I wondered if Sandy was going to get you guys. Mama Rose was talking about it and Chicago, but from what I heard it wasn't going to be too bad for it. (Sans the wind I guess.) She was telling us about how Wall St. was closed for the first time in history, and they were just talking about how it's a fat, slow-moving storm.

@Radio: be safe out there! You too Don, you're likely to get after-effects too!

Anyway, HI! I had heard those statistics, yeah! One of the mission president's counselors lives in our boundary, so we had a chance to talk to him and hear about that. So cool! I'm definitely expecting to see a lot more Sisters come January, unfortunately that means my likelihood of training just about tripled. Aah! I'm not super excited about that. *does not want*

Tell Holly I said hi! I met the ASL sisters out here briefly last Saturday, and I was telling them about the ASL ward out in Wheaton (right? I don't remember exactly). They were impressed :) Except now I'm going to be keeping an eye out for other deaf people to help them out. Plenty of work for them too, just harder to find for them O-o

I'm sure they're related; Sister Pulsipher said she has a ton of family out there. That's her side though... I dunno about his. Tell her hi for me, too! n_n

Soooooo this week was really awesome!! We had transfers again and my companion scooted, so I have a new companion! Her name is Sister Ripplinger, and she's from Idaho. It's only been a couple of days since we started together but there's already a lot of miracles happening!! For example, yesterday we got one of our new investigators, Jacqline, to come to church with us! Yay! But after sacrament she was asking us about if her son (he's 16) could go on a mission. I started off saying "Well he has to be a baptized member..." and she said he already was! That caught us off-guard for sure. XD So we asked her why she hadn't been, and she invited us over later to talk about it. So we talked about baptism and the Holy Ghost and all that awesome stuff, and we invited her to be baptized. She accepted! Woooo! So basically awesome things are happening and my companion is enthusiastic and great things are going to be happening here in the next little while. Thank you for your prayers! They are so effective in helping us realize OUR potential, too! They can only change if we invite them to.

Also, I'm so happy that our ward is super excited about doing missionary work! We can always count on them to help us out in a bind. Sometimes I wonder what my life would've been like if I'd seen more of the missionaries growing up, but I guess that can't be helped. Have you seen a lot of the Sisters at home? Have you invited anyone to take the discussions? Something to pray and ponder. <3

The other day I was looking at 2N 31:20, and it was pointed out to me a phrase that occurs twice: press forward. Now at first glance it's all, "oh, endure to the end, blah long blah." but the interesting thing to me is especially the word press, cos it means there's some resistance involved. So of course it's going to be hard to keep on the path and keep moving, but it's all by design. God created us to grow! Just by two words we can learn all that. I love it! It also makes me think of the movie Meet the Robinsons, just the quote by Walt Disney at the end. I don't remember what it is exactly, just something like "around here we don't stay still for very long, and we keep moving forward!" Definitely the same with us that we can keep pressing forward and work hard in every aspect of life :)

Anyway I love you all! I hope things go well with the hurricane, I pray for you always. <3

LOVELOVELOVE,

Sister Nelson

P.S. It's really weird to live in a place where they can count on their baseball team to win anything.

Sister Nelson

Sister Fonua and Sister Nelson

Sister Nelson and Sister Fonua

Rose Schembri and Sister Nelson

Sister Nelson

Sister Fonua and Sister Nelson

HAI.

Isn't Rose the best? She's so adorable and I love her :D If you haven't already, you can post the pictures to the blog.

So! Big news here in Loomis - my companion Sister Fonua (foh-nu-ah) is being transferred! Nuuu! She was the Australian one and I will miss her loads. With her I've learned how to not sweat the small stuff, how to overcome big barriers, and how to have a good time despite working really hard! It's been good to be with her and I know that good things will follow her to her next area :3 My next companion will be Sister Ripplinger (sp??) and she actually came from the visitor's center in Nauvoo! We usually have a Temple Square sister in the mission at some point or another, so it's really cool that we have both right now. But she'll be my next companion and I don't actually know where she's from. I think Idaho, maybe. Stay tuned for that!

