Get Robbie Baptized

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Jun 06/20/11 Matt's Final Letter

2011-06-22T15:53:00.000-07:00

FAMILY!!!!!

A sister missionary came up to me this week and asked me what I was taking home from my mission. I named a couple different souvenirs and then sat down to prepare for zone conference. As I was sitting there I started thinking about some of the physical souvenirs I was taking home. I realized that those things really didn't mean that much to me. I started thinking about the things that I am taking home with me that really mattered to me. I decided to make a list of what I am taking home with me. These are some of the things. President Dance asked me to email him today and explain all about my experience and things I learned on my mission. I am going to copy and paste what I write to him and send it to you! I love all of you. Thanks for everything you do. I will see you on FRIDAY!!!

President,

I don't think I could fully put into words how I have felt about my mission experience. Over the last two years I have grown and learned more than I can explain. I have decided to follow your example and write down a few things that I will be taking home with me from my mission.

1. A personal knowledge and relationship with my Savior Jesus Christ.
2. A love for God and the people that I have been serving.
3. A testimony that obedience brings blessings.
4. The knowledge that I can achieve all worthy goals if I am focused on it.
5. I can make it a good day or a bad day.
6. Cold is a state of mind.
7. Pride is a great stumbling block.
8. I don't have to know EVERYTHING.
9. Patience is a divine gift that we all need to develop
10. An appreciate for my family and those supporting me
11. A knowledge and testimony of the Restoration

Of course there are many more things, but those are some of the greatest gifts that I will be taking home with me. I love the people here. I have gained another family by coming to the Baltic’s. Once again I feel that I am getting ready to leave the people and countries that I love. I feel that for the first time I know exactly who I am. I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. I have loved serving him and look forward to being able to serve him for the rest of my life. I am happy that I can look myself in the mirror and be happy with the person I have become. I am thankful for all of the members, family member, friends, investigators, and companions that have helped shape and mold me into who I am today. I would especially like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to work so closely with you. I loved all the time I was able to spend with you and sister Dance. I have learned many valuable, life long lessons from both of you. You have helped me recognize the need for the constant companionship of the Spirit. You have helped me see the benefits of being well organized. You have helped me see how to manage a busy life and still magnify a calling. Thank you for everything you have done for me. Over the last couple years I have been able to see countless miracles. I have been blessed enough to find, teach, and baptize worthy investigators. I am grateful that through my obedience and hard work I was able to become an instrument in the Lords hands. Some of the people I will remember forever are Dzintars, Ali, Sharunas, Oleg, Yurri, and Diana. These people will forever be in my prayers and on the back of my mind. I have grown to love them and am thankful that the Lord put me in their path. One of the greatest spiritual gifts I have obtained on my mission is LOVE. I am especially grateful for my love of the Savior and my Heavenly Father. Once I was able to recognize and increase that love, all other aspects of missionary work fell into place. I was able to be obedient and work hard because of my love and desire to serve them. I am grateful that I have the rest of my life to keep increasing my love for God, Christ, my family, and all those around me. I know this Church is true. I am so grateful for my decision to serve a mission. I am grateful for the atonement of Jesus Christ. I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet and that we have a prophet on earth today. I am so grateful that he can receive revelation from Christ. Without that ability we wouldn't have anything. I know that Christ leads and guides his church today. I know that without Christ, my life would be pointless. I am grateful for him and for his atonement. Thank you for everything once again. I look forward to our interview this Thursday.

