So much.

Oh my goodness. This past week was jam packed. Here goes nothing!

So, basically this last transfer was one of the best I have ever had in my mission. We were able to get the work rolling more, get the members a bit more excited, and the zone I am in is just freaking amazing. All of the missionaries in my zone are awesome. I grew so close to them, and we all became like family. That is really never happened with any other of my zones, but it did with this one. There are only 13 of us. This allowed us to get to know each other a lot and support and strengthen each other. A few people in our zone are getting transferred, so I am sad about that. My own companion got transferred. It is sad to see Elder Inman go. I am looking forward to this next transfer though. I am going to make it a good one.

Elder Ewell, one of my favorite missionaries, finished his mission his past week. It was so cool, because I got to see him and Elder Benedict before Elder Ewell left. They had to drive a long way from up north so Elder Ewell could make his flight in the morning. They stayed with us Thursday night, so we were able to catch up a bit. Man, I love those guys.

So one of the biggest events of the week was Elder Inman and me getting sick. We woke up on Friday morning and started puking up everything we had. All I can say is it didn't feel amazing. We were pretty much bedridden for the rest of that day. Elders Zaugg, Biggs, Dunn, and Dresden came over and gave us blessings though. I'm so grateful for the priesthood. So that describes Friday. We were sick at home all day.

Saturday we did a blitz in the Antelope 1st area. We knocked on quite a few doors. We did end up getting into a seventh-day Adventists home. She was very nice, and we had a very nice visit with her. We left her the Book of Mormon. She said she would check it out. She also gave us one of her books that she reads from. It is like a biker's guide to Jesus. Like a motorcycle biker. Looked pretty interesting! I started feeling a little bit sick again. It was really weird because my neck and upper back started getting really stiff too. I was talking to another missionary and they said it could be meningitis. We went back to the apartment and I called our mission nurse. After making a few calls she figured it would be best if I went to the emergency room. So we went there at about 9:30 at night. We walked into the ER and everybody's heads turned to look at us. It looked straight out of an episode of "House" or something like that. Everybody was just staring at us with blank faces. Kind of freaked me out a little bit. I got my blood drawn, had to wait a couple hours, and then we found out I was totally fine. We celebrated that we could finally go home. We got back to our apartment around 1 AM on Sunday. It was a really weird night.

Love you all.

Elder Nielsen

The Antelope Zone, wearing the amazing shirts the sisters made for them.

Smelling the roses in the Roseville mission

This was an interesting week. There was a lot of up and downs, but everything is good. This upcoming week is the last week of the transfer, so I hope it goes great!

We had a couple lessons with Bridget this week, and they all went pretty well. We gave her a tour of the church, and we talked to her about coming to know if the Book of Mormon and the LDS church is true. At that point, she told us that about a month ago she had a dream that an angel came to her and told her "You need to find out what is true and what is false." She had that dream right before she met us, and we pointed that out to her. She seemed to understand the importance of finding out for herself, and she said she would pray to find out.

We had an awesome visit with an investigator whose first language is Russian. She speaks very good English, but there are some things that we aren't able to communicate very well. We went over to her home with a ward missionary name Brother Sprague, who is a champ. He is 89 years old and has some difficulty getting around but still wants to come out with us. He is an awesome example to me. So we taught Raeisa, our investigator, about the Book of Mormon. We bore testimony and promised that it would help her grow closer to God, and she said that is what she needs. She said she would read the Book of Mormon. I'm so glad we met her. She is such a sweet lady, and I enjoy meeting with her a lot!

We were visiting a less active member yesterday, and she was very nice. It wasn't a good time to see her right then so we set up another time to come back this week. As we were leaving she said, "you guys need something nice." She ran inside the house, grabbed a pair of scissors, came back out, and cut a rose off her rose bush for each of us. You know it is a great day when you get a rose in the California Roseville Mission!

Peace and blessings upon you all.

Elder Nielsen

Hanging out at the church on p-day

Week of Spiritualness

Hello everyone!

This weekend has been very special. It was awesome that he had the opportunity to hear from the Prophet and the Apostles this weekend. I love listening to General conference, and this one was great! I especially liked the talks that spoke on the importance and value of the family. 

We had a very cool opportunity today to go to the temple as a mission. It was even more special experience because it happened on April 6, which happens to be the day the LDS Church was formed, and more importantly, the actual day of Christ's birth. I felt the Spirit very strong in the temple, and it was so awesome

We had an awesome experience with one of our investigator's this past week. We stopped by last night, and she said she really want to know all about the church. She says she feels it is true all ready, and she just wants to learn more about it.

I love you all. I know this gospel is true.

Elder Nielsen

Sab qaum teb Highlands

Happy Easter Week, everyone!