I'm sorry about Aunt Renae. With what we know about the Plan of Salvation, death is surely not an end! I think that's truly one of the great blessings of the gospel we have today. No wonder Abinidi told the people "the sting of death is swallowed up in Christ" (Mosiah 16:8). I will continue to pray for them, for sure.

 Congrats about the new car, btw! Sounds like a fun adventure. Does that mean there's four cars, now? Not for very long, I'll bet, the Taurus sounds like it's apt to die any minute. ¯\[°_O]/¯ Haha! (also, the comment about the biggest ball of yarn had me in stitches. It's not even that funny, but just how nonchalantly it was mentioned was awesome. Hehe.)

Hmm, what else. Oh! Our Primary Program was yesterday! It was really cool what the ward did, tho - they totally used it as a way to get all the less-active members to come out and see them too~! Cos who doesn't like little kids singing and being cute on the stand? :3 There were a few who came, too, so it was great :D

Woohoo, chapel tour! Those things are the best! This ward does them four times a year, so we're pretty well-known in this area. It's kinda neat, and every time they have new people that come. They combine with the other two wards that use the building too, so it's neat that there's always somebody there who hasn't ever seen it before. It's a great draw :)

It's cold (ish) and rainy here today! All the Californians are kinda weirding out cos it's cold. And wet. I'm quite comfortable, actually. Haven't had to use a coat up to this point, and even now it's just a sweater. No prob! Maybe when it gets into the thick of winter I'll actually get a light jacket to use. Maybe. Haha!

So yesterday I was looking through my scriptures and I found I had a lot of notes in ch.9 of John. In it, Jesus is walking with his disciples and they see a blind man. The disciples ask Him if the man sinned or his parents sinned, that he was blind. Jesus told them, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." So he spits in the dirt, gets clay, puts it on the man's eyes and tells him to wash in the river.

Of course, we can see the physical miracle to this - he gets his sight back. But there's another miracle coming - watch for it.

The man goes back to his house and all his neighbors see him. They ask him what happened and he tells them, and they want to know where he sis now but he doesn't know. Then the Pharisees come and have a big flip-out cos oh no, he healed on the Sabbath. Must be a sinner, they think. They ask the man what happens, he tells them, and then they ask him what he thinks of this man. "A prophet," he says. But the Jews think he'd been lying about being blind, so they call his parents and ask them. They confirm it was their son and that he was blind, but they don't agree to anything about him being healed. They're, of course, afraid to agree to anything in case they get cast out (excommunicated, basically) so they tell the Pharisees, "He's of age, ask him!" So they do, also mentioning along the way that they think Jesus is a sinner for healing on the Sabbath. At this point the man is obviously annoyed with them for not believing him and calls them out, telling them that they must be crazy if they think Jesus is a sinner. He reminds them that if he weren't from God, there's no way he would've been able to heal at all. So the Pharisees get mad and cast him out.

Did you catch it? The 2nd miracle happened. The man not only had a physical miracle, but a spiritual miracle, that he realized he had faith in Jesus Christ the son of God and testified of him! I love that; sometimes we need to be placed in those challenging situations to realize we have faith and a testimony of the things we're being tried on. I really liked that.

 But yeah, I need to go now. But I love y'all and you are wonderful! I pray for you every day and I know good things will happen! Look for those missionary experiences, and remember if you pray for them they will happen!

I LOVELOVELOVE you!

Sister Nelson

A very merry unbirthday to youuuu~!

Yaaay, box! Thank you so much :D I told my companion you were thinking of sending one and she's been as excited for me to get it as I was. Haha! I shared candy with her and we've been munching on the Tootsie rolls... which has already caused issues, we sent some through the washer on accident this morning *brick'd* it wasn't too bad though, thankfully. :)

Woo, Sister missionaries!! :D They're the bomb-diggety! We're thinking we'll see a big spike in 3-5 months, so we'll see. At present we have 25 Sisters in our mission, so we'll see how that goes. Excitement! Btw, I've been keeping an eye out for an Elder Tagget, but I think he may be serving up north somewhere so we'll probably not see each other unless he transfers down here. (There's an Elder Taggert, too. Confusing.) ANYWAY, our Sisters Training/Conference was awesome! I got to see all the Sisters in the mission, which meant I saw Sister Tittle again :D Hooray! It was so fun. We learned a lot about service and compassion, and how by serving the people in our area (and our companion!) more things will come from it! n_n it was really inspiring.