Love,
Elder Nielson

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Jun 06/13/11

2011-06-13T12:58:00.001-07:00

Family,

Wow. I can't tell you how happy it made me to open my emails and see emails from basically everyone I have ever known and loved. Thank you for your love and support. I loved all the pictures drawn by my niece and nephews. Thanks for your email Marc. I especially loved the subject line. Mom and Dad thanks for always motivating me and helping me stayed focused. I also got an email from Zach Mattee. Thanks buddy. I loved hearing the story about Billy. You were a wrecking ball of spiritual goodness here, now you continue to destroy by the means of the spirit back at home.
Miracles continue to happen in Imanta. Zidonas is doing well. He wasn't able to come to church, but he is making progress in other areas. Last week we taught him about the Word of Wisdom. The whole time we were teaching he kept saying "NO" before we even gave him the commitment. We were just talking about what it was and he kept saying “I can't do it." After about 10 minutes Elder Froelich said “I want to share a scripture." As he was opening up to 1 Nephi 3:7 I looked at Zidonas and said “Will you live according to the word of wisdom?" He paused for a couple of seconds and said "Yes, I will start right now!" Elder Froelich didn't hear him say that. So he went right into his scripture. He introduced it, read it, applied it to him and than committed him to live according to the word of wisdom. Zidonas just smiled and said “You are a funny guy, Yes." As far as I am concerned, Zidonas is still living the word of wisdom.
Zidonas also gave me an Oakland Raiders hat. He showed up for our lesson wearing an Oakland Raiders hat. I said "Cool hat." He then insisted that I take it. I told him no, repeatedly. However, he started getting a little offended. I am now the proud owner of an Oakland Raiders hat.
Our other baptismal date Lidia is doing well. We taught her yesterday with our branch mission leader. Lidia wanted to meet outside. Because there wasn't room for all 5 of us on one park bench, I sat on the park bench about 10 feet away and just listened to their lesson. As I was listening I couldn't help but notice a man across the park who was eating a pastry very animatedly. After he finished, he looked down at the bag he was holding and then put in on his head. I sat there for a few minutes pondering upon why this 60ish year old man had a bag on his head. I decided to walk over and talk to him. I sat down and asked him why he had a bag on his head. In English he said “Why don't you have a bag on your head?” I learned a valuable lesson from this man. Sometimes we judge people and think they are pretty weird for having a bag on their head. Maybe we are just the weird ones without bags on our heads..... Well anyways the lesson with Lidia went really well. She got along really well with Yurrie. She is excited to be baptized in August. Both our baptismal date are really solid right now. If all goes according to plan there should be at least two baptisms in this area by the end of the summer. This area has not seen a baptism in a long time.
President and Sister Dance picked us up on Friday and took us to see a member named Valerie. Valerie is the man. He handles the migration and visa work for all the missionaries and he also happens to be our landlord. The Dance’s went over and thanked him for everything he has done over the years. He made us a delicious meal of stuffed peppers. They were stuffed with pork and rice. I guess the last missionary that was there was Elder Matte. Valerie just assumed that we all eat as much as Elder Mattee. He made us eat A LOT of food. It was way good though. It was fun translating for the Dance’s. I have not done that for a while.
We should have a big week coming up. We set a goal to teach 20 lessons this week. The most that missionaries have taught in this area this whole year has been 12. We are pretty excited to hit our goal. We have a lot of lessons set up. We are all determined to get it. I am excited to end my last week with 20 or more lessons and a few more baptismal dates!
I love you all. Thanks for everything you do. Stayed focused this week. Don't get trunky.

Love,
Me

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Jun 06/07/11

2011-06-09T14:16:00.000-07:00

Matt will be coming home on June 24th!
He will be speaking in Sacrament meeting on June 26th at 1:00 pm.
Holladay 10th Ward
4601 South 2565 East
Holladay, UT 84117

We would like to invite you to our home for food and visiting after he speaks. (2:10) Pass this info on to anyone you think would be interested.
We are so excited to have Elder Nielson home and are grateful for his service.

