Sent: Monday, March 23, 2015 8:33 AM

 

This week we were actually really successful even though I was stuck inside for two days for being sick. Bro Fuller brought me over to Urgent Care on Saturday so now I've got some good potent medicine and feel pretty great. It feels good to be able to breathe through both nostrils after about a month of not being able to.

So we've got these two crazy neighbors who accused some of the past missionaries in our area of doing some stuff so now we probably have to move out of our apartment. We had a fun day on the phone on Friday trying to clear up the whole mess but now we are set to go. Our landlord told us he would rather kick out our neighbors than us because he has never had complaints about us before and our payments are always early. It sure is worth it to have payments in on time. But I'm pretty sure Pres Vest is just going to move us anyways so that he/we don't have to deal with the situation at all. So we'll see what happens in the next week or so.

Our Bishop told us an awesome story about when he was in the Navy in Vietnam and they had to make an emergency landing in Okinawa in the dark with no lights on the landing strip and no fuel left. It was a pretty sweet story and really showed the strength of his testimony in the Gospel. So I was really glad that he was willing to share that experience with us.

Oh we also went to the Kansas City Zoo last week on P-Day. It only cost us $6 to get in because we are residents so that was pretty sweet. It wasn't a huge Zoo but it was still pretty cool and it was extra fun because we didn't have to wear proselyting clothes. The biggest problem though was that it actually turned out to be a pretty hot day and we didn't bring water bottles, which wouldn't have been a problem except for that all the drinking fountains were closed for winter so there was absolutely no place to get water, unless you wanted to pay like $3 which I'm too cheap to do soooo... Yeah it was still pretty fun though :)

It's kind of crazy how fast time is flying by over here. This transfer it almost over already so I might be gone from Belton in a week and a half. I really have come to love all the members and our investigators over here so I will be a little bummed if I have to leave but at the same time I know that I'll get called to where the Lord wants me to go.

This week Mosiah 4:30 stuck out to me which says "But this much I can tell you, that if ye do not watch yourselves, and your thoughts, and your words, and your deeds, and observe the commandments of God, and continue in the faith of what ye have heard concerning the coming of our Lord, even unto the end of your lives, ye must perish. And now, O man, remember, and perish not". I think the command to remember is one of the most important commands that we hear in the scriptures. Most of the problems we have in life come from the fact that we forget that we are children of God, that He loves us and wants what is best for us, and that our actions bring definite consequences. I know that as we remember the importance of living the Gospel and strive to be examples of Christ in all that we do that we will see immediate blessings in our lives.

We have several investigators that we are teaching that are on/approaching a baptismal date. It's super awesome to be a missionary and to be able to see that change that the Gospel of Jesus Christ brings into the lives of those around you. We get to meet so many people every day of varying faiths, all of which can see the blessing that God has brought into their lives. It's an amazing experience being able to be a guide to help others to come to a more concrete belief in the Savior and his Atonement. It's definitely an experience that I would never trade for anything in the world.

Well that's pretty much it for the week. I don't really have much more interesting stuff to talk about. I hope all is going well for you! Make it a great week! I Love You!

        -Elder Nyholm

 

 

Sent: Monday, March 9, 2015 8:23 AM

 

So this week has been pretty rough. Last week I got sick. Tuesday I got better. Saturday I woke up with a sore throat again. And now I am sick again. So yeah, it's pretty rough doing missionary work when it hurts to talk and you can't breathe through your nose. But I guess it's just another one of those learning experiences that will help me to become a better and more hard working person in the future. At least the weather is super nice now and looks like it should be good for the next two weeks or so. I think it's supposed to be in the 60s for the next few days. Spring is coming and I'm pretty excited for it.

This week we were able to schedule Cooper, a 9 year old boy, on baptismal date. Missionaries have been working with him and his family for the last several months so we are praying that all will go well and he will be baptized on April 18. We are pretty excited for him and he is super excited that he will be able to be baptized.

Most exciting part of the week. We were able to go with Pat Davies to do baptisms in the Kansas City Temple for her first time. She was able to do the work for her grandma and great-grandma and Elder Young did the work for her grandpa and great-grandpa. It was a super awesome experience to be able to go with her to do that. She told me she was going to call you and tell you about it so she's probably already called you or will call you pretty soon.

