Sent: Monday, December 30, 2013 9:39 AM
Subject: Into Week 2

 

So this week went by really really really fast... Just like all the other ones ;) Its kind of hard to believe that I've almost been out for 2 months already because time is just going by so fast. Anyways, this week went really good. We had a fair amount of success teaching people although its been pretty hard with the holidays and such. We have a few new investigator families and A guy named Braulio who is investigating the church. He's 17 and he's really a pretty awesome kid. I can't imagine myself taking lessons from missionaries when I was 17 so props to him :D.

This week was also pretty nice because we actually had warm weather. We had a few days that were up in the 50's. It took away all the snow so now we can actually get places without slipping all over the place. Now it's cold again though so that's kinda a bummer. I think it gets up to about 25 degrees or so which is nice but then it drops pretty low at night so its kind of a bummer.

Not many interesting things happened this week but I'll hit some of the highlights. First off, I got to call home and face-time with you guys so that was awesome. It was great getting to see that you were all doing well. Now I just have to wait 5 more months till we get to do it again haha. We also had Christmas Eve dinner with the Bishop. They had tons of food which was great because they had left overs which meant that we got to bring some home. It was good food too so I was pretty excited. We also had a ward Christmas party. It got cancelled last week due to the snow so we had it on Saturday night. It was pretty fun and we got to meet a lot of new people and a few nonmembers which is good because now we have some more people to go see. Then at church yesterday I squatted down to give a little kid a handshake (probably about 2 years old) and he ran up to me and gave me a hug. Super unexpected and I didn't know what to do because as missionaries we are not really supposed to touch kids at all other than for handshakes or high fives or whatever. Anyways, I just thought it was funny because it was the first time this kid has every seen me, and his parents are both Hispanic so I look nothing like them, and he still came up and gave me a hug. Pretty weird right?

So I have two quotes that I really liked this week. One of them is actually from when I was in the CCM but I just remembered it so here goes. Our teacher told us that while we are in the mission field (and throughout our lives) we need to follow the saying "Work like everything depends on You, Pray like everything depends on God". I figure if we follow this advice then everything will always work out pretty good for us. We will never have an idle moment and we will always have the companionship of the spirit. I've found that you can never go wrong with hard work and prayer. The other good quote I found (yesterday?) was "Replace Fear with Faith". We've had a few investigators that have said that they are afraid to join our church because maybe its not the true church or whatever. But this quote can really help them and everyone else. If we have fears of sharing the Gospel with others, all we need to do is replace our fear with faith and everything will work our exactly how it should. There really is nothing to fear as long as we have faith that God is on our side.

So yeah, that's my week in a nutshell. Nothing too exciting going on here but all is going well. My Spanish is coming along pretty well, at least to the point where I can understand a fair amount of what people are talking about. I've found that my biggest weakness in the language really is being able to understand the natives. They speak suuuuuper fast so I'll understand one sentence and completely miss the next one. It will come with time though I guess. Oh, and thank you again for the Christmas gifts you sent. They were much appreciated :D Hope all is going well with you all at home :)

      Love

         -Elder Nyholm