We hope you can join us in welcoming him.
Love,
Dave and Jaci

Family,

I can't begin to describe or write all the blessings and miracles that have happened this week. Our area has turned from almost dead, to thriving with prepared people to teach. We have literally been working as hard as we can and we have seen the fruits of that labor. It wasn't easy, but now that the ball is rolling I feel it will be impossible to stop. It is interesting to me that all these miracles happened at the end of a very hard and challenging week.
This last week started off very slow. We were working very hard and smart, but nothing was happening. When we started weekly planning last week we had 1 lesson. In case you didn't know we count numbers from Sunday to Sunday. Before we started planning we got down on our knees and asked the Lord to bless us so that the remainder of that week would be successful. Before we began to plan for the next week we discussed how we could make the rest of the week a success and go into the following week strong. At the end of a long discussion, we really didn't have any concrete plans, except to keep working hard and doing exactly what we had been doing.
The next day was a very hot day. We spent the majority of the first part of the day contacting people in the park. That day we ended up teaching 4 new people in the park! All of them became new investigators!
However, the best miracle of that day is a man by the name of Zidonas. As we were throwing the trash away we had a Gypsy man approach us. (P.S. I had no idea before coming here that Gypsies were actually a real group of people and not just a made up people in a book. There are Gypsies all over these countries.) I have to admit that when he first came up to us I was very skeptical. For the most part when a Gypsy walks up to you they just want money, they even have a tendency to get a little violent. This man came up to us and told us that he had met Elder Thomas in Daugavpils. He asked us if we could sit down and talk. After checking to see if he was drunk, we sat down on a bench and talked with him. I was very surprised to see that he was one of the most sincere people I have ever taught. He told us that he wants to change his life. He told us that he is tired of people being afraid of him. He told us he wants to bring his life in harmony with the Savior and give up his old ways. We ended up setting a baptismal date with him for July 2nd.
The next day we had district conference. All the members from across Latvia came together and we met in the world trade center in Riga center. We met Zidonas right outside our house about an hour before. I knew that people would be nervous if we brought a rough looking Gypsy man with us, so I gave him a white shirt and tie. It was amazing to see how much better he looked with a white shirt and tie on. He even brought a pair of glasses and put them on. He went from looking like a rough looking Gypsy to a potential Priesthood holder. As we were walking to the bus stop his friend stopped him and started making fun of him for looking like a "Rich Man." He responded with a well placed, “I don't care, I am going to church."
District conference was amazing. Elder Clayton and President Lawrence came and spoke to us. They all gave great talks. It was a lot of fun to see all my member friends from Riga center and Daugavpils. I was even able to see Dzintars. I am not sure if you remember him, but Elder Worsley and I taught and found him while we were Assistants. He is doing great. I asked him how he was doing and he said "just continuing in my spiritual progression." He also loved conference. It was so fun to see all the members and be able to say goodbye to a lot of them.
Later that night we went out contacting again. We were walking down a small street with absolutely no one on it. I had a strong feeling that we needed to stay on that street. To make it more productive, I walked down one side of the small residential street and Elder Froelich and Barnard walked down the other side. As we were walking Elder Froelich
stopped a man and began talking to him. As I went to cross the street to join their conversation a little 60 year old woman named Lidia called out to me. I started talking to her and she asked if we had time to talk. I told her we could walk over to that park. As I looked over to call my companions over I realized that their guy also wanted to come and talk to us. We ended up pulling both of them to the same park. On the walk over we realized the guy we were walking with wasn't very interested, so we said goodbye to him and had an awesome lesson with Lidia in the park. She had investigated the church about 8 years before that. She also wanted to follow the Savior and agreed to be baptized on August 6th. She said it would be too hot to get baptized in July.
Our week that started off soo slow ended up being a very very productive week. We were able to teach 12 lessons in 3 days. We were blessed a lot and I am very grateful for that. Sometimes it's hard to get the Ball rolling, but once it starts, it won't stop until it gets to the bottom. I am grateful I get to run along side the ball for the next couple weeks.
We had a wonderful mission conference yesterday. We were able to bring the whole mission together and be taught by the Claytons and Lawrence’s. It was great. I learned a lot from all of them. Sister Clayton says she knows Brent and Marcia and also the Neuenschwanders. She said she knew Joni very well. She was excited that I was related to them. It was even more fun to see all the missionaries one last time and take pictures with all of them. I fear these next couple of weeks may fly by. However, I am excited for the next stage of life.
We also have zone conference coming up next week. This will by my last one and also the Dance’s. I am sure it will be an emotional time for everyone. Thanks for everything you do. I love you all so much. Thanks for the support and love you have given me my entire life! I love you and will talk to you soon.