Who's on the Lord's Side, eh? I'd pick 2/4, fast or slow. Once at the beginning and once in the middle. I'm sure nobody minded if you were swapping around though. :P

I did know Alyse was expecting! Yaaay! Congrats to her :D and speaking of the dog I miss him :< Luckily I meet four-thousand dogs every day (not kidding) so I get my fair share of love and shedding hair... Thank you for getting a shed-less dog. (Also, as far as her shower, aren't they "plainfield" people now? Since the ward got shredded and all? lol) And Debbie! Hi, Debbie!

There were a lot of funny things that happened this week. One of them happened while we were doing service! We were at a woman's house, and she has a spinal-leak so she's not able to stand up for a long period of time... so we invited ourselves over to wash her windows! They hadn't been washed in five years though so there were tons of spiderwebs caked on them. Ain't no thang, all the ones we saw were dead. (OR SO WE THOUGHT!) So we start cleaning and whatnot, and all of a sudden Sister Fonua starts yelling, "Step on it, step on it!" So I turn around and see this BIG OL' FAT HAIRY SPIDER (definitely the size of a quarter T_T ) crawling towards me! I start screaming and it stops moving - either it was paralyzed by my lungpower or it was terrified too; potentially both - and I stomp on it. We realized later it was a black widow. *freakout* Sister Fonua laughed at me a bit, she said she'd never heard me scream that loud. And I thought I was a spider-slayer. *failsauce*

Among the other funny things that happened this week (accidental off-roading, being casually flipped off by an old dude [though we think we caught it out of context], having a nerf-gun war), the spiritual things were so great! The Lord is doing great things here through the members, and the longer I'm out the more I realize that it really cannot be done without both sides actively working and looking for people to teach. Two missionaries can do what they can to find and teach on their own, but it goes so much faster and more effectively if the ward's at their back, fellowshipping and finding with them. If the ward helps out, well, that's 100+ people looking for seekers at the same time! If you were out to find someone lost in the countryside, having as many people to help look would get the job done faster - and if there's a small window of time that they could be found, it's more likely it'll happen if there's lots to help. Same with this work! Doors are opening up everywhere and it has been fantastic.

@Dad: I remember you were asking about where we live, and we live with a non-member Rose. (I can't remember what faith she claims.) Through different events she was invited by her bff-Mormon friend to house them, and they've been with her ever since. She loves us and we love her!! She is one of the cutest, kindest, loving people I've ever met, and she takes such good care of us as if we were her own kids :3 That said she has the furnishings of a real kitchen, so that's definitely a plus. Haha! We have dinner with her once a week, and we have good times together. ^_^

I don't think we'll be able to go to our Halloween party :< Pres. Weston wants all the missionaries to be in at 6 so they don't get caught out with all the drunk people (or other crazy things that could potentially happen on Halloween). So, I think we're going to end up staying home and passing out candy to all the chilluns that come to the door (or just eating it all ourselves, whichever happens first). It'll be good though! Mama Rose has lots of cards so we might play. We'll see how it goes.

Anyway, I've spent way too long on this so I've gotta be scooting. I love youuuu! Thank you always for your prayers, both for me and our investigators!! Things are changing and going great <3

LOVELOVELOVE and blessings!

Sister Nelson

Surprise! It's a Tuesday! (All the libraries were closed on Monday cos of Columbus day. Funny how Monday holidays used to be the best and now they're kinda annoying. C'est la vie.)

 

Anyway - so conference was basically AMAZING! Each session kept getting better and better, don't you think? I was particularly excited when Elder Ballard started talking about bees :) Did you know all of that? I knew about some of the things, like there's several thousand of them in a hive at any given time, and that they produce a tiny amount of honey over their lifetime. Something else I thought about after he spoke was how even though those particular bees might not live long enough to have to use the honey in the winter, they still prep it and make it to be available for the bees that will come after them. I think about that sometimes when I'm out here, that my calling is more than just inviting people to come to Christ but to plant seeds too so another missionary can come and reap that work I put in.

