Hi everyone, how’s life?
Well another week passed by and things just fly by here. This month is almost over and it feels like it just started. So I heard about the stuff in Haiti that happened and that’s just horrible. It´s really made people here in Dichato realize they aren’t as poor as they think. Because Dichato is a really poor town and everybody works.
So this past week I went on a mini combio and went to Tome the next city over it was fun. A doctor there who is way cool and is a member and who always makes the missionary’s food and has come over to our house and made food before he was looking at my feet because my ankle was bothering me and he said my toe nails were all messed up and so he clipped them, so now they will grow correctly because before they curled around the toe and now they are better. Also that same guy his name is Domingo bought some spray for our house that will kill all the flees forever so I won’t have any more problems with that and I know it sounds really funny to have flees but it´s no joke they itch just ask Darren.
Domingo came over on Saturday and made my comp and I pizza it was SO GOOD. He triple layered it, it was way good. Um let’s see what else happened here well not much. Oh I remember my comp and I got taught how to make sopipia. It´s this fried bread it so good; I can’t wait to make it for all of you when I get back you will love it.
So having to do with missionary work for the week it seemed like everything we planned fell through but we were knocking doors on Monday I think it was, and this lady opened the door and the woman was listing to us for a minute and then she said I have my religion, and I was already baptized. So then we asked her in what church and she said catholic and then we started to talk with her about how Jesus Christ was baptized and we had a picture of it and we asked her if she thought it would be important to follow his example and get baptized by immersion and with the correct authority. She said yeah and we asked her when you’re a baby do you understand sin and do you understand the promises you are making with God? She said no and then we said well do you think your baptism was valid? She said no, but then she says I have my religion. And then somehow we got to the apostasy and talked about that and how we have a prophet on the earth today and to lead and guide us. It was cool though because this whole conversation was very calm and chill and I was saying things that I had never really said before, as in, thoughts that were coming into my head with things to say. This woman understood everything perfectly what we were saying. I bore my testimony to her about prayer and how she can know for herself if it´s true. The spirit was so strong and we were teaching with so much authority it was cool. I asked her if she knew with all her heart that and she prayed and asked God if her church was true and if it was the same church that Jesus Christ established on the earth when he was here. And she said again I have my religion.
Then my comp said if you know that you’re denying two servants of God and Christ's church with 12 apostles and a prophet and if you know that, we will leave and she said yes. So we left but that truly hurt so badly and it was a real testimony of agency and how sometimes in life you do all that you can do and in the end it´s up to the person to make the choice for themselves. In this case even though they may had felt the Holy Ghost testify to them the truth they still rejected it. But my comp said that my Spanish was way good there and I was conjugating verbs and it was good.
Also I gave a another talk in church this past Sunday and that was fun well not so much, but the worst part was when I was reading my scriptures I had but other than that it was good. Well family and whoever else I gotta go but I hope all is well with everyone and hope to hear from you, take care.
Love Elder Nichols
Saturday, March 6, 2010
January 11, 2010
Hey everyone
I hope everyone is doing well. It’s amazing how much a new comp and a good attitude can help things. It truly does make the difference with everything but even in life and in general. We can choose to have a bad day and let things get to us and just be mad over something we can’t control. I have truly learned that it’s not worth letting little things or even people ruin the next couple hours or even the whole day. For example last Saturday morning my comp and I went out and did contacts by this farmers market type thing where people sell produce and whatever else and we were trying to give away cards with a number on it where they would get a free video called the "Lamb of God". And by the way it was pretty warm out, but people were just plain rude and we just asked if we could say hi to them and give them a gift and they were just straight rude.
For example this older man walked by and I said hey can we say hi to you and as he was walking by he said ¨porque´´ which means *why* and he said it in a really low voice and kept walking. So at that point I had kinda had it with people so as he was walking away I said because we have a really important message for you. Then he stopped and turned around and stared at me for a few seconds with a really mad face and I was just starring back. That all that happened, I said it in a really nice voice but some people just have hard hearts.