Love,
Me

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: May 05/30/11

2011-06-04T09:45:00.001-07:00

FAMILY,

So I bought a suit this week. I remember Dad telling me that I would be able to get a new suit when I got home. As I was walking through the mall I walked by a store called Dressmen. I noticed that their suits were all on sale. I was not expecting to buy one, but after trying on a gorgeous suit that isn't too European I decided to buy it. I am not even going to wear it until I get home. It was about $120. Now we don't have to buy me a suit when I get home. I just wanted to let you know that I bought one and that it looks great. Alright enough with the boring stuff, on to the exciting part of the email.
We had an interesting lesson with our investigator Nadejda. We decided officially that she isn't worth teaching anymore because she hasn't been progressing and doesn't really listen to what we are saying. Towards the end of the lesson we all gave each other the look that said "okay, we are done." Nadejda then started to get really weird. She looked at us and asked if we were prepared to meet the Savior. I told her we are striving to prepare ourselves each day. She stopped listening after two seconds and we were about to just close the lesson when Elder Froelich randomly asked "Where is Arvid?" Arvid is her husband. We have never actually met him, but we have just heard her talk about him. I started to laugh a little because Elder Froelich’s questions was so random. Nadejda then snapped out of her weird trans and said "oh he is on the computer." She then went and brought Arvid into the room. All of us were so excited to see him because as he walked into the room he brought a great spirit in with him and made Nadejda normal again. We literally all said "HHEEEEYYYY""" as he walked in. Arvid is the man. He is way normal. He is a great guy. He drinks a little bit, but just because that is the only thing that has helped him put up with his wife. We had a great lesson with him and invited him to church. He ended up getting sick, but we hope to meet with him tonight!
Anya and Anastaseja were both sick this week. We called them a couple times, but they couldn't meet. They live pretty far outside the city and didn't feel well enough to come in. We found some members that live out in their area though, so we are going to try and go out there and teach them with the members. The members can also give them a ride into the city on Sundays for church. Good deal.
Our branch is planning a big temple trip in August. The branch President has been pushing to get all the members who are able to the temple together. Because of this he has asked us to go around and teach the members about temples. We have also been having a temple prep class every week. I never took a temple prep class, so it has been nice to be in one. It has also made me pretty trunky to go to the temple. I am not trunky at all to watch movies, listen to music, or do anything like that, but I can't wait to go back to the temple.
We had a big combined district meeting with a few different cities and the Dances. It was sort of like a mini zone conference. It was a lot of fun. We talked about the using scriptures in our teaching and introducing, reading, applying, (IRA) scriptures to our investigators. It was a good time. I always love being around President Dance. I have learned a lot from him. I am excited for you to meet him one day.
As we were walking down the street last week I all of a sudden had a really big urge come over me to find new people. I have always been pretty motivated to do missionary work, but for the first time I really really wanted to work as hard as I could. For some reason I just started to run. I am not exactly sure why, I just wanted to run. We ran that day to our knocking area. Of course when there are people around we would stop running and talk with them, but we were all just really anxious to find the prepared people. When we went knocking that night we would run from door to door. It has been a blast. My companions were sort of finding a hard time motivating themselves, but as soon as we started running they both get really exciting to work. Now of course we are still keeping the dignity of our calling. We are not acting like a bunch of chickens with our heads cut off. We just have some important stuff to say to people and we want to share it with as many people as we can. Wish us luck.
In all honesty we don't have too many investigators right now. We are working hard to find more though. I am confident that we will find the prepared people and that success will follow because of our obedience and hard work. Thanks for all your love and support! I hope everyone has an awesome week! I can't wait to see all your faces and talk to you in person. Don't get trunky.

Love,
Elder Nielson

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: May 05/23/11

2011-05-25T09:20:00.001-07:00

Family,

I am not exactly sure where all the time goes. Every week when I sit down and email I feel as though I just got done emailing you the week before. Time moves by very quickly. The other day I was on the bus looking around at all the run down graffiti buildings and people who don't look much different and I realized for about the 100th time how much I love it here. I don't know why I love all the people and places here. That's just what happens when you serve people. I feel like I have a clock in my head and that I am watching the time slip away until I have to say goodbye to my Baltic family and friends. It is the most bitter sweet experience in my life. However, I don't have to worry about that for another month.
This was a great week. We had a lot of miracles happen. My favorite miracle involves a lady named Anya and Nastja. Do you remember the lady I told you about named Nadejda? She is the healer. Well, she wanted us to talk to her friend Anya. She gave us her number and we set up a lesson with her. About 30 minutes before the lesson Anya asked if she could bring some friends to the lesson. She ended up bringing 3 other people to the lesson. She brought her 20 year old son and his girl friend and then an older guy named Alexander to the lesson. I need to take a minute and describe Anya to you. She is about 45 years old. When she was younger she was a model and toured all around Europe. She is having a little bit of a hard time letting go of her glory days and so she dresses and acts like she is still 20. She has gotten Botox so her lips are HUGE and she wears about a pound of make up. I was very surprised to find out that she is very very spiritual and understands a lot about God and the Bible. Her Son and the other guy Alexander weren't very interested, but Anya and the son’s girl friend seemed very interested. We invited them to come to church and they came! President and Sister Dance came to our branch this last week and gave amazing talks that were perfect for our investigators to hear. The whole branch loved these two women. Usually there are only a few people in the investigators class, but when you bring two female good looking girls to church all of a sudden all the single men in the branch for some reason want to come to the investigators class. :) We are pretty excited about them. They loved church! Sister Dance asked them how they felt after church and they told her that they felt like they belonged here. They talked about how much peace they felt. It was a cool experience. However, we need to talk to them about modesty sometime. Hopefully we can give them a baptismal date this next week.
We also had a cool miracle with a man named Andris. I contacted this guy about a week ago. He gave me his address and so we tried stopping by a couple weeks later. Unfortunately he had a certain kind of lock on his door to his stairwell that are impossible to crack. They are the Kryptonite of missionary knocking. I tried for a long time, but couldn't get it. I figured we could just try back another day. Luckily, this is the Lords work and he won’t allow us to mess it up. The next day we were walking down the street and I saw this same man standing in the same spot as he was when I contacted him. We pulled him to a park bench and taught him for about 20 minutes. We didn't have much time so we just taught him about prayer and then set up a meeting for the next day. The next day he came and we went with him to the church. He is Latvian so I grabbed a Latvian speaking missionary and went and taught him while my companions went out contacting. We had a great first with him. It was way fun to listen to a first lesson in Latvian again as well. I understood a lot of it! We were able to teach in unity in 2 different languages and then we challenged him to be baptized. I haven't taught someone who understood what we were talking about that well in a long time. After I told him about the Apostasy he said "Ya I have been thinking about that for a while. I think everyone has changed the true Doctrine of Christ, which is why I am now looking for it." He is the man.
We also taught an interesting guy this week named Alexander. Everyones name is Alexander. We realized this last week that we taught 4 people named Alexander in one day. This guy seemed pretty normal at first, but then we realized that he wasn't. He has a lot of issues. He is afraid of EVERYTHING. He doesn't like to go outside because he is afraid he is going to be killed, but he is afraid of his Grandma, so he doesn't like to be at home either. He came to church this week for about 8 seconds. He came late while we’re in Sacrament meeting. He walked into the room, sat down, and then sprinted out. I wanted to go after him, but I was translating for all the English speakers, so I wasn't really in a position to leave. We tried calling him after church. He didn't answer. Hopefully we can get a hold of him!

