HIII FAMILY <3

Things are good on this homefront :D and for the record dad, I'm in the Woodside ward; Orangevale has Elders!

Tehe I love that phrase, "galavanting around the countryside". is that from something? I feel like I use it frequently.

"Though I would do it again." take us out of school or go through gradeschool again? haha.

I love that about Payton :D is he gonna be totally confused when you say, "let's wake up Rach"? altho, I'm not sure he could make it up to the top of the bed, but he could surprise me. those lil' dogs can jump better than you'd think o.o

Alma 32 is coming great! I'm on day 7. It's really good! It's interesting how one chapter can apply to your lives in many ways. I think every day this week I've gotten a different interpretation of the same verse! Also, I have a new love for v. 19. go read it! and you should do it too. Just keep lots of notes! Things that came to your mind, things that you found interesting, other things you want to copyreference, whatever. Just have something handy to write on. 

*domestic diva* I like that! I totally forgot we even had a raspberry bush... I knew about the blackberries, but not the raspberries.

My companion's family is in MN. Maybe they'll move into their ward! They live by Rochester. What are they moving up there for?

Yay, family history! I was looking at my familysearch thing and I don't have a granpa. Sad day. I don't think that'll get fixed until... well, you know. Dumb Salt Lake XD

Things are well here. We're getting a lot of direction on the course we need to take, and it involves making a lot of friends. Which shouldn't be too hard, I think. hahaha. 

Also, a member told me that she thought I was awesome, and that it must run in the family. So I thought I'd pass that along :D <3

We have zone conference this week, so I'm super excited :D I'm hoping we find out more about the whole technology-using-stuff, since a lot of people are asking us about it. I'm getting more and more excited for the changes, so that's a good sign I guess :) Yay! 

Thanks for being AWESOME!!! And just fabulous in all ways. Stay great! Stay close to the spirit! 

I LOVE LOVE LOVE YOU ALL!!!!

Sister Nelson

FAMILY!! <3

Sooo as far as the pictures, the first one is just cute and you don't need to post it. The latter pictures are what we did this weekend! WE PARTIED! Yeah :D The ward had an ice cream social this weekend, and it was tasty. Obviously. A lot of people made ice cream and brought it, so it worked out well! There was a really yummy kind, like a chocolate cherry, and it was divine. OOH! I wanna learn how to make that O_O Anyway, a picture of my Sister Tanner, in case you were wondering. :)

I am super distracted by sending pictures and whoever else is emailing me today, haha. Apparently there's another Sister Rachael Nelson serving in Texas somewhere, and people have been sending me emails for her. Pretty funny, also especially since there was a Sister Loveland down there, too! So apparently the Loveland/Nelson duo is a divine one :) Yeah!~

I do not know everyone yet, haha. There's a lot of people that my companion doesn't even know, so sometimes I feel like I'm just paving my own way. We're organizing our area book and whatnot so we can leave more notes about who everyone is and who would be good for fellowshipping and whatnot, but there's a long way to go so we're going to be meeting a loot of people. :) Sister Tanner moved to MN when she was 8, and she's 19 now. So you can math that and see where you were at the time. I knew dad went to school there, but I didn't know if I could accurately count that as a "connection" or not, considering I don't know anyone. But yay! Cool! (literally?)

Seminary and school started this week around here, so people have been stressin' and everything else. I kinda liked the isolation of Paradise. More chill up there!

YAY, MB! Sounds like so much fun :D

"So we don't get attacked when we pick them" this made me happy. also I laughed. :D

@cleaning: I claim my room.

*pompoms for bees* apparently we are having dinner with beekeepers this week. They are, ironically, the Winns. (Not Craig's, and not related either.) They have given the sisters here a lot of honey, so we have some stockpiled in the cupboard. Haha :)

You are hard-hearted, haha! Don't even think about the rabbits. Poor dogs. You think they'd be able to keep each other entertained. I dunno, the Hunts had a cute lil' Terrier (she looked like she ought to be the show-dog for dog-food commercials) that would click on the floor sometimes. I think it just made me feel better cos I miss being around well-behaved dogs (there are very few of them out here. And somehow people go off about how they don't have the finances for xyz and they have a bunch of animals. what? *brick'd* ). How was Payton when Craig came back? Nearly passed out from the excitement, I bet :D

This week was good! Met some more people, and we're getting back into a groove too. Getting to know the ward (a lot of them are hilarious, ohgosh I can't even) and they love us. a LOT. :D We're hoping to go to the temple next week! I haven't been since January, and apparently... well, they do things a little differently. Apparently better. Have you been recently? If not, you should go. And hope there's no one that needs a translation in your session. *winkywink*

So we were talking to one of the other Sister companionships this week (Sister Loveland and her companion, actually) and she talked about how she read Alma 32 every day for 21 days!! That's a lot of Alma 32. She mentioned tho about how her perspective on faith changed a ton because of it, so I think it's a really good and cool idea, so I'm gonna try it! I'm starting tomorrow, since I forgot 'til just now. It'll be SWEET! I'm excited for it :) and I'll be sure to report back on it, too. 

Well, that's about it for now! Sorry it's short. Hope all is well and things are going great :) G'luck with school and everything!

LOVELOVELOVE,

Sister Nelson 

Ward Party Aug 2013

Sister Tanner Aug 2013

HAI FAMILY <3

I didn't get the letter he sent last week, but I'm assuming it got stuck at the mission office with transfers and everything so it'll prolly get here today or tomorrow. Never fear! If it doesn't come by next week, I'll just assume it bounced or something haha. I'm surprised I haven't gotten any Nielson mail yet- we have two of those in our mission at present. Go figure :)

"driven out of Paradise"- I didn't willingly go and they didn't want me to either, so nyeh. Haha. 