This week we also did exchanges with the Grandview Elders and so Elder Hansen came to Belton with me. We had a super fun time and learned a lot from each other and had some pretty good success that day. I used to hate exchanges but I've come to really enjoy them over the last 2 or 3 months. I better like them because Elder Young has to conduct 5 exchanges every single transfer in this district. That means an exchange per week. It's a heck of a lot of exchanges so it's a good thing I am starting to enjoy them.

This morning I watched the Finding Faith in Christ video during studies. There was one part that really stuck out to me where a woman caught in adultery is brought to Christ and Christ is asked what her punishment should be. Christ says "He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone". As we know, everyone leaves and Christ is left with the woman. There is some dialogue and Christ says "Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more". I just thought it was so cool that Christ is so quick to forgive us for our mistakes. But that forgiveness is made completely conditional on whether we "Sin no more". Repentance can be a long process but it is a process of growth, and growth never comes easy. But I know that as we truly repent of our mistakes every day, and "go and sin no more", that we can grow to become more like our Heavenly Father.

I'm not really sure what else to write about. Let me know what else you want me to write about in future letters and I'll try to write more. Thank you for everything you do. I Love You! Make it a great week!

        -Elder Nyholm

This is a picture of us and Pat at the temple

 

Sent: Monday, March 2, 2015 8:29 AM

 

It’s been a pretty good time here for the last week. I'm really coming to love Elder Young. He's a super great guy and he's super diligent and hard working. It's nice to have solid example of a companion. I don't feel like I've really had that for a while. So it's definitely a nice change. Not to mention I don't have leadership responsibilities so I have more time to focus on the people we teach, which feels a lot better.

Well it pretty much was just junky weather all week but we made the best of it. With a lot of clothes and a lot of member rides we got through it. I'm just hoping that by the time our next walk week rolls around that we will have some nice weather coming in. I think it was about the middle of March last year that it started warming up and stopped snowing so hopefully it will be about the same this year. I'm really not a fan of walking in the snow. The nice part about walking though is that we (My companion and I) have a lot more time to talk and get to know each other which kind of makes getting along a lot easier. So there is a plus to it all.

Mom, it's nice that about 2/3 of your seminary class actually does scripture mastery. I sure wish I did. On a good note, I can still say the first two from New Testament that I learned my Freshman year. I guess if I had learned them all in the first place maybe they all would of stuck. But since I didn’t, I just keep a little cheat sheet in the front of my scriptures so that I'm still good to go during lessons. I kind of like not having to rely on my memory anyways. It doesn't seem to work too well a lot of the time, which you probably noticed as I was growing up. Especially when you told me that the lawn needed to be mowed and the garbage needed to be taken out........

This week we had a Baptism for a previously ex-communicated member. That was a pretty awesome experience and she is super happy to be able to start over again. She is really an awesome lady and has done a lot to change her life. And Sister Davies gave an awesome talk at the baptism. GO SISTER DAVIES. She was a little nervous as it was her first time ever giving a talk but she did super duper awesome :)

Funny moment. After it snowed we went around with the other Elders in our ward and shoveled a bunch of driveways. We have one family in our ward who always loves to give us hot chocolate but the wife is sick and the husband just had surgery on his shoulder so neither one of them could shovel the walks. Well we went over and shoveled the whole thing and then went up to the door to see if we could share a quick message and he opened the door and said "Come in Elders. And thanks for shoveling the driveway last week. Don't worry about doing it tonight though." Elder Young and I just looked at each other and kept as straight of faces as we could because we had already shoveled the darn thing and he didn’t see it because there were four of us standing in his way hahaha. I think he was probably still pretty happy to walk outside the next day and see that it was all clear.

I was reading through Helaman 5 the other day and verse 41 really stuck out to me where it says "...You must repent, and cry unto the voice, even until ye shall have faith in Christ...". I just thought that it was interesting this scripture shows that repentance and prayer lead to faith. Usually in the church would look at repentance as an act of faith and that we only repent after we have already developed faith. However, I love that this basically says that we should be repenting before we even develop a firm faith and that our repentance, and prayer, will lead to a firm faith in Christ. I know that through the Atonement of Jesus Christ that repentance is made possible and that through repentance and prayer we will develop faith in Jesus Christ and our Heavenly Father.