 

I liked that a lot of the talks were about service! Elder Nelson's talk was particularly fun. "Ask the missionaries, they can help you!" Yes, yes we can. It was particularly ironic that when we were watching that talk, Jehovah's Witnesses knocked on our door. :D They saw our tags and wanted to scoot out of there pretty fast though. We invited them to stay and watch with us, but they declined. *shrug* I've never had more experiences with JW's than when I came out here. Haha! Ain't no thang, as Sister Fonua would say.

 

As far as changing the missionary date, we are stoked! Super suprised, but also excited. We'll keep an eye out for an increase in numbers in about three months haha :) We've already heard of a ton in our ward who've attacked Bishop already to start their papers. Haha! Is there a lot looking to scoot in the home ward? We're hoping we get more Sisters out here, that would be the best :D You can't go wrong with Sisters, man.

 

Did you get an email from Rose? She's the lady we live with! She was hoping to hear back from you, but it either must not have gotten to you or it went to the spambox or you deleted it already. She sent her phone number with it too, just in case. *shrug* She's delightful though :D and not a member! Her best friend was Mormon and a couple years ago both her sons moved out at the same time, so she suggested that Rose offer her home that the missionaries live with her. It's worked out really well so far, and she loves us :)

 

With the start of conference, though, means suitcoat season! Yaay. Which basically means that the Elders have to wear their suitcoats everywhere now. The sisters have to have cardigans with their outfits, but that's much better than a fatty suitcoat. I'm still in the market for a light jacket, but with all the thrift stores around here it shouldn't be too hard. I think the coldest it got around here last year was about 35F. Balmy! Definitely not a problem. Lately it's been in the 50s/60s in the mornings and I've been peachy, but my companions have been freezing. This winter will be awesome. :D

 

We're going to have a Sister's conference this Friday! It'll be so fun! I'm excited to see all the Sisters. We only have 24-26 Sisters (I can't remember which) in the whole mission, so we're all gonna go to the President's house to be with them :) Yay!

 

I'm still trudging along in Matthew, but I should be finished with it soon! This morning I read about the parable of the laborers, and I was reminded of Elder Holland's talk in conference in April. "Why should you be jealous because I am kind?" I was impressed by his talk this weekend too, how he's able to take the scriptures and make it that much more real and personable to us and our understanding. I hope to be able to do that for all scirptures one day!

 

I'm running out of time, and things to say. So I hope all continues to go well! 

 

I feel your prayers! And I'm sending some back your way too :D

 

LOOOOOOVE YOUUUUUU! (man I wish I could speak whale.)

Sister Nelson

No e-mail this week.  :(

Might be Columbus Day related and not able to get to e-mail.

HI! <3

 

I never knew knowing how to make bread would win me stars in the eyes of... well, everyone. ¯\[°_O]/¯ It's kinda cool though! The Elders in our district are way spoiled. XD (I made 'nana bread today. Yum.) Btw, Craig, do you have Sisters in your zone? If not that's totes depressing... especially cos the Sisters seem to have a way with deciding what happens on P-day :D Or maybe that's just the hierarchy in the Roseville mission... or we don't have any of the sporty guys either. Wish you could come to my p-day activity; there's a member's house we're going to today and they have a game room with pool, pingpong, foozball, and air hockey. And a really big yard if that's not enough for you. It's kinda cool (well, coincidental really), the wife just got done with her rounds of chemo too. We had dinner with them two weeks ago and it was the first time my companion, who's been in this area for 7 months, had met them. So it was like I needed to be there. We talked about you, mum. And your hats. She liked that :) She's doing good though, like you. So it's just an extra connection n_n

 

Speaking of, good luck on your radiation today!! I'll be sure to keep praying for you, as well will President Weston and some of the Elders out here. Aunt Renee too- any news on that front? I only heard what Dad told me in his letter. (Btw, I didn't notice any difference other than your letter came on Friday instead of Thursday. No big!)

