"With God all things are possible"

Happy President's Day!

We were able to meet with Steven and his family a couple of times this past week. Have I ever said how awesome I think they are? I hope so, because they are super awesome! We taught them the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and we invited them to be baptized. We invited them two weeks ago, and they told us they wanted to come to church twice before they decided on that. This time we invited them they accepted a baptismal date of March 1st! It is the last Saturday before the transfer, and I will probably be getting shipped out of Roseville to somewhere else. I am hoping that everything goes well in order for them to be baptized on the 1st of March, and it has worked out so far! We taught them the Word of Wisdom as well, because they have had a history of drinking tea and coffee. We explained to them that there is a 2 week period before baptism in which you have to live the Word of Wisdom completely in order to be baptized. Before we could even start going over ways they would be able to overcome coffee and tea, Steven mentioned to us that he has been off of coffee for a couple of days already! We were so excited since they had already started to live the Word of Wisdom on their own! Steven and his family inspire me by the way they learn the commandments of God, and then they live them. No questions asked. They know that because it is a commandment from God, we really don't need to bother ourselves with the why and how. They know that Heavenly Father knows what is best for us, and they follow His commandments for that reason.

I had the opportunity to play an arrangement of "Come Thou Fount" in church this past Sunday. I was so nervous, and my heart was pounding so loud I was sure everybody could hear it! Luckily, one of my friends in the ward was giving his "Pre-Mission" talk, and since he was sitting on the stand he was able to joke with me to calm me down a little bit right before I played. I made sure to pray really hard right before hand too! My leg was shaking so bad on the pedals that I thought people could see the whole piano moving! It went well, though. Multiple people thanked me for playing, and I told them to thank my parents! They are the ones that made sure the lessons happened and were paid for. I just got the fun part!

We weren't able to have much of a sit-down lesson with Kimberly this past week, but we did stop by to try and see how she is doing. She told us that she was watching a Christian movie a couple days ago about a girl who rebels against her father and her religion, and goes off to do her own stuff. She finds out that she isn't as happy as she thought she would be, and ends up going back to her father and to church in the end. Kimberly told us the movie really touched her, and put everything into perspective. She told us she has felt she has pushed back against what we have taught her and invited her to do at times, and she told us she is so grateful for everything we have done. She said she has been trying a lot harder to get over her issue with coffee, and she has been off of it for 3 days now! She has told us that she has had coffee every day since she was 10 or 11, and it has literally become a part of her. Doctors have been so surprised at how crazy her medical statistics are because of how much coffee she has had in her life. By her being able to be off coffee for even 3 days really strengthens my faith that "with men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible." (Matthew 19:26) She had tried to do it by herself before, but it didn't work out until she humbled herself and turned to God.

Love you all! Have a great week!

Elder Nielsen