Hey family! 

The Temple was GREAT this morning! With my last areas it was always a race to get to the temple in the morning on time, but it´s a smooth sail from the mission office. I´m also in the same zone as Elder J.  (who started in Provo with me), who´s actually my zone leader now. 

This first week of the transfer went GREAT! We´ve got a great idea we´ve been working on for a while to help out our area. For a while now mission secretaries have been in this ward, and because they spend about 4 hours a day proselyting, the members hardly know them. We want to change that. So what we did is combine everything that the two companionships have (investigators, contacts, referrals, recent-converts, etc) and treat it as if it were one large companionship of four. But we switch ^companions^ for the day so that investigators and members get to know more missionaries. And sometimes people have different reactions to different missionaries. I´ve never heard of an area doing this - a four-way blitz, so it´s all in the trial run. But we´ve got our Ward Mission Leader and our Mission President liking the idea.

3 days into the experiment and guess what - we´ve found 3 new families!!! FAMILIES!! And they´re pumped for the gospel!! One of them even came to church without being invited! Here´s a cool story about one of them:

A couple weeks ago we got a package from the US for someone named Nelson Dine. We don´t have an Elder D.  in our mission, so we sent an email to the other São Paulo missions to see if he exists. There used to be another mission in this office before us, so it happens a lot that we get mail for other people. Everyone replied saying that Elder Nelson D.  isn´t in their missions. Kinda weird. We double-checked the address that was on the box, and it was for another house on our street. Kinda weird, because we´re the only place around here that gets constant mail from the States. But we checked out the house, knocked, and who answered? Nelson D. ! This guy has a son in Connecticut doing some study work. But the guy let us in and wanted to hear our message! He even asked to read some our material and wants us to teach his daughter. So far the test results are lookin good! 

Picture with Elder Costa (one of the area seventies) 

 Wednesday we had an interview with Elder Costa - great meeting! The day before President called us: [Elder I want you all to clean the office from top to bottom. If there´s one piece of paper in a wastebasket, throw the bag out and put a new one in.] So Tuesday we spent the whole day (literally - until 11:30 at night) throwing out a bunch of junk missionaries left behind. It really wasn´t that dirty - it´s a big office haha.

My new companion Elder L.

Elder L. and I are getting along great. He looks pure American, and he already speaks great in English. This past week he asked me to pray a couple times in English - man how embarrassing it was. He´s a hard-worker and it´s a blast. 

Great pictures of Seattle! Good luck on all your finals, projects, sylabusses, and work. I´m always praying for you every day. 

Love you all very much!

Elder Nissinen  

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