for it, I have no idea. Shipping it would make me anxious though, if you do decide to go that route, don't tell me it's coming. Haha! Reeds would be nice though, I'd be grateful for those for sure.

 

I've decided you should get a smartphone, if not only because people in my ward take pictures of us missionaries on occasion and go, "Now give me your parents number and I'll text this to them!" and then we all get sad when I tell them they have a dumb phone (or in mom's case, doesn't even get pictures). So at least one of you should get one. Maybe Dad cos he already knows how to function an iPad. Haha! One family said they'd get it on the computer and send it off that way, so I gave them your email. I told them to mention me in the email somewhere, but in case they don't, keep an eye out for that. It's coming from a Hodgson, for the record.

 

I've acclimated to the alergies now! I still have to blow my nose more than ever before, but at least I can breathe and stuff. Who knew, allergies. Pft. Too bad I can't keep an eye on the pollen count or anything. At least it didn't stick for too long!

 

Aye mom, my warddrobe is as I expected. Although two of the skirts are super thick and that doesn't translate well to the California weather, so I'm keeping an eye out for more skirts. If you find any that would be cute to send my way you're welcome to! I'm still hovering around 16/18, and if the length would go to your knee (or above it, let's be honest) it'd be perfect for me. Just so ya know~!

 

Hmmmm, I'm trying to think of what else. If my phone hasn't died yet, will you text Lindsay Weaver and ask her for an address at which I can write her? I forgot to ask. Also Lyra. I told them both I'd write and I forgot. (Or maybe if you post this they'll see it and just write me. XD)

 

There was something else I wanted to say and I forgot what it was. Oh! Haha, mom, that was the lesson that me and my companion have been using to get the ward members to let us serve them. It's great stuff! I liked that someone mentioned that it shows the humility of Ammon, cos even after he chopped off those arms he didn't take them back to the king himself and say, "look what I did!" but kept doing the things he'd been asked to do. I'd never thought of that before!

 

Well, time's about up so I'll finish up now. I'll see if I can print some pictures at walgreens and send them back to you this week, unless I can figure out how to get pictures from my camera to the compy. ¯\[°_O]/¯ oh well.

 

That's all for this week! I love you so much! Thank you for your prayers, I pray for you too! <3

 

Love love love,

Sister Nelson