Elder Nissinen

Hey everyone!!

On Friday I woke up to a HUGE RAINSTORM!! Winds were up to 40 mph. The rain looked like it was coming down sideways! It was great!! Elder B. woke up sick that morning, so we stayed in for part of the day. That car is really coming in handy. And it didn't stop raining until Saturday afternoon. It sounds weird, but I actually missed the rain. I'm sure you all are sick of it by now though, so if you want to send a few clouds over here, Hesperia will take it.

Every Tuesday we have District Meeting, and the Assistants to the President called me that morning and told me they were coming to my district meeting. I was so nervous!!! But it all went well. I have no idea what they were doing up here...?

Remember what we chatted about last week? I took your advice and shined Elder B's shoes while he was in the shower. They needed it. Later that morning Elder B went to go shine his shoes and came back and said, "You son of a gun! You shined my shoes, didn't you? Thanks man." You can't ever go wrong by serving your companion.

But this week has been a fun one. We did Perler Beading with a new investigator (it's plastic beads that you iron on), hula-hoed an old lady's backyard for service, had dinner at a burger joint that reminded me of Basco's Burgers (that's why it showed up on my credit card), pushed an old lady and her broken electric scooter up a half-mile hill in the rain, and did some killer LAZER TAG as an Elders Quorum activity. We had about 15 guys playing lazer tag inside of this blowup maze that took up a good part of the gym. I got a bunch of pictures this week. D. B. and D. H. came too. And yesterday D. blessed and K. passed the sacrament!! He said every word perfectly.

Do you remember W.O. ? He was an investigator we were teaching a couple months ago, but his wife has been super sick and in the hospital since then. She has hyperemesis, which is really bad morning sickness. She can't keep food down and has a PICC line going into her heart. She's been in and out of the hospital for the last couple months. But last night we were finally able to meet with them just to see how they're doing. What I had been really wanting to do was to give her a priesthood blessing. We gave her one, and the Spirit was super strong. This morning we had to go over and give her some more IV's because her husband was at work. I've got some pictures of that too. Anyways, she told us she felt soooo much better after the blessing, like she wanted to get out of the house for once! Power of the Priesthood baby!

I learned an important lesson this week: I hate TV. It's so hard to focus on a person talking and listen in to the Spirit when you've got Disney Channel or NASCAR screaming in the background. That happened twice in the same day last week. And I had the biggest headache afterwards! Not like a migraine, but I could totally tell the Spirit was not as strong as it could be. TV is ridiculous (except Andy Griffith, that's ok haha).

I have zero clue about what's going to happen with transfers. Chances are that one of us will leave. But I could end up getting my visa. There's just a bunch of question marks with transfers; it's exciting!

Congratulations on the Personal Progress, Rosie! Don't forget what that medallion means and what you stand for.

B, your email last week was hilarious!! Doesn't take much to impress girls these days haha. Way to represent!

Joe, you're doing great! Keep up those good grades, merit badges, and all that.