Living large in "Dead Bluff"

So everybody here calls Red Bluff "Dead Bluff" because there ain't a whole lot to do, but I think it is great here! We see a whole lot of awesome stuff, and the people are awesome!

We are working with a couple people that are so close to baptism right now. We are trying to meet with the Roberts family again, because we haven't been able to for about a week and a half. We are going to talk to the father and daughter about being baptized, and we are really looking forward to it.

We are having family home evening with the Lawrence family tonight, and we trying to help them get to the temple. They have had some family problems recently, so it has been pretty tough for them. They are one of my favorite families in the ward. They have such good hearts and they just want to do what is right. We are going to set goals with them with things they need to do to prepare for the temple. It is gonna be great!

I am trying to memorize a scripture a day again to make my study more effective, and it is awesome! I memorized Ephesians 4:11-14 this morning which is about the organization of the church. One of my favorite parts was verse 13, "Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God." I am grateful for church organization that allows us to be able to do as much good as we can. It enlarges our sphere of influence beyond what we can do ourselves and allows us to serve people in ways that weren't possible before.

Give em' Heaven!

Sincerely,
Elder Nielsen

Red Bluff, CA

Howdy from Red Bluff!

I love Red Bluff already. The city has a population of about 15,000 people, and then there are people living outside city limits in the country. A good number of the members in the ward live out in the country, so we snag a ride with them a couple miles out of the country for dinner! Our area is about 50 miles across. It is huge! Crazy thing is we are on bikes. Luckily we have a set of Sister missionaries that also cover the ward, and they have a car!

There is a good amount of work going on here, and it is really exciting. We are planning to invite a girl and her dad to baptism this next week, and we are really looking forward to it.

We were in the family history center this past week and I was looking at my pedigree a bit and seeing how far back I could get with my ancestors. Apparently I have a line tracing back to Adam and Eve! I didn't know that! It went through a bunch of royal lines, and I found out I am the heir to the throne for about 4 different countries (Italy, England, Italy, and France). Pretty sweet!

I know the Gospel is true, and it is the way to find true and lasting happiness. Being here I see a lot of different people, and the people that are truly happy make the Gospel a way of living.

I love you all! I hope you had a good Easter, and that you have a great week!

Love,
Elder Nielsen

Peace out, Roseville

Yep, I'm moving.

I'm getting transferred to Red Bluff, which is one of the most spread out zones in the mission. Apparently I am on a bike too. Future Lance Armstrong right here! Except for all the....yeah.

So...I am pretty excited to go to Red Bluff. There are mountains really close to the area, so just to see them will be awesome! I have been missing the Utah mountains pretty good, and so it will be nice to see some here! Red Bluff is more of a country area, except for the town of Red Bluff. It is one of the hottest areas in the mission, with a temperature reaching 115+.

We met with an investigator named Rene this past week, and we were able to have one of the most spiritual lessons that I have had on my mission. We were teaching him that Gospel of Jesus Christ, and we started talking about Baptism. He has talked about being baptized in the Lutheran church, and we started talking about proper authority. I was able to bear my testimony about the restored Church of Christ and the authority that we have. After that he kind of sat back and said, "That is what I was supposed to learn." When he had first met us he had told us that he felt there was something he was meant to learn from us, and he reminded us of when he said that. He said that he felt something like electricity run up his spine, and we talked to him more about the Holy Ghost and what the purpose of it is. We invited him to be baptized, but he said he is going to have to talk to his girlfriend. She plays a very large part in his life, and he doesn't want to mess anything up because they are getting married soon. She is Lutheran, so we are pretty sure he doesn't want anything to grow between them because of religion. We are hoping that he will choose to follow the promptings of the Spirit, because he has felt it so strongly.

I love you all, muchly. THE GOSPEL IS TRUE. I know it.

Much Love,

Elder Nielsen

"if you believe all these things, see that ye do them."

Hello, all!

I hope you all enjoyed General Conference. I know I did! Now we get to bless our lives by acting on those things we have learned, hence the subject line (Mosiah 4:10). If we believe something will bless us, then we might as well put it into effect instead of putting it away in a filing cabinet to attend later on!

We had dinner at our ward mission leader's house this past week. He invited his less-active friend to come as well. We tried to figure out what kind of message we could share that would really help his friend. We were looking through some Mormon Messages to see if any of them would be good to share. We came to "Waiting on the Road to Damascus" that was based on a talk by Elder Uchtdorf. While we were watching it I just had a feeling that we needed to show that video. At dinner, we watched the video and talked about it for a couple minutes. After dinner our ward mission leader and his friend were giving us a ride to the church for another appointment. His friend turned around and said, "Can I ask you why you showed that video?" We told him that we had prayed to figure out what Heavenly Father wanted us to show and felt that we needed to show that specific video. He told us that video was exactly what he needed, and he thanked us for it. Promptings from the Spirit are real!

We had a lesson with the Pillay family this last week, and we invited them to come back to church. Their answer seemed to make things a bit clearer than we had understood in the past. They told us they need to work through some personal things before they can commit, and they really love the church and the people they have met there. I hope everything goes well for them in the future because they are such an amazing family.

One of my favorite talks from conference was Elder Uchtdorf's, speaking on gratitude. I loved when he said, "Gratitude is the catalyst to all Christlike attributes." It seems that if we want to be more like Christ than having gratitude is a pretty important thing! I know gratitude brightens the blessings and shrinks the sorrows that we all receive in life.

Love,

Elder Nielsen

Wild, Wild West..coast

Hey everybody!