Things are going really well in our companionship. Both my companions are really fun. We have a good time together. We all complement each other very well. We are all pretty different, but it's fun. Elder Froelich is from Virgina and Elder Barnard is from American Falls, Idaho. Good guys.
Okay I love all of you! Have a great week! Have fun and tell everyone I say "Hey."

Love,
Me
P.s It is also raining here. Small world

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: May 05/16/11

2011-05-21T12:11:00.001-07:00

Family,

Hello for Imanta. As I guessed I have been transferred to the wonderful area of Imanta. Imanta is still considered Riga, it is just on the other side of the river. Before, I served in Riga center on more of the North West side of the river. Imanta is down on the South Eastern side. This is area is much different than any other place I have been. I have spent basically my whole mission in the capital city. That means I have done a lot of street contacting and not as much knocking. Imanta is basically an all knocking area. It has been a lot of fun though.
I am with Elder Froelich and Elder Barnard. We are in a threesome. If you remember I served with Elder Barnard back earlier in my mission. Elder Barnard is a couple transfers younger than me. Elder Froelich has almost been out a year. Both are great missionaries. Elder Barnard and Froelich have already served together for 3 transfers. This will be their 4th together. I sometimes feel like I am playing referee between them. They love each other, they just like to bicker and argue a little bit.
Our Apartment is very very small, but I like it. Luckily I am not claustrophobic. The branch here is awesome. They have a pretty strong Priesthood. They have about 10 active Melchizedek Priesthood holders. This branch is a very mature branch. The majority of people know exactly why they are at church and many have been to the temple. It has been fun getting to know them.
We are the only 3 missionaries in Imanta. Because an Elder went home early, they had to combine two areas. This means we have A LOT of area to cover. None of us have been in the area we are living in as well, so we have been getting a little bit lost every where we go. It has been a blast though. Threesomes are always a lot of fun. It takes away a lot of the stresses that come with just living with and working with one person.
We have some great people we are working with. We have two baptismal dates. Both are named Alexander. One is about 45 and the other 20 years old. They are two friends that live together. They have quit smoking for a little over a week now and have a strong desire to be baptized. They are fun to work with. We need to move their baptismal date, but we are planning for about three weeks from last Saturday. I am pretty excited for them.
Another lady we are working with is Nadejda. That means "Hope" in Russian. She is a little interesting. She is a healer. She is a very very spiritual woman. She is very good at reading people and knowing how they are feeling at that moment. It is a little bit creepy almost.
I learned a great lesson last week. It doesn't matter how talented you are, if you don't have the spirit, you have nothing. I will tell you a story that happened to us last week while we were teaching Nadejda. Elder Barnard speaks Russian very very well. Some might argue that he is the best Russian speaker in the mission. Elder Froelich struggles a little bit with the language. The other day while we were teaching Nadejda, Elder Barnard recited the first vision to her and explained all about Joseph Smith in perfect Russian. Elder Froelich asked her how she felt. She said she didn't feel anything. Elder Froelich then re-re-explained about Joseph Smith and testified to her about the restoration in very broken Russian. She looked at him and said “I am not sure what you just did, but I haven't felt the spirit that strong in a long time." Elder Barnard is an awesome missionary. He however is struggling with a few things right now. Because of this, when he taught her, he didn't really use the spirit. He just relied on his own skills. Elder Froelich relied on the spirit and the difference was incredible to see. It helped me realize how important the spirit is in this work. We can't just rely on our own skills. We have to qualify for the spirit and then put our trust in him.
I am excited to be in this area. A lot of good things are going to happen this next transfer. Thanks for all your love and support. You are all amazing. It was fun to see all the pictures. Abby has grown soo much! She is way cute. I love you!