I will explain the subject line. Don't you worry.

Good things happened this week. We are working hard and the work is definitely progressing! I am glad I am serving here in North Highlands. It is an awesome place, and it is where I am supposed to be at this point in my mission.

We finally got our bikes this past week, so we aren't walking anymore. We have been able to get around a lot quicker now, so it has been great!

We found a new person to teach this past week, and she is awesome! Her name is Rachel. We met her when we were trying to visit some of our investigators. Elder Inman and I don't know them very well so we wanted to get to know them more. While we were there on the porch Rachel came out and started talking to us. She talked about some of the things that have happened in her life and explained that she wants to start going back to church. She said she was planning on coming to our Church on Sunday, so we offered to give her a tour of the church before she came. She accepted and we gave her the tour on Saturday night. She came on Sunday with her two young boys and she seemed to enjoy it. Unfortunately, her boys got a little rowdy so she took off early. We visited with her yesterday and she said it was nice. We are meeting with her again tonight in a members home, so I hope things continue to go well!

I also wanted to explain something cool about our area. There are a lot of Hmong people who don't speak any English in our area. We have one Hmong Elder down in this part of our mission, and luckily he's in our zone! He has been teaching us a little bit of Hmong so we can train talk to some of the people that don't speak any English. I've picked up on a little bit of it, but it is pretty difficult! The pronunciation of the words is very technical, and there are differences in pronunciations for different words that I don't even hear yet. It is fun though! We kind of stumbled our way through street contacting a Hmong person the other day, and they accepted a Book of Mormon! Definitely a cool experience. That explains the subject line - it means "North Highlands" in Hmong.

I am super pumped for general conference this week. I always look forward to hearing the talks from certain apostles (Christofferson, Bednar, Holland), and then there are always awesome talks from members of the Seventy. We are probably going to watch a few of the sessions in our stake center, which is huge! It has two chapels in one building. Going to be pretty sweet. The church really should rent a movie theater for general conference and sell popcorn, but only on the Saturday sessions. That would be super cool.

I love you all. I hope you have a great week!

Elder Nielsen

North Highlands

{Elder Nielsen didn't sent a group e-mail last week, so let me catch you up before you read this week's update. When he was asked to be an AP, his mission president asked him whether he wanted to finish his mission as an AP, or go back out "into the field" and focus on missionary work again. He said he wanted to serve the last two transfers (12 weeks) of his mission in another area. Last week he was transferred to North Highlands, and his new companion is Elder Inman from Lehi.}

Hello!

There are so many things that occurred this past week that I really don't know where to begin.

North Highlands is definitely one of the most unique places that I have served on my mission. My area is arguably the most southern area in the mission. The border of my ward is also the border between my mission and the California Sacramento Mission. My ward building is about 50 feet from being outside the mission, and the church I go to is where some Sacramento missionaries also go to church. I got to meet some of them this past week, and it was really weird! I have only seen Roseville missionaries for a long time, so it was weird to meet missionaries currently serving from a different mission.

I don't feel like I can do this past week justice in an email, but I will do my best! Our area is actually one of the smallest areas in the mission, so we have just been walking around everywhere. We probably walked about 25-30 miles this past week, but it seems like a lot more! We have had the chance to talk to about 3 million people so far, so that has been awesome! We had a couple neat experiences come from it so far. We talked to a man named Samuel last Wednesday. He is a man in his 80s, and he was standing out on his driveway when we began to talk to him. We got into a conversation with him and found out that his wife of about 60 years passed away about 2 years ago. He began to cry as he told us that he missed her, and it tugged at my heart strings a little bit. We talked to him about how he could live for eternity with his wife. He seemed very receptive to the message. We gave him a Plan of Salvation pamphlet and he said he would love to read over it. It was an awesome experience.

There were a number of funny experiences that we had while walking around too. We were walking home on Saturday night after having tried to contact a referral. As we were walking we saw a lady in her 30s biking the opposite way of us down the street. As we were on the sidewalk she started biking towards us, and we began to wonder what in the world was going to happen. As she got very close she leaned over on her seat and barked "Woof!" right in my face! I walked away more than a little confused at what had just happened. There was another funny experience that we had just yesterday. We were walking towards dinner and we walked right by another lady. As she passed us she looked at Elder Inman and blew him a big kiss! It was very dramatic, which made it hilarious!

I have also decided I need to learn Russian very quickly! There is an apartment complex in our area that we were proselytizing in the other day, and the amount of people of Russian descent that lived in that complex was insane. Literally about 50-60% of the people in the complex seem to be from Russia or the surrounding countries. We tried talking to some of them, but some only spoke very broken English. However, we did talk to one lady named Raeisa who spoke fairly good English. She said missionaries had come over in the past and she always felt good when they were there. She said we could come back another time too! Luckily we have a lady who spoke Russian on her mission, so we might be using her quite a bit for this particular apartment complex!