Also a few days before that we knocked on a few doors and talked to a couple ladies and they just did not understand that there is only way to know if what we are teaching is true is by asking God. It truly hurts inside when your teaching someone at their door and they just keep going around everything you say and your questions and they just don’t have all the truth they have parts but not all of it. I used an example the other day because people always think that dios is uno solo with God is the only one we need. That it doesn’t matter what church you belong to because we will all end up to the same place anyways. But that’s WRONG.
So I said ok you have 3 buses and they all want to go to Concepcion and they all started different places and they all get maps on how to get there but only one of the maps is correct and only one of the buses will get you to Concepcion even though all of them are trying to get there. Its the same thing all the churches are trying to get to God but all of them have the wrong maps and no authority. Sorry I am going off on this it has just been something that bothers me a lot here. And we always tell people that we don’t want you to believe us we want them to ask God.
But we are pretty close to getting this women and her daughter and they have dates to get baptized for the 2 of February and they just need to ask God. Also this lady Cesia who we taught her a mix of the lessons but it was really powerful lesson she has a date set for the 2nd and she is evangelical but she is willing to ask God and see if what we are teaching is true. Also this past Sunday this woman came in with this less active member and we had taught this lady her name is Maria and the lesson we taught her was great and felt like things could go well with her. But when we taught her was like the 3rd week I was here and after that she was always in the hospital for depression. But when she walked in on Sunday it was awesome so we got an appt with her for Wednesday.
Right now we are trying to help the ward and regain the trust in this branch and just do a bunch of service for all the less actives and see if that will help anything. We found a family of 3 last night 3 girls one is like 17 and all she does is sleep all day so she has no excuse to not come to church and my new comp is a good looking guy so maybe she might come now haha. But that is our big focus right now is reactivating people but still inviting people to baptism.
I am doing pretty good as for me and just keep plugging away at the Spanish. I have started to read the book of Mormon out loud in Spanish so I hope that helps. Well not much else to say but I did eat lengua de baca which is cow tongue. It wasn’t too bad actually a little chewy but not to bad. Well everybody I gotta go but take care and I hope to hear from you next week.
Love Elder Nichols
I hope everyone is doing well. It’s amazing how much a new comp and a good attitude can help things. It truly does make the difference with everything but even in life and in general. We can choose to have a bad day and let things get to us and just be mad over something we can’t control. I have truly learned that it’s not worth letting little things or even people ruin the next couple hours or even the whole day. For example last Saturday morning my comp and I went out and did contacts by this farmers market type thing where people sell produce and whatever else and we were trying to give away cards with a number on it where they would get a free video called the "Lamb of God". And by the way it was pretty warm out, but people were just plain rude and we just asked if we could say hi to them and give them a gift and they were just straight rude.
For example this older man walked by and I said hey can we say hi to you and as he was walking by he said ¨porque´´ which means *why* and he said it in a really low voice and kept walking. So at that point I had kinda had it with people so as he was walking away I said because we have a really important message for you. Then he stopped and turned around and stared at me for a few seconds with a really mad face and I was just starring back. That all that happened, I said it in a really nice voice but some people just have hard hearts.
Also a few days before that we knocked on a few doors and talked to a couple ladies and they just did not understand that there is only way to know if what we are teaching is true is by asking God. It truly hurts inside when your teaching someone at their door and they just keep going around everything you say and your questions and they just don’t have all the truth they have parts but not all of it. I used an example the other day because people always think that dios is uno solo with God is the only one we need. That it doesn’t matter what church you belong to because we will all end up to the same place anyways. But that’s WRONG.
So I said ok you have 3 buses and they all want to go to Concepcion and they all started different places and they all get maps on how to get there but only one of the maps is correct and only one of the buses will get you to Concepcion even though all of them are trying to get there. Its the same thing all the churches are trying to get to God but all of them have the wrong maps and no authority. Sorry I am going off on this it has just been something that bothers me a lot here. And we always tell people that we don’t want you to believe us we want them to ask God.