Love,
Me

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: May 05/09/11

2011-05-10T19:41:00.001-07:00

Family,

It seems like I just talked to you on the phone. Oh wait, I did just talk to you on the phone. It was fun hearing your voices and talking for a little bit. I am glad you also got to talk to President Dance. That is a pretty funny story. I am sure he gets a few phone calls each Mothers Day and Christmas from frustrated parents who can't get a hold of their missionary.
Today is the first day of the rest of my mission. I am excited to stay focused and work hard until the end. President Dance talked to me a little bit about that in my interview. He said the more obedient I am now, the more I will qualify to have the spirit with me after my mission to make important decisions. I believe that and I am excited to stay obedient and work until the end.
I can't believe that I am starting my last transfer today. I have seen a lot of missionaries start their last transfer, but I never really believed that I would be in that situation. It is a beautiful day today, we aren't wearing suits, the trees are all green and I ate cookies for breakfast. Can life get much better than this? I submit that it cannot.
I want to tell you about a cool miracle. I meant to talk to you about this during our phone call, but I forgot. Do you remember Sharunas? The first time I was in Vilnius, during my second transfer, I found him. Elder Briggs and I taught him for a while and then was baptized a little while later after I left. He is a young guy. He and I became really close. Well over the last year or so a lot of things have happened in his life. He got his girlfriend pregnant, married her, and left the church. When I came back to Vilnius no one had heard from him for a long long time. He wrote me an email when I was in my 4th transfer, but that was the last time we have heard from him. He got a new number and moved somewhere. For the last 3 transfers every time we are out contacting I have kept my eyes open for Sharunas. I have seen a few people that look like him, but I have never been able to find him. A couple days ago we were out contacting and we went down a random side street that I have never been on before. We were the only people on the street and I felt silly taking us down there because there were no people. I then saw a young kid riding towards us on a skate board. He had longer hair and hadn't shaven in a few weeks. The kid stopped riding his skate board when he saw us and just looked at us. He then pointed at me and said "Nielson?!" I then realized that it was Sharunas! He kicked his skateboard off to the side and gave me a big hug. It was so good to see him. He told me that he wasn't with that girl anymore and that a lot of things have changed in his life. He also told me that he is coming to America this summer and is planning on coming to Utah. I told him I was going to be home. He said “I know that is why I am going to Utah, I wanted to find you." We had a fun time talking. I told him he needed to come back to church. He said he would think about it. It made my day. Maybe one day you will all get to meet him.
Good things continue to happen in Vilnius. Miracles happen everyday. I really hope I get to stay here for my last transfer. I was looking around at church and realized how much I was going to miss everyone in that branch. They are all my family. This branch has so much energy. When my companion and I walk into the church on Sunday everyone is so happy to see us. Everyone is giving each other hugs and acting like they haven't seen each other in a month. I love them. It will be weird to come home and have people try to shake my hand at church. We hug in the Baltic’s. I think I might just take that home with me.
Veronica is doing great. We have District Conference this week, so she will be getting baptized the week after. She is way excited. I just hope and pray her parents will come to church again. It might take a while, but I am confident they will come around.
Okay, well I love all of you. Thanks for your love and support. I hope you have good weather like we do right now!

Love,
Me

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: May 05/02/11

2011-05-02T19:13:00.000-07:00

Family-

Before anything I guess I should tell you about the phone call. It would work best for us if you called 11:00 your time. That means it is 8:00 my time. Does that work for you? Elder Falk’s Mom will call about 12:00 your time and 9:00 our time. I hope that works. If I remember correctly church starts at 1:00. This should give you enough time to talk and then head off to church. This is my number (011-370-606-78530) If for some reason you run into problems, President Dance’s number is (011-371-2928-7605) If for some reason that doesn't work.... I guess we can talk in about June :) Just kidding mom, it will work.

