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