Holidays =closed Libraries=No Email

Hey,

We couldn't email on Monday so here is a really short one. 

I am alive. 

We have the fireside with Elder Gavarret tomorrow night. We actually are coming from our zone conference with him. It was good. I'll say more on Monday. Transfers are coming up. 

For the Gratitude Journal project, my gratitude thing is I am grateful for going back a second time to people's houses.

1. Leaving blessings in homes is an interesting concept. I have never thought of that.

2. Yeah Pday Eve is when you have a more laid back Sunday night. I much prefer having work to do.

3. We do exchanges with the Zone Leaders once a transfer. It's fun, lots of back and forth with stories and whatnot.

Okay,  I love you. Bye.

Love. Nick 

Always a Football Connection

Man, that is super cool. NINERS!!!!!

 I’ve had a few run-ins  of my own with the NFL. On Saturday night we went to visit a super cool recent move-in to the ward who is an immigrant from the Ivory Coast. We got to talking and his kids live in Castro Valley. Wild. His son is apparently an all-star running back for CVHS and his mentor is a guy on the Ravens named Paul Kruger. Paul Kruger served in this mission and that is how they know him. Another interesting fact about Paul Kruger is he went to the University of Utah. An even more interesting fact is that he is from Pleasant Grove. That 6 degrees of separation thing is creepy. 

The bigger NFL experience is as such: the Kansas City Chiefs recently hired a new coach named Andy Reid. He happens to be a member of the church. Cool, right? That's not all. This new coach found himself in the sacrament meeting of our Riverview ward. Afterwards he came up to us and shook our hands. I had to hold myself from exploding football upon him. It was super cool. I've seen him on tv many times and we went to a game against his former team, the Eagles, my senior year. There he was, in sacrament meeting. It was unbelievably cool. In hindsight, I would've told him that the Niners are going to kick his team's trash the next time they met. So cool. It would be really sweet to have a Super Harbowl. Do they ever use LaMichael James on special teams for like kick returns and whatnot? They should, he was the best running back in college football and a track star.

The work is going well. We've been working hard and staying anxiously engaged. We are trying to get some people to church because everyone that was a regular church goer dropped us. It has been a little bit of a struggle, but we are working through it. We found a few cool investigators this week. We're hoping that they work out alright. 

We are having a member of the Seventy named Eduardo Gavarret come out to visit our mission next week. It will be pretty neat. Last year we had one named Elder Evans come here and he had a lot of good things to say. He spoke at our stake conference when President Anderson was called. He was the guy that 40 minutes left in the meeting and used every last one of them. I’m excited about Elder Gavarret coming. It's going to be cool. He will be holding a special fireside for all of the Spanish people in the area at the Kaw River building. It is going to be great.

We have hit another classic case of Missouri weather: in the 60's on Friday and it hasn't gotten above 28 degrees since. Better not get used to anything because it’s always changing.

Go to the January Ensign and look on page 76. Is that our house in the background? Why did you let this family into our home? 

1. Yes, we have a microwave in the apartment.

2. We give them quite a few tries if they dog us on an appointment. We just go until they tell us not to come anymore. Persistence is key.

3. We are going to play some basketball today. It will be fun.

Okay, mi familia, have a great week and cheer hard for the Niners. I love you.

Love, Nick

Fish out of Water: Missionaries in the Liquor Store

Note: Because of the Christmas and New Years Holidays, the library was closed and Nick was not able to email.

Hey  I spent $30.00 at a liquor store. 

So what happened was we switched cars with the Zone Leaders for some random reason, and we needed to get gas, but the gas card was not in the car. We called the Zone Leaders and they didn't have it, then the AP's called us and said that we could use one of our Blue cards (card with monthly amount) and get it reimbursed later. We just happened to be in an unfamiliar area, and the only gas station close was a Crown Liquor. Therefore, your son spent $30 at a liquor store on his mission. Pretty crazy, considering I have never set foot in one before.

The rest of our week was alright. We are still working with one strong investigator, and now he wants us to focus on getting his wife comfortable with the church. 

We had dinner with a really cool couple last night. The dad hooked us up-he gave us some ties from his mission in Hawaii (not fair, right?) and a CD with some Polynesian hymns on it. It was sweet. 

The baptisms lat week were good. It was 2 part-member families that we were helping complete. Both families are from the Marshall Islands, which is in the Pacific somewhere. 

The real deal in the field is the real deal. We teach all day everyday, at least we try to. Sometimes people blow off our appointments or shut the door on us. Sometimes we teach like 7 or 8 people in a day. Lots of ups and downs. We had a hard time getting members at our lesson last week, so that was tough. Also, nobody that we are teaching showed up to church yesterday. It was a real bummer. It is okay though, because the Lord has been working with us. Our tracting time went really well during the week, and we have some excellent potential investigators to teach. For New Years, I slept and heard the gunshots go off. Other than that, it was a normal day here. We are making sure that this past week's low points can be made into next week's high points. We had a cool lesson in EQ yesterday about how we can build up our lines of defense against Satan.  Making constant improvements is key. Life is good.

Interesting, the Packers are coming to the Stick again. Their QB has an arm and has put up good numbers. SF's QB is a scrambler with some good weapons. Eerily similar to a past game. Once again, Go Warriors! 

1. I'm having a hard time making resolutions, because I have some 8 month ideas, and some 4 month ideas, but I am not sure what exactly to pick. With the Book of Mormon challenge, I want to read it in English and Spanish before August. That's probably the biggest one.

2. Most of our finding is through tracting. I like it because we get to meet lots of different people. We haven't gotten very many referrals lately.

3. I have no idea who is 18 and who isn't, so all the new missionaries are the same to me!

Be safe and healthy. 

Love you, Nick

P.S. any word on scholarships?