Well good day to you my family!

It has just been goin in good ol' Zavodskoy!  First I gotta give a big happy birthday to papa!  I hope you had a good day filled with burritos and pepsi and definitely had a lake run in my dreams that night in your behalf.  Also I had to check out the glory day pics on the calendar to remind me.  Well done with the calendar.  I am definitely in the process of trying to get a birthday season package together, because there are just fun things here.  Man that is so crazy that we are hitting both birthday and football season back at the ranch.  I can't believe it, what a good time.  The air is definitely a little bit more crisp here in the mornings, and it definitely brings back a load of memories.  Good times.  That is fun to get the lone peak knight reports, another thriller with the mighty mustangs it sounds like.  Again, good times!  I just have one request, I know I made the comment about not havin much time to email, but I love reading from you guys too!  So don't worry about holding back on me, I always have to hear myself talk enough here anyways.  And I will do my best to keep you with the most up to date analysis of the big Zavodskoy!  To answer your questions mama, I haven't gotten the letters yet, but I don’t know that there has been a chance to get things from the office yet.  So, we will definitely keep a keen eye out.  We are already back to zone conference next week, so I would assume that would be a good opportunity to get mail.  As far as things in a package, the granola bars were awesome to have some snacks on the run, peanut butter, and green chilis were awesome.  Basically, everything there was great!  as far as supplies and things go, i can get all that kinda stuff here and it is the American brand of things so no stress on toothpaste and things.  It is crazy how much those kind of things spread!  American companies and products are pretty much everywhere, so we get along alright.  There is just always that Russian twist to everything, you just gotta learn to not expect anything to go right or be perfect, and you can be a happy Russian. 

As far as things go here, things just continue to go.  Man it is so crazy how fast time just continues to fly by.  Can you believe i passed my 8 month mark?!  I am still just a puppy on my mission i swear!  it has been so good to serve with elder Whittemoore.  We get along real well, he is definitely outta the Andrew Gifford mold and we have a good time just doin the good work. It has been interesting to be with a new missionary.  His faith and desire just drives all areas of the work, it makes me wonder why we can't all just stay that way.  It is so fun to serve with.  He does struggle a bit with the language, so it has been a little interesting trying to help him out with that.  It has also helped me to realize that there seems to actually be progress with this language with me!  It brings back some painful memories of those first few weeks at church of not understanding anything, but it is fun to feel that I can start to talk to people now!  But there is so much to go, so it's all good. We have had a lot of time on the streets this past week.  It just happens that way sometimes that everything begins to fall through, and so it is time to get new blood flowing through the area.  The Ivan scene continues to be quite the interesting episode.  We met with him on Wednesday night- it was pouring rain so we couldn't do our sports night, so we played ping pong in the branch with him- and were able to get him refocused on a baptismal goal.  he recognizes that he just wanted light immediately and that he needs time.  So, we are going to work with him for a more long term goal to be baptized on the 29th of September!  He came to church, and hopefully comes tonight with us to family night here at the Stephens.  We were very blessed with just finding some cool people on the streets and are pretty much just into doin the dirty work mode of missionary work here to get investigators that we can meet with.  I had some good Troy memories as we went over to serve one investigator and put these styrofoam tiles on the ceiling at his apartment.  i must say, we did a fine job. 

I hope all things are good at home, my time suddenly ticked faster than I thought!  i wanted to get a lil' note to lil bro and lil sis as they start school. :)  i love you all and pray that all is well, have a good week and we'll cya next Monday!

Love,

Elder Nielson