Elder Nissinen: Crunch Time!

Dear friends and family,

I'm really shocked at how fast my mission is winding down. It seemed just a few days ago I was saying I had 5 months left, and now I have 5 weeks. I'm not sure if I'm more excited than nervous. I don't feel ready at all. I feel like there's a lot more I need to accomplish before I'm done. These next 5 weeks will go by super fast. In terms of baptisms, anybody that will be baptized in the next 5 weeks we've already met, and they must be prepared now.

As I said already, my new companion is Elder Ackley. He attended the same high school as Elder Burns, and will go home the transfer after me. At home he was a skateboarder. He graduated a year before I did. Ackley is a really cool guy. We have a similar teaching style, and the people like him. The challenge is that I only have 5 more weeks to teach him the area before he's leading himself.

Elder Ackley

We had a really good, productive week. Mostly I was showing him the area/members/investigators. We extended baptismal dates to two great investigators... and I hope they'll be baptized before I go! Thursday was MLC -President and Sister Heid's last one. It was great. We're just paving the way in preparation for the Keye's, who will be coming in two weeks.

Four investigators showed up to church Sunday, and all four had baptismal dates. That was great. Little Priscilla was confirmed, and both her parents were there. Our hope was that her baptism would re-activate the family, and that seems to be the results! The Mia-Maids and Laurel's presidencies were created, and TWO of my recent converts were involved! Heck yeah.

It can flood really bad. The temperatures are a lot cooler. The people complain that it is too cold and they can't go out in it, even though it's at like 70 or 75. We ride in it, but the tires kick up dirt and mud sometimes, which wrecks our white shirts, so we tossed on rain jackets and persevered. It was fun.