Birthday Season

Hey family!

Glad to see all of you doin’ good and looks like you’re all keepin’ birthday football season alive there! You all look great there at the BYU game! The birthday season is definitely exciting out here too and things are just going so good right now- I can't explain how fun it's been this last week and how much we have been blessed, it is just some good times on the mission.

So, since we got back in on Monday, it has just been go time in our area for the week. Honestly, we came back and hadn't had too much work done in our area for the last few weeks, so we started building this place from the ground up! It was so fun to come back into the normal groove of things after being fired up for the last week and have been very blessed as we have tried to just put everything on the line to do the work. Of course, to get some new people, we just spent the week on the streets. The weather is so good here and so we started on Monday night just talkin’ to everybody and have found some great people. We had to go down to the senior couple's apartment here to help them translate on Tuesday morning and talked to a sweet couple of kids passing by, we got their numbers and (as we were taught to focus on at these past zone conferences) asked if they knew anybody that would like to meet with us. They didn't, but gave us their number. The next day, we called him up and he said it wasn't too interesting to meet, but said he had some friend that would be willing. Anyways, he gave us this kids number and we called him and got a meeting that night! His name is Leyonti (some old Russian name) and is just a prepared person for the gospel. We had a great meeting and the next night (Thursday?) met again, taught the restoration in full and set a baptismal date with him- he is just a great kid! Anyways, we were blessed throughout the week with little tender mercies like that as we tried our best to just do everything for the work. The stops are all coming out! haha

We have been trying to make p day focused too, and so today and last week we have tried to get as much food ready for the week so we don't have to spend time on getting it ready- I just had to report that our food today that we prepared were some canned beans that we found and cooked up and mashed with some chicken and have a pile of burritos now in the freezer for the week. haha I thought you would like that one momma. We are pretty excited about it- efficiency baby.

Anyways, things are so good, we are just excited about everything and the whole mission is just pumped up after all of these conferences with President Bennett- we are doing everything to make sure that fire doesn't go out. We definitely owe it to our Heavenly Father and our friends here to do all we can. Anyways, we're going to be exchanging this week and taking off to Penza tonight for a couple days and are excited to see the miracles that the Lord has in store there and in Samara here. He is definitely in the details of our lives and this is His work.

Hope you all have a good week!

Love

Elder Nielson

P.S. Here is us with the man- this isRoman our driver for the mission. He has been around for 20 years and is the best. (and of course,Elder Whittemore pictured as well)