 

In our lessons this week we only made 9. I was kinda sad, but then I realized that I'd rather take quality lessons over stressing out about taking a member with us. Also, I thought about the spirit and how it works, and Sister Fonua and I decided that perhaps the investigator needed just us to be there to feel more comfortable. We definitely need to go out and find more though, since the majority of our investigators are at a point where they're just waiting for their confirmation from Heavenly Father about if the Book of Mormon and the Church is true. Not much holding them back from that! Pray that they'll get their answers! And that we'll find more investigators. We've been really bad at going out and finding lately. o.o;

 

@Matt GOOD LUCK AT IMEAAAA!!!! *glomp* mum'll tell you about dynamics to be sure, but my advice is to have fun with the music!! They'll recognize that more than anything else you do, and if you really are enjoying yourself the musicality will come out naturally. I wish I could be there to help out but you will be awesome!! Practice!! (I know you hate hearing that, but if there's anything I wish I would've done better in HS it would be not slacking off on being the best I could be. The power of hindsight is ridiculous. Also perspective. The bar was not as high in HS as it probably could've been, or should've been. Why stop at the mountain when you can reach the sky??)

 

Thank you for that scripture! I really like that. I've been looking for more good scriptures to memorize - there is such power in remembering a scripture whenever you're feeling or down or distracted. Or just because you can! My first one was Psalms 27:1 - "The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?" (yes, I just did that without looking.) I don't know why I love it, but I do. It also makes me think of the hymn it's based on - #89 I think? Y'know - the looooooord is my liiiiiight~ ♪ <:D

 

@Lyra: I can't remember if I sent a response to you... so I'm just going to say I did and that it's your turn to write. :D?

 

I am definitely having more fun here in Loomis. There are still some days where I'm not really sure where I'm supposed to be going, or how the heck I'm supposed to be able to recieve inspiration for this area cos I don't know the people still (this area is kinda huuge... it encompasses Penryn, Newcastle, and part of Loomis) BUT, I know that my companion knows this area really well, and if I can just ask the right questions about who they are and where they live, the spirit can tell me that it's someone we should see. She's really great at following the spirit and thinking of their needs, so it's worked out well so far :)

 

Halloween is coming up! It's exciting cos my companion is from Australia, right. She's never had one before! So this year will be fun, cos we can carve pumpkins and dress up all for her first time :D Missionaries are supposed to be in by 6 on that day (it's unsafe for us to be out O: ) but our ward party's that night! so hopefully I can ask Pres if we can go and be with the members. If not we can hang at home with our landlady Rose (she's a nonmember! cooly!) and dress up and have fun times. It's still a ways out though so we'll see what happens.

 

So as part of one of our lessons with our investigators this week, we taught them about agency! It was really fun. But something we challenged them to do was at the end of every day, pick one good choice and one bad choice that we did, and then list the consequence of doing it. We told them we'd do it too, and it's been really interesting so far! For example: we were driving back from the General Relief Society broadcast on Saturday (it was really awesome, btw; it's on LDS.org, y'all should watch it!), and we passed this guy walking his bike up the road. It was really dark at that point, and my companion and I looked at each other and was like, "we need to talk to him!!" so we flipped the car around and chased him down. *brick'd* but we pulled up and asked him if he needed to use our phone to call someone (he looked really tired) and he was like, "nah I'm good! thanks though!" and so we tried to give him amormon.org card to check out the site and stuff - I started rambling about how we're missionaries and that our site is really cool and whatnot, and he went, "what church?" I got a little nervous thinking he'd be like, super anti- or something, but I told him and he got this awesome corny smile and went "oh yeah, I'm a member!" and so it turned out to be pretty funny in the end. My companion and I were just super giddy all the way home, and we decided it was because we followed a prompting of the spirit, even though there was nothing really that came of it (from what I can see). I was really glad that we followed it! Maybe it was practice for us, or maybe he needed to see how missionaries can talk to everyone (even if they're members). But that was one of our good choices this week :) I'll keep the bad ones to myself. Haha! They were mostly little opportunities that we missed, like our neighbor was washing his car and we didn't say anything when we could have. *double brick'd* but there's always room for improvement! and second chances!

 

The gospel is great, the church is true, we have a prophet on the Earth today!! And everyone should watch conference this weekend and see the prophet speak! :O Das a big deal, peepsicles. Woo!

 

I hope you all have an awesome week! I love you and pray for you always!

 

LOVELOVELOVE,

Sister Nelson!