Good morning family!
It has been another wonderful week here in Kazan...just livin’ the dream on the mission you know!  I don't know that I have time to write back, but definitely appreciated the nice letters from Grandma Nielson and Arnett and loved to hear from them.  I might not always get much written back, but I love to hear from you and love you two!  And Grandpa Nielson and Arnett as well of course.  I will do my best to answer questions and report a little on this last week.   First, I gotta report on the new comp.  Holy cow, he is so cool.  We are way good buds already and have had a hoot this week working together.  I am excited for this cycle and what we will do here.  He is only on his fourth cycle and has been in country about 4 and a half months.  So our Russian is just dazzling.  Its a good time, but we are both young in mission years and get along so well that we have a good time and find a lot of super cool people.  The Russian is coming along, ever slowly but surely.  We were talking to some people yesterday and I suddenly was thinking, dang we're totally jokin’ and havin’ a good time with these guys, in Russian!  Pretty cool to think about.  It's always difficult to understand and express myself, but it makes for a good time and keeps us humble.   The drama continues to unfold with the brothers as we got a hold of them and found out they were in Moscow.  I hope they have returned by now and have gotten documents and things in order.  I prayed pretty hard that day that the authority helping them would have their heart softened.  We really didn't have much happen this week in the way of investigators progressing.  It's funny you say that about trying to get people progressing dad.  We call and call and plan and plan and it just seems to not be a Russian priority to show up to things or plan out their day.  Definitely gets disappointing, but makes for some fun hours on the street finding people.   We have one young guy thata is way cool guy that we had met down in Ulyanovsk on splits.  He is studying there, but lives here and speaks English.  So, a miracle, if you will, to find somebody that lives in our city but in a city about 5 hours away.  But we have met with them a couple times (them being him and his girlfriend) and are excited to get him moving on now.   I love being here in Kazan because there are tons of universities so we find tons of young people.  They are way fun to talk to and are willing to listen about things.  We had a couple funny things that I gotta report on though.  First, last night we met a couple guys from, yup you guessed it, the same place as the brothers. They actually know them.  When we asked their names we didn't hear one and asked again and he said "Osama...like ben laden."  Haha we lost it we were laughing so hard.  So good.  We also found a new lady who was named Anastasia.  So we found Osama and Anastasia from Russia.  The other story was we were just walking at night and saw this bum kinda digging through some trash on the ground.  All the sudden he just stands up and throws this peice of paper.  We realized after a second that it was a paper airplane.  It went like two feet and then just crashed and he just sat there and watched.  Haha I am laughing just writing this.  It was one of the more random things we had seen.  So good.  Just had to let you know some of the fun stuff.   We also were walking home the other night and had to grab something out of the store.  We grabbed an ice cream cone (they are like 40 cents here) and were just walking home for the evening.  We came up on a kid and tried to talk to him.  He turned and indicated that he was deaf.  But he whipped out his phone and typed in, "how many rubles?" Haha I expected him to say hi or something.  So we were just like wait here man.  And we sprinted back to the store and grabbed him a cone.  It was fun, made his day and gave an invitation.  Just some of the good times on the mission.   We look forward to now moving forward with these people that we found.  There have been some special people that we have met and continue to meet.  We get good laughs every day from the fun Russian things we see, and just keep working and doing our part.  We know there will be something special that happens here.  I agree with you Grandma ‘Net that this is definitely a time to have missionary work exploding.  See what you can do at home to help the work progress.  You would be surprised what would happen when the members get involved, because there is always more to be done.   Tanner it sounds like your ballin’ hard and havin’ a good time at the Hope of America.  Good times, wish I could be there to do all that with ya.  Sarah, I am so proud of you and heard about the patriarchal blessing.  Well done sis.  That is something special and I hope you continue to grow and just have fun.  And I'll be lookin’ forward to seein’ a t-bird strut when Em and Jackson come out.  Its a good neck of the woods to be in.  And, of course as always I love you momma and dad.  I appreciate all you do for me and feel all the support of your prayers.  Love you!
Love,
Elder Nielson