Toe Surgery. Everything went very smooth. Bloody, but smooth. My appt was last Tuesday. I went in and laid down on the table. I tried to look up, but the Doctor said "No looking, lay down." I kept trying to sneak a peek, but he kept telling me no. I wasn't really scared, I just didn't like have people do stuff to my toes, without knowing what they were doing. The only lady that spoke Russian came up to me while I was laying down and in her thick accent said while stroking my hair "Relax, it will all be over soon." If that isn't creepy I don't know what is. In America doctors don't use words like "Pain." According to Brian Regan they use words like "Pressure." This is not the case here. The Doctor pulled out a large needle and said "This is going to hurt." After a few minutes he asked me “Can you feel your toe?" I asked "Are you touching my toe?" (Don't forget I can't see anything) He started to laugh a very creepy laugh and said "Yes." I am not exactly sure what happened next. All I know is it sounded like someone was hitting a hammer against my toe. After that I limped my way back home. It didn't hurt too much, it just felt weird walking on my foot when I couldn't feel it. We took lunch after that and then I rested for a couple more hours and then we went out and worked. All in all it was an interesting experience. I don't recommend anyone goes through it. I am still wrapping my toe in a bandage and it is still all bloody by time I come home at night. Don't worry, I took a picture.

This has been a pretty slow week for us. We were dealing with my toe surgery and Elder Falk is having some problems with his arm. He got some sort of weird rash infection. It started off with just a few red bumps, but now has spread over his entire arm and is pussing. Everyday I wrap his arm up and by the end of the day the puss has soaked through the gauze. It's way sick. We are going to the Doctor tonight. I don't really know what Leprosy is, but I imagine it looks like Elder Falk’s arm. “I hope they call me on a mission, when I have a grown a foot or two. I hope by then I will be ready, to have pussy arm infections, Ingrown toe surgery and other things like missionaries do." Haha I just made that up. I should be a song writer.

Veronica is in Germany right now with her parents. They will be there for the next couple of weeks. We are baptizing her when she gets back. Jefim has been on cloud nine ever since his parents came to church. He even got up and bore is testimony about it. Haha while Jefim was bearing his testimony he said “I can't wait for my sister to be baptized on the 14th of May." The ward mission leader yells out, from the congregation "Jefim we have a district conference that weekend, maybe we should do it the next week." Jefim agreed and continued with his testimony. ohhh Vilnius.

This is going to be a short email. I am sorry. We are running a little short of time. Thanks for your emails! Thanks for your love. It was fun to hear from Melissa. The pictures are adorable. I can't wait to meet her. I can't wait to talk to Mom and Dad. Have a great week!

Love,
Matt

Elder Thatchers Last Week in Finland. 4/25/11

2011-04-26T09:07:00.000-07:00

*Scott will speak in the Heughs Canyon Ward, May 15th at 11:00 AM. The address is 6301 South 2300 East. For anyone who might be interested.

Well, this is it huh?... Oh how much I wish I could stay. It has been maybe the hardest well not maybe it has been the hardest 2 years of my life... but just like they all say it has been the best two years of my life. Two years that I truly wouldn't trade for anything in the world! I have come to love this country to love this language and to love these people. I will never forget the bone rattling cold or the hot summer days. I will never forget that, I have loved Finland... but even more than that I have loved my mission. I have changed so much and I will never be the same. I honestly wish I didn't have to go. I wish I could stay here and spread this gospel to be a missionary to get bitten by dogs and get frost bite while riding a bike... but well my time has come. There is a great scripture that is found in the Bible... and well I found it through the missionary handbook... it says that there is a time and a season for all things under the heavens. There is a time to go on a mission and unfortunately there is a time to come home from a mission... but this isn't the end... oh no... this definitely isn't the end... but this is simply a new beginning. I will remember my mission every single day of my life! For it has saved my life or if I may be more correct the Lord has changed my life as I have served!

Well I figured that I would let you know what my schedule will be like for my last week in Finland :(. We are leaving tomorrow morning for Helsinki where we have a District Meeting and after that I will be spending the next few days with the APs until I fly out on Friday morning... I will try to get some of the "Royal Wedding" ha ha but I don't think they will have to much going on in the airport where I will be :) so I don't think you have too much to worry about as far as my safety etc... I think I will be fine :). Well your emails really touched me... I don't know why but I was doing fine about going home until I got them... I don't mean that in a bad way just that it was like a reality check... oh ya I leave soon... But like I said although I am sad to leave I know that the Lord has made me something... something out of nothing quite honestly... and although I won't be a missionary anymore, that doesn't mean I can't serve and change lives even while I am at home studying etc. It doesn't say anywhere that only missionaries who wear name tags can be disciples of Jesus Christ... although I will not have the privilege of wearing the Savior's name right next to mine on my chest I will always let my light shine so that others will know where I stand... I know that it will be hard coming home... but it has been hard to leave every single area I have served! I am only eternally grateful to my Father in Heaven that I have been able to serve here! IN THIS AMAZING LAND!!! I will be leaving another family here as well, and I will never forget them and how they changed and saved my life but also I will be coming home to my family, I love you and I know this Church is true! It really is! I KNOW IT! I STAND AS A WITNESS OF IT IN ALL TIMES AND IN ALL PLACES!!!!!!!!! I know that this Church is Jesus Christ's true Church the Church that Joseph Smith restored! IT IS TRUE! DON'T FORGET THAT!!!!!!!!!!!