The beginning of church was kind of insane this past week. Rene said that he and his girlfriend were going to make it to church, and so we were waiting out in there hall for them to come so we could walk in with them. While we were waiting a lady in our ward was walking down the hall and someone opened the door right when she walked by. It turns out that she got whacked in the head pretty hard by it. Right then, Rene texted us saying that they were there, and so we went to get them from outside to show them where we were headed. On the way there someone asked us if we could give the lady a blessing since Sacrament meeting had already started and nobody had any consecrated oil. Luckily we did! We went to get Rene and Melinda real quick and we showed them where we were sitting in the chapel. Then we walked back out of the chapel to go give the lady a blessing. At this  point things had calmed down a lot, and we were able to give her a blessing in one of the spare rooms. It was a crazy and neat experience all within a couple of minutes!

The part-member family that just moved into the ward were also able to make it to church this week! They stayed for sacrament meeting and then headed home because the wife had her stroke only about a month ago, so she is still trying to recover from it. There is a less-active member that we are working with as well. He said he made a personal commitment to come to church this week, but he didn't show up. We stopped by after church, and he said that he chickened out because he didn't have the right clothes. I'm just gonna make it so the missionaries start wearing overalls to church so the people that come in different clothes don't feel uncomfortable! He said he is going to make it this next week though since he will have church clothes by then.

We got a tornado here in Roseville! We were eating dinner at a member family's house, and all of our phones got "EMERGENCY ALERT: TORNADO" texts at the same time. The members told us that tornados very rarely come to Roseville, and the last one hadn't come for a couple decades! They figured out that it wasn't a very strong tornado at all, and it was clear on the other side of Roseville. The time for the tornado warning passed, so we were alright to go and start doing missionary work again. We found out the most damage it did was broke a window and took some shingles of a roof. That is the closest I have been to a tornado though, so I was pretty pumped!

We met with the Pillay family and talked to them about General Conference coming up this next week. They said they would like to watch it, and we showed them how to get to the video on the internet to watch it live. We pulled it up, and it said the Women's session was starting in about 45 minutes. We made sure to get out of there just in time for the mom and daughter to watch it! They also broke the news to us that they are moving in about 2 months. I was kind of bummed to hear it, so I joked with them and asked if they were moving to Orem, UT. I was hoping they would say yes, but nope. They told us they bought a house in a gated community right there within the ward boundaries though! I thought they were moving somewhere really different because they had told us they want to move to Oregon within a couple of years. I am super excited because the ward will be able to stay in contact with them and continue to fellowship them!

I love you guys! Have an awesome week, and enjoy general conference!

Elder Nielsen

March is marching on...haha.....ha...

Hey everyone!

Please enjoy the incredibly well thought out pun in the subject line. Really though, It is so crazy how we are almost in April 2014!

We were able to meet with a part-member family this week. They are a really nice couple that just moved into the ward. Patty, the wife, is a member. She had a stroke at the end of February and it really messed with her. She received a Priesthood blessing, and it helped her recovery A TON. The doctors were incredibly surprised to see how it all worked out. Her husband saw the difference too, and it softened his heart a bit. They haven't come to church yet since Patty is still recovering, but they should be coming this next Sunday!

President and Sister Weston stopped by to inspect our apartment this past week, and they were telling us how good it looked! President was asking us about the family that we have been teaching and we talked with him about them for a bit. He called us the next day and said that he wants to come with us on a lesson when we teach them. We are really excited, and we hope it goes well!

We are in extreme finding mode right now, because we don't have a whole lot of progressing investigators. We are going to be doing quite a bit of talking to people!

Love you guys!

Elder Nielsen

Happy "Tough day for the Color-Blind" Day!

Top o' the mornin'!

The Pillay family had us over for lunch the other day, and they fed us Indian Curry! It was so good, and super spicy! They told us that we handled it better than most people do. I guess they just breed em' strong up in Utah! They are such an awesome family. They told us they would like the time to take a step back for awhile, and they said they would like to visit their family in South Africa before making the decision to move forward with baptism. They told us they are going to visit them in July, so I really hope they make the decision to be baptized. I hope that I can come back to Roseville to see it too!

Super cool miracle that we had this past week. We have been trying to find new investigators through less-actives, and it isn't always the easiest thing. Most of the less-active members in this area want nothing to do with the church, so we are having a difficult time! We were able to meet with a single sister who has an 8 year old son though. We shared a message with her and invited her to come to church. She said, "I will try my hardest." We have heard that before, and then the people don't follow through on the commitment. Fast-forward a couple days when we were sitting in Sacrament meeting right after it started. We saw the single sister and her son standing just outside the chapel, and we waved them over to come sit next to us! We haven't had very many less-active people come to church for a bit of time, so it was a very awesome miracle to see.

We went to a funeral on Saturday for a lady in the ward that passed away about a week ago. It was an interesting funeral, because the sister and her husband went to a couple of different churches throughout their lives and made a lot of close friends. The service was held in the chapel of the church, and some people from the church talked about false doctrine so it was kind of interesting. It was a really nice service though, and it was nice to have people see how we aren't the same as the Amish people! 

There is a family that we are going to go back and see this week and teach the Restoration. We have met the wife and the husband on separate occasions, and both were inconvenient times to stop by. They said we can stop by this next week, so we have hope that it is going to go well! We don't know too much about them, but we are hoping for a miracle!

This next week is going to be filled with miracles. I can feel it. Stay tuned! It's gonna be a good one.

Love you all! 

Elder Ethan "NorCal" Nielsen