But we are pretty close to getting this women and her daughter and they have dates to get baptized for the 2 of February and they just need to ask God. Also this lady Cesia who we taught her a mix of the lessons but it was really powerful lesson she has a date set for the 2nd and she is evangelical but she is willing to ask God and see if what we are teaching is true. Also this past Sunday this woman came in with this less active member and we had taught this lady her name is Maria and the lesson we taught her was great and felt like things could go well with her. But when we taught her was like the 3rd week I was here and after that she was always in the hospital for depression. But when she walked in on Sunday it was awesome so we got an appt with her for Wednesday.
Right now we are trying to help the ward and regain the trust in this branch and just do a bunch of service for all the less actives and see if that will help anything. We found a family of 3 last night 3 girls one is like 17 and all she does is sleep all day so she has no excuse to not come to church and my new comp is a good looking guy so maybe she might come now haha. But that is our big focus right now is reactivating people but still inviting people to baptism.
I am doing pretty good as for me and just keep plugging away at the Spanish. I have started to read the book of Mormon out loud in Spanish so I hope that helps. Well not much else to say but I did eat lengua de baca which is cow tongue. It wasn’t too bad actually a little chewy but not to bad. Well everybody I gotta go but take care and I hope to hear from you next week.
Love Elder Nichols
Part 2 January 4, 2010
Hey everybody again,
So I didn’t get to finish about the week. So I forgot to say that I ate liver!!!!! It was interesting it wasn’t to bad actually just kind of chewy but not a bad taste. I also ate this really good kind of fish that was pretty good. But anyways this week was fast Sunday and my comp and I had a huge fast for people here and I fasted for my Spanish to be able to speak better, and it was nuts because on Sunday after sacrament meeting we talked with our branch president about how we can help the ward become active and what the town of Dichato needs and I was able to explain what I wanted to say and our president understood clearly and he told me that. And it was just really cool. My new comp elder Findley is helping me a lot with stuff. He has a positive attitude about things here even though they are really tough here considering we had 18 people at church. If you could all pray for this guy Juan and this girl Kathy she is a 15 year old girl who wants to get baptized but her parents won’t let her and her grandma is way evangelical and its really hard for her to have faith that miracles are possible with faith in Christ.
I have FLEES and they SUCK well actually they itch like crazy and they are all over my body but I am going to get some stuff to help that so we will see how that goes. I got to go, but I love you all. Hope you all have a great week.
Love Elder Nichols
So I didn’t get to finish about the week. So I forgot to say that I ate liver!!!!! It was interesting it wasn’t to bad actually just kind of chewy but not a bad taste. I also ate this really good kind of fish that was pretty good. But anyways this week was fast Sunday and my comp and I had a huge fast for people here and I fasted for my Spanish to be able to speak better, and it was nuts because on Sunday after sacrament meeting we talked with our branch president about how we can help the ward become active and what the town of Dichato needs and I was able to explain what I wanted to say and our president understood clearly and he told me that. And it was just really cool. My new comp elder Findley is helping me a lot with stuff. He has a positive attitude about things here even though they are really tough here considering we had 18 people at church. If you could all pray for this guy Juan and this girl Kathy she is a 15 year old girl who wants to get baptized but her parents won’t let her and her grandma is way evangelical and its really hard for her to have faith that miracles are possible with faith in Christ.
I have FLEES and they SUCK well actually they itch like crazy and they are all over my body but I am going to get some stuff to help that so we will see how that goes. I got to go, but I love you all. Hope you all have a great week.
Love Elder Nichols
January 4, 2010
Hey everyone!!!