My ward is called Woodside! It's half in Citrus Heights and half in Orangevale. To my knowledge there isn't actually a lot of citrus here, although since last week I've been craving a grapefruit like whoa. Haha. My companion is Sister Tanner! She's from Minnesota (but no accent, alas) so everyone's amazed that they have two midwestern-ites for missionaries :) it actually makes our claims a little more awesome, since neither of us are from Utah XD for some reason I feel like people take us more seriously. Not a clue why that is. Ah well. But yeah, she's super sweet and nice and we've had a lot of fun already :D

As far as the work, there are a lot of less-actives to work with here! we're doing our best to get to know ALL the members of the ward- there's half of the even active part that we have no clue who they are. So we're going to be bffs with all the people :) we have one investigator, Stacey! She's a cute Catholic lady who has a devoted Mormon neighbor, and when she started asking all kinds of questions about our faith he quickly got us involved! She still has a ton of questions and I think she's doing okay, if not a little overwhelmed at everything. But she recognizes that the spirit of the Lord is with us and that we were sent for some reason, so she's willing to stick it out for a while to see what that message is. Might take a while, but we're not really in any rush. :)

Ooh, the MB theme sounds fun :O should video that one, if you can!

Oh, well if Bro Beeri visits us instead, I'm way okay with that haha. Who do Dad&Matt HT instead?

FARMER! I knew it. Haha. Well, whatever your term, you're a cute one. :D 

Ah, corn. I just remember the last time we tried it, it didn't work out in the least bit. Oh well. 

I've heard of boysenberry! I've tried it in syrup before, it was pretty good. loganberry sounds fictional to me, you'll have to tell me how that one worked out. speaking of blackberries, Paradise had a ton of blackberry bushes all over the place :O we ate a lot of them, they were really good. And I can't imagine how bears would get to them, those bushes are really pokey! But anyway. Tasty tasty :9

Anyway! We did a lot of cleaning and such this week, mostly for our own stuff :| Sisters have lived in this little unit on the side of a member's house for basically ever, so there's a TON of left-behind and whatnot stuff. So... we organized and cleaned it to pieces :D it made me happy! You're be proud. Threw away and recycled tons of paper and stuff, and we're going to donate a lot of left-behind clothes and stuff to the thrift store. Yay! So yeah. We did a ton of that this week. *feels so good!*

Something else cool happened this week! We have been trying to contact a lot of people that visited with missionaries before, so we can try to get to teaching more people. We decided to walk a lot, since that opens a lot of opportunities to talk to people about the gospel without annoying them cos we're knocking on their door :D anyway, we were walking down the street and there was this lady in the front yard with her two little kids (aah they had the bluest blue eyes, cute @_@ ). We said had and exchanged comments about the weather and whatnot, and then we started talking about religion. (it's funny how easy that comes up.) but she talked about how she had been religious before, but stopped attending after some people in her life passed away and she just couldn't figure it out. So when we were talking I got this very distinct impression about Alma chapter 40, so I pulled out my extra Book of Mormon and a passalong card to stick by the chapter. I started sharing with her about the Book of Mormon and how that book had brought me a lot of peace and answers in my life, and how it was really simple and straightforward to understand. Anyway, she took the book! AND she said we could come back in a couple weeks to talk to her about it :D Yaay, excitement! Anyway, it was exciting. We're hoping that she actually reads it so we can talk to her about it :3

Not much else to report. I'm thinking I won't move again after this until I come home in December, so more than likely I'll finish up here. That's reassuring, isn't it? :) 

Thanks for being great! I love you all and am so grateful for your thoughtfulness <3 keep at it!

LOVELOVELOVE,

Sister Nelson

Hi family! <3

Birthday was GREAT this week! It was all awesome. We had a BBQ that night and they gave me a balloon :3 it was cute. if I had my card with me, I'd send it. I'll try again next week.

@Craig: honorable release FTW!

@Paradise friend: All the ones close to me would be, um... Turners, Singlers, McArthurs, Dunlaps, or maybe the Southwicks. Or if they're in the other ward, the Reeves or the Taylors? Take your pick hahaha.

Transfers! I am indeed moving. I'm going from Paradise clear down to the Woodside ward, which is located in the Citrus Heights stake! I hear it's pretty and nice, but we'll see compared to Paradise. It just doesn't get much better than that, does it? :) Anyway, next week I'll send the address, so hold onto Dad's letter next week until you get that. Thanks.

"I think Dad and I made him feel a little better, but that could be parental delusions." I laughed.

*pompoms for marching band*

I feel the same way about Utah from here. Plus it seems half the ward just moved out, so bleh.

Testimony meeting is probably one of my favorite meetings in the church! I had the opportunity in my ward to bear my testimony, which I enjoyed. :) There was a member who got baptized 11 years ago and bore his testimony for the FIRST TIME yesterday!! So special :3 Basically this Paradise ward is so cute and happy. I'm going to miss it a lot.

So our baptism got moved this week again, so now I won't be a part of it. Oh well. I will just assume then that I've done my part and everything that I was supposed to do. Heavenly Father knows what's best and I feel peace about this move. There most be someone there that needs me too!

Not a lot else this week. A little scatterbrained at the moment too, but I'll get back on that later. Next week, haha. 

Thanks for the letters and help and everything! I LOVE YOU ALL! <3

LOVELOVELOVE,

Sister Nelson