Well all in all this week went pretty darn fantastic. Make it a great week. I love you!

     -Elder Nyholm

Sent: Monday, February 23, 2015 8:26 AM
Subject: Still in KC3 - Belton

 

I'm glad that you got the package that I sent home and that Dad is enjoying his new tie. I'm also glad that you had fun reading through my journal haha. Yeah that was probably a pretty interesting experience but I'm sure that you get a lot more information from that than you do through my weekly e-mails. So hopefully when I wrote in there I included mostly positive experiences (although I know that often I only write in it because I'm having a bad day so...). Hopefully I will be able to keep myself from collecting anymore stuff so that I don't have to send another package home haha.

So I didn't get transferred. Elder Monroe got transferred over to Ottawa Kansas (boonies). Now my companion is Elder Young (name comes from Brigham Young's oldest brother). He's from Clinton Utah, likes ceramics and basketball, been out 7.5 months. He took my spot as district leader, which is really nice because now I have more time to study for people who we are going to teach instead of preparing trainings. It's really takes a lot of stress out of being a missionary when you don't have the extra responsibilities of a leadership role. I'll enjoy the time while it lasts :)

Yeah this is our walk week. We have car 2 weeks and then lose it for 1. It looks like it's going to be a pretty cold walk week but I kind of enjoy the walk weeks because we get more exercise and aren't sitting down all day. Also it forces us to rely on the members to bring us to appointments which is a really good thing because then we have members at more of our lessons and also develop better relationships with the members. So overall I think our walk weeks are really a blessing.

That's sweet that Erik got to go into Honduras again. I imagine the accent was probably a little weird for him but it's awesome that he still feels comfortable enough with the language that he can go into the city and talk to everyone he needs to. I speak Spanish so little that I still don't feel entirely confident in talking with the Spanish people without someone else who speaks Spanish. I don't have a Spanish companion either so I'm always on my own when we talk to Spanish people. I guess I learn it faster that way though.

I was actually thinking of making some brownies last week. Then I found out that we don't even have a baking pan so I kind of threw that idea out the window. I guess it was just God telling me that I need to eat more healthy and to stop eating junk. Yeah we do have dinners with our members 95% of the time. My meal menu is Breakfast: 3 scrambled eggs and a banana. Lunch: An apple and sometimes white rice w/ hot dogs. Dinner: Anything we get fed. If we don't get fed then I eat the same as I do for lunch. It's a pretty boring diet until dinner but it's cheap and it gets me through the day so it's good enough for me.

This week I was reading in 2 Nephi 4 and verse 35 really stuck out to me. It says "...I know that God will give liberally to him that asketh. Yea, my God will give me, if I ask not amiss; therefore I will lift up my voice unto thee; yea, I will cry unto thee, my God, the rock of my righteousness. Behold, my voice shall forever ascend up unto thee, my rock and mine everlasting God..." It's a great knowledge for us to know that God is waiting to bless us in our lives. Oftentimes to receive those blessings all we have to do is ask with a sincere heart. Prayer is such a simple principle but often in our lives we go without it because we are so quick to forget that we have a loving Heavenly Father who is willing to help us with our trials. I really like what the Bible Dictionary says about prayer that "As soon as we learn the true relationship in which we stand toward God (namely, God is our Father, and we are His children), then at once prayer becomes natural and instinctive on our part (Matt. 7:7–11). Many of the so-called difficulties about prayer arise from forgetting this relationship. Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other. The object of prayer is not to change the will of God but to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant but that are made conditional on our asking for them. Blessings require some work or effort on our part before we can obtain them. Prayer is a form of work and is an appointed means for obtaining the highest of all blessings." I've come know that God really does hear our prayers and that through our sincere prayers we can obtain the strength and the blessings that God already wants to grant us.

This week we met a member of our ward who drives trucks for a living. I asked him where he drives to and he told me "well this week I'm going to be making a delivery in Livermore California". Not only that but he makes his delivery right next to the go-cart place behind the Lab. I just thought it was super cool that this guy that I've never met before was going basically straight to where I live. Kind of a cool experience for me.

Well that's about it for the week. I hope the rest of the week goes well for you. I Love You!

    -Elder Nyholm

Pictures: Old Companion. Old Companion. New Companion. Old District Leader who just died (went home)