Sent: Monday, July 28, 2014 10:17 AM
Subject: Another Week of Change

 

Soooo a lot changed this week. A lot a lot. So I'm opening an area, Shoal Creek Valley. It has only been a ward for 4 weeks so I'm kind of repeating what I did in the Hill Park Ward. The Elders that were here before (about 2 or 3 months ago) were a bit disobedient and got pulled out of the area so we are dealing with trust issues from the members in this ward which is hard. On top of that I'm training a new missionary (Elder Drinkall, who just happened to come out with Elder Fillerup as well... seriously, the names are no joke) which is a pretty new experience in and of itself. But so far it is going well. Bummer part about the area is that there are pretty close to zero Spanish speakers around, which is weird because 5 of the 8 missionaries in our district are Spanish speaking missionaries. So to answer your question mom, yes this week is full of new stuff.

 

Hey, Erika Pujols was baptized the day before transfers and she actually asked for me to baptize her so that was a great experience. We had started teaching her but then turned her over to the sister missionaries a little while back. Hopefully her little sister and her two friends (who have been attending church for about a month now) will follow suit. Pray for them :D

 

Mom, you should definitely take up Dustin Prusso on the invite to learn about the climbing gear and work at "the wall". That way you can come outdoor climbing with Paul and me ;)

 

On cooking catfish, we cooked some up a few weeks ago for a District Picnic. We got the fish a little wet and then put it in a dish of zataran (I think is what it was called) and then fried it and it came out REALLY good. Might be something for Dad to try in the future if he plans to cook catfish again. And the tortillas with cinnamon sugar are really good also. The Spanish members in Kaw River made them for Christmas so we had a lot of those. I agree, they are pretty delicious.

 

The thing that really stuck out to me in my studies this week comes from Moroni 10:3-5. Everyone knows that it's Moroni's promise that if you Read the Book of Mormon, Ponder it in your heart and Ask God if it is true then Heavenly Father will answer your prayer so that you Know that it is true. I think it really applies to a lot more than just knowing the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon though. I think that same principle can be applied to any situation or question that we have in our lives. We have to Read/Study/Listen/Act in some way so that we can put forth our own effort and show our determination to find out what we want to know. We then need to Ponder the matter in our hearts, really see how the things that we have studied/read/heard can apply to our lives and our situation. After all we can do we then ask our Heavenly Father to assure us that the decision that we plan to take is correct. The Spirit of God will then let us Know through feelings of  "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance" (as talked about in Galatians 5:22-23) if the decision that we have made is correct and at that point we really will have obtained knowledge. So I guess the goal is to see what situations or questions we have in our lives that we can apply to this pattern.

 

Well that's about it for the week. So far everything is going great here so we will just keep on keeping on and working hard. Have a great week! Love you all!

 

    -Elder Nyholm

 

Here's some pictures.

 

1) Erika's Baptism;

 

2) Great-Grandpa>Grandpa>Father>Son (Elders Christensen>Sanchez>Nyholm>Drinkall);

 

3) Elder and Sister Haws. Elder Grzan and I are the only missionaries who they have picked up from the airport. They finish their mission in about 3 weeks.