So I got a new comp!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It´s amazing, he is pretty cool. And guess where he is from? Washington he is from the Seattle area. He has only been in the mission like 6 months but his spanish is pretty good I'm sending pictures as I am writing this email so I'm going to explain a couple the first one is this really cool lady she is a new convert , not mine but they were making empanadas and they were pretty good. The first pic is just of a road in Dichato and some houses and the 2nd, 3rd and 4th are of me. But anyways this week we worked pretty hard because the sector is basically dead because my last comp had no faith. But the first morning we go into a house taught this pretty cool girl. Then got into a couple other houses that day so it was way good. New Years Eve was hard but we got some really good food that night it was way good. Everyone knows the primary song with the pioneer children sang as they walked and walked and walked and walked. But only it was walked and knocked on doors and nobody was home. So that was really was lame and our legs were dead. I slept really good that night. But yeah the next day was basically the same we had appointments with everybody and they all fell through, so we knocked doors at the end of the night and this is what happened on the last door we knocked on this and this lady answered it and at first she was like, I don't want anything to do with you, but we started talking with her and teaching her on her door step and we were teaching with so much power and authority it was really cool and she couldn't deny anything we were saying. We told her that we take the sacrament every week and she only takes it once a year and so I said do you wash your clothes once a year or once a week!!! BAM haha but yeah it was cool we pulled out another appt with her for this week but it was good.
Love Elder Nichols
December 28, 2009
Hey everybody
I hope everybody had a good Christmas. Sorry for those that I did not get to talk to you very long I am really sorry and felt really bad about that and was really sad. But for those of you who didn't talk to me I had a good Christmas except that I got tons of flee bites Christmas eve. The big thing here is Christmas Eve they call it the bueno noche and so we went to a members house in the next town over and ate some really good chicken and it was good. We stayed the night with some other elders in their apartment. Then we came back and I opened my packages and was supper excited with what I got. The lemon pepper was amazing. But yeah then went and ate lunch and went to the church and called home and it was kinda a mess but it all worked out I guess. Then we went over to this way cool family who are eternal investigators and they fed us dinner it was pretty good. Then went over to this other family's house who are not members, we teach and they gave me some really good fish but I wasn't hungry at all, but I ate it anyways. It was a pretty fun day not a whole lot of work got done on those days.
So I am getting a new comp I am pretty excited because I need a new change and a new attitude in Dichato. His name is elder Findley he is from Washington, (hey so am I ) but from the other side of the state, transfers are tomorrow I heard he is supper chill and really cool so that will be a good change to have because elder Crenshaw is supper supper extrovert, so I am excited to see what goes down. So I know everybody wanted pictures but next week I promise I will send pictures of lots of stuff. Lets see here we have a couple new investigators one guy who doesnt have any legs and his son, and this other lady whose mom was a member and she died like 8 years ago and she said it was really hard for her to get over her death but had a dream about her about how she saw her in a perfected sate and saw her in a white tunic like when she was baptized and so we told her to pray about what we taught her it and if it was true, and she said she already knew it was true but we challenged her to baptism and she accepted. So we will see what happens.
Well everyone not much else to say but I love you all so much and enjoyed talking to you all of those that I did. Tell everyone hi from me and give the a hug.
LOVE Elder Nichols
I hope everybody had a good Christmas. Sorry for those that I did not get to talk to you very long I am really sorry and felt really bad about that and was really sad. But for those of you who didn't talk to me I had a good Christmas except that I got tons of flee bites Christmas eve. The big thing here is Christmas Eve they call it the bueno noche and so we went to a members house in the next town over and ate some really good chicken and it was good. We stayed the night with some other elders in their apartment. Then we came back and I opened my packages and was supper excited with what I got. The lemon pepper was amazing. But yeah then went and ate lunch and went to the church and called home and it was kinda a mess but it all worked out I guess. Then we went over to this way cool family who are eternal investigators and they fed us dinner it was pretty good. Then went over to this other family's house who are not members, we teach and they gave me some really good fish but I wasn't hungry at all, but I ate it anyways. It was a pretty fun day not a whole lot of work got done on those days.
So I am getting a new comp I am pretty excited because I need a new change and a new attitude in Dichato. His name is elder Findley he is from Washington, (hey so am I ) but from the other side of the state, transfers are tomorrow I heard he is supper chill and really cool so that will be a good change to have because elder Crenshaw is supper supper extrovert, so I am excited to see what goes down. So I know everybody wanted pictures but next week I promise I will send pictures of lots of stuff. Lets see here we have a couple new investigators one guy who doesnt have any legs and his son, and this other lady whose mom was a member and she died like 8 years ago and she said it was really hard for her to get over her death but had a dream about her about how she saw her in a perfected sate and saw her in a white tunic like when she was baptized and so we told her to pray about what we taught her it and if it was true, and she said she already knew it was true but we challenged her to baptism and she accepted. So we will see what happens.