I am so grateful for the power of the Gospel to change lives. If we focus on trying to live like the Savior then our lives will be changed for the better.

Overall, this will likely end up being the most eventful area of my mission. It will definitely keep things exciting.

I love you all, and I hope you have a fantastic week!

Elder Nielsen

Rocklin & Rollin'

Hey everybody!

This past week was pretty good. I went on exchange with Elder Gillies and we set a goal to find 2 new investigators. We were trying to go all over the place to find people to teach, but we couldn't talk to any one that wanted to talk to us. We decided we would walk towards the college campus and try and talk to people. We started talking to a guy named Micah (Shoutout to Elder Moore!), so I told him one of my best friends back home is named Micah. We talked to him for about 10 minutes and he said he has really been trying to develop his relationship with God. He seemed so sincere; we gave him a Book of Mormon and promised it would help him develop his relationship with God and he said he would read it! It was such an awesome experience.

We have an all-mission conference tomorrow with Elder Nielson of the Seventy to talk about using technology in a righteous way. I am very excited to see everyone in the mission!

I love you guys and hope you have a great week.

Elder Nielsen

Rock City

This week was very busy with Zone Conferences across the mission. They were pretty enjoyable, but they seemed to get pretty long near the end of the week. We had a meeting from about 8:30-5 for each of Tuesday-Friday, and I thought I was starting to develop "Restless leg" syndrome! The Tuesday meeting was in Anderson, Wednesday in Yuba City, Thursday in Lincoln, and Friday in Antelope. One of the main topics of the meeting was conversion. President Marston had asked everyone to prepare a 5-minute talk on how they had become converted on their mission, and I had the chance to be one of the people to give talks. It was a neat experience to hear the experiences of all the different missionaries and to piece them all together.

I love talking to people on the street, and just wherever they are! This was the thing I disliked most at the beginning of my mission, and I know I enjoy it so much. Yesterday we were having a lesson with a recent convert on the college campus, and we started talking to this guy named Tanner as we were walking out. He said he has never gone to church much but he wanted to check out Mormon.org from the card we gave to him. It is so cool to just do a little bit here and there especially if we aren't able to start teaching someone right away. He said he hadn't heard much about the church other than the musical about the Book of Mormon, so now he gets to learn actual stuff!

We also talked to a guy last night as we went to visit a less-active. He was looking at his car a few parking spots down from us, so we walked up and started talking to him. He has a bunch of LDS friends, and he told us he is searching for truth on his own right now. We shared Moroni 10:4-5, and talked to him about how we can come to know truth through study and prayer. He said he would check it out and add us on Facebook so we can keep in contact with him! He told us he likes doing a bunch of stuff, like slack lining, so we are going to do it with him sometime!

At zone conference, we also had the chance to hear departing testimonies from the missionaries who going home in the next 2 transfers. I love hearing the testimonies of the missionaries who have been through a mission worth of successes and failures. I have even come to enjoy hearing the testimonies of those departing more and more as my mission has grown shorter on the tail end. One of the Elders that bore testimony really touched me a lot. This particular missionary is a very smart guy. He has also had his fair share of trials on his mission. He shared how he has battled with depression and insomnia, so he spends most of his time in the night by himself. He said he has felt very alone at times, and the only comfort he could receive was from the Atonement. His general message was this:

"Sometimes the Atonement only assists us by causing us to know we are not alone in comprehending our suffering since we know Christ knows exactly how we feel. When we pray to our Heavenly Father, if our plea for the removal of our trials is a "not now...not yet." then Christ, because of his Atonement, is still able to comfort us with companionship. As we are in the midst of sorrow or affliction he puts his arm around our shoulders and comfortingly says 'I know...I know.' Sometimes this companionship is the strongest thing we could receive, and it is, in the end, really all we do need." In the words of Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, "...because Jesus walked such a long, lonely path utterly alone, we do not have to do so." I know Christ is here to help is in times of trial and to help us become better through those times.

To finish the week off right I had the opportunity to go to the temple to witness the sealing of this couple, Bob and Lois. I had taught them while I was in my first area, Citrus Heights, and they are the nicest couple ever. The missionary I am with is Elder Zaugg, and he is the one that replaced me in Citrus Heights. It was such an awesome experience to be at the temple with Bob and Lois. I am so grateful I had the chance to work with them, and I am so happy they are now sealed together for eternity. They have so much love for each other, and they are so sweet.

I hope you all have a stupendous week!

Elder Nielsen