Well everyone not much else to say but I love you all so much and enjoyed talking to you all of those that I did. Tell everyone hi from me and give the a hug.
LOVE Elder Nichols
December 21, 2009
Hey everybody feliz navidad
So I helped yesterday set up a fake Christmas tree at our branch presidents house that kinda helped it feel a little more like Christmas but still lacking the Christmas spirit. But I hope everyone got a good laugh about the fruit cake haha. But this past week was pretty warm I got a nice little tan going so it´s pretty sweet and my face is so clear and has like no acne and I love it. Today we had a zone activity and we had a white elephant gift exchange and that was fun I got a cool beanie for my head I think I spelt that wrong but yeah and then we played some dodge ball and then ate this stuff called chorianna you first put a bunch of french fries on the plate then a bunch of meat and then a fried egg it´s so freaking good. This guy in one of the wards made it all for like 20 missionaries he is an amazing cook.
I will find out on the 27th if I get a new comp or not I think I will because he has been there for 6 months so we will see. This past week I went on a mini cambio with an elder from Ogden who live pretty close to Traci he lives on glassman in south Ogden. It was so much fun I loved it. But I don't have any time to share any cool stories today because running short on time because of our activity but I cant wait to talk to everyone on Friday, Kelli and Traci i gave Darren the details about what is going down for the phone call. But I love you all and hope all is well with everyone.
Love Elder Nichols
So I helped yesterday set up a fake Christmas tree at our branch presidents house that kinda helped it feel a little more like Christmas but still lacking the Christmas spirit. But I hope everyone got a good laugh about the fruit cake haha. But this past week was pretty warm I got a nice little tan going so it´s pretty sweet and my face is so clear and has like no acne and I love it. Today we had a zone activity and we had a white elephant gift exchange and that was fun I got a cool beanie for my head I think I spelt that wrong but yeah and then we played some dodge ball and then ate this stuff called chorianna you first put a bunch of french fries on the plate then a bunch of meat and then a fried egg it´s so freaking good. This guy in one of the wards made it all for like 20 missionaries he is an amazing cook.
I will find out on the 27th if I get a new comp or not I think I will because he has been there for 6 months so we will see. This past week I went on a mini cambio with an elder from Ogden who live pretty close to Traci he lives on glassman in south Ogden. It was so much fun I loved it. But I don't have any time to share any cool stories today because running short on time because of our activity but I cant wait to talk to everyone on Friday, Kelli and Traci i gave Darren the details about what is going down for the phone call. But I love you all and hope all is well with everyone.
Love Elder Nichols
Monday, December 14, 2009
Fruit Cake
So growing up everybody in the family always joked around about how gross fruit cake was and how nasty it was and all. But I never knew why I just thought it was cake with fruit on it and didn’t understand why everybody thought it was so bad. But I UNDERSTAND NOW its so gross. Every time we go into a house I hope they don’t offer us fruit cake because its that bad. I am kind of starting to get used to it but I still don’t like it at all. I don’t really know why I started off talking about that but I just felt like saying that.
Well the climate is changing here and it’s getting much warmer and I am getting a really nice tan its pretty sweet. My comp has been sleeping really bad lately and so he bought some sleeping pills and then his nose was all stuffed up and he was so loud when he was sleeping so that was fun to deal with haha. Also yesterday was the day the Chileans voted for a new president and so everything shuts down its nuts, at least in the morning, and we could only have an hour of sacrament meeting and that was it because it was a group gathering and you are not supposed to have any of such the day of the elections. But they do it weird here, the winner has to win by 50 % or more or they have to have a revote so on the 17th of January they are having a revote because the winner only won by 44% but I was like holy crap 44% that is kind of obvious who the people wanted right haha.
So this past couples of weeks has been really rough because my comp is all sector turnkey or area. He will probably get transferred because he has been here for 6 months at the end of the month and Dichato is really small but he has basically given up on the people here as in with the ward or lack there of because we only have 2 active members in our branch. And it is really hard because we have almost no support and it’s rough. I just hope my new comp has a really positive attitude so things can turn around here. We have lost 2 really good investigators this week so that was rough, they were the two I talked about in last weeks email Rosa and Tamara, we lost them because they have to work all day everyday now since it’s the summer here and this is a tourist town. This also makes it hard because tons of people are just here for the weekend. I guess that the Lord is trying to teach us something. I am not sure, but on a positive note hopefully we will be having 2 baptisms on the 27th if all goes well and according to plan.
Also this week went on a mini cambio or a mini splits for one day. A missionary that has the same time out as me came over to Dichato and I was in charge of the sector for the day. It was cool but I am defiantly not ready for that yet. But if everyone could pray for this guy who cant get baptized yet because of some problem he has, but the problem is not in his hands, it’s in someone else's so if you could all pray for him that would be great
Well this morning I made a great breakfast my comps grandma sent him from dear elder some blueberry pancake mix and so we made some pancakes and I made some really good scrambled eggs with 5 eggs and 4 pancakes and ¨it was tasty but it was filling¨. So yeah I really don’t have anything that cool to share with you this week, but all I am gonna say is that I miss American food and how you can buy anything in the stores there, like its no problem, but I did find some milk this week that is pretty good. It tastes like half and half its like straight cream, but I bought some chocolate milk and added the cream into it and it made it taste like real chocolate milk so good.
Love Elder Nichols
Well the climate is changing here and it’s getting much warmer and I am getting a really nice tan its pretty sweet. My comp has been sleeping really bad lately and so he bought some sleeping pills and then his nose was all stuffed up and he was so loud when he was sleeping so that was fun to deal with haha. Also yesterday was the day the Chileans voted for a new president and so everything shuts down its nuts, at least in the morning, and we could only have an hour of sacrament meeting and that was it because it was a group gathering and you are not supposed to have any of such the day of the elections. But they do it weird here, the winner has to win by 50 % or more or they have to have a revote so on the 17th of January they are having a revote because the winner only won by 44% but I was like holy crap 44% that is kind of obvious who the people wanted right haha.
So this past couples of weeks has been really rough because my comp is all sector turnkey or area. He will probably get transferred because he has been here for 6 months at the end of the month and Dichato is really small but he has basically given up on the people here as in with the ward or lack there of because we only have 2 active members in our branch. And it is really hard because we have almost no support and it’s rough. I just hope my new comp has a really positive attitude so things can turn around here. We have lost 2 really good investigators this week so that was rough, they were the two I talked about in last weeks email Rosa and Tamara, we lost them because they have to work all day everyday now since it’s the summer here and this is a tourist town. This also makes it hard because tons of people are just here for the weekend. I guess that the Lord is trying to teach us something. I am not sure, but on a positive note hopefully we will be having 2 baptisms on the 27th if all goes well and according to plan.
Also this week went on a mini cambio or a mini splits for one day. A missionary that has the same time out as me came over to Dichato and I was in charge of the sector for the day. It was cool but I am defiantly not ready for that yet. But if everyone could pray for this guy who cant get baptized yet because of some problem he has, but the problem is not in his hands, it’s in someone else's so if you could all pray for him that would be great
Well this morning I made a great breakfast my comps grandma sent him from dear elder some blueberry pancake mix and so we made some pancakes and I made some really good scrambled eggs with 5 eggs and 4 pancakes and ¨it was tasty but it was filling¨. So yeah I really don’t have anything that cool to share with you this week, but all I am gonna say is that I miss American food and how you can buy anything in the stores there, like its no problem, but I did find some milk this week that is pretty good. It tastes like half and half its like straight cream, but I bought some chocolate milk and added the cream into it and it made it taste like real chocolate milk so good.
Love Elder Nichols
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