I really don't know what else to say... so let me just this I LOVE YOU!!!

The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose
I will not, I cannot, desert to his foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I'll never, no never, I'll never, no never,
I'll never, no never, no never forsake!

This is Elder Thatcher signing off... it's been a great two years

Rakkaudella Vanhin Scott Craig Thatcher

*Scott will speak in the Heughs Canyon Ward, May 15th at 11:00 AM. The address is 6301 South 2300 East. For anyone who might be interested.

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Apr 04/25/11

2011-04-26T09:06:00.000-07:00

Family

I am having open toe surgery tomorrow. Over the last month or so I have getting a pretty bad in grown toe nail. I have gotten a couple on my mission and have been able to remove them myself. This one is pretty deep and close to the root though. It also got infected when I tried to take it out myself. I went to the doctor last week and we scheduled and appt for me to get it removed this week.
My Dr. is an interesting guy. He doesn't like Russians very much, so he only speaks to me in English. He doesn't speak English very well though so it is sort of hard to communicate. When he was looking at my toe he didn't even use gloves. He just grabbed my foot with his bare hands and started poking at my infected toe. After a few minutes of poking, he looked at me and said “Yes, you have something wrong with your toe." Haha really? Thanks Dr, how much do I owe you for that one. I guess he is going to take a chunk out of my toe and then burn it so it never comes back. My operation is tomorrow. Wish my luck.
On a better note, Felix was baptized yesterday! Our district also has another baptism coming up this weekend. About a month ago a women named Elena was baptized. (The one that jumped up and said Yahooo!) Her daughter Yulea is now getting baptized this next week. Yulea is 13 years old. She is way solid.
To make it even better Veronica is getting baptized a few weeks after that. She will be in Germany for a few weeks, so we are just going to baptize her when she gets back. Her baptism is set for May 13. She is awesome. We had a couple of great lessons with her last week. We taught her a bunch of commandments, including the Law of Chastity. I wasn't exactly sure how to teach it to her so I got President Dance’s advice. We ended up teaching it in about 1 sentence. “God wants our relationships with our friends to stay just as friends until after we are married."
Veronica and Jefims parents came to church yesterday! It was huge! Do you remember me telling the story of the man who talked with a member of our church on a business trip? Well they ended up coming to the baptism on Saturday and church on Sunday! It was a miracle. They are way nice. I talked to the Dad for a while. They are people that we can't really push quickly into the church, but all the members were great with them and all the talks in Sacrament meeting were perfect. It was way fun to see Jefim, his little sister, and his parents all together at church. That would possibly be the coolest thing ever if we could get them both baptized and sealed.
I went on exchanges this past week. I was with Elder Manning. Elder Manning is the man. He has a full ride scholarship to play football for USU when he gets home. He is a quarterback from Logan. He also had a scholarship to play basketball, but wanted to do football more. He is also a great missionary. It was a lot of fun being with him. We are pretty similar people. Besides the fact that he is much more athletic.
You are all correct, the weather here is awesome right now. All the trees are even starting to get green. It is really pretty. I love being warm. Soon we will even be able to take off our suit coats.
I am not sure what time you will be able to call on Mothers day. I am sure I will be able to tell you next week. It seems like we just talked on the phone doesn't it? Crazy.
I love all of you. Thanks for everything you do. Happy Birthday Melissa last week! Happy birthday Ashley this upcoming week! Also happy anniversary Mom and Dad. Tell everyone who keeps telling me "Hi" that I say "Hey" back.

Love, Me

Matt Nielson On: Apr 04/18/11

2011-04-19T21:20:00.000-07:00

Family,

I almost died this week. Just kidding. I remember being in school and learning about your introductory sentence. I figure that would be a good one to grab your attention and pull you all into the letter. In all reality I was really sick this week. I don't exactly know what a sinus infection is, but as much as I have gathered, I had one. It was super annoying. It didn't really stop me from working, it just felt like someone has hitting me in the forehead with a golf ball all day long. Everything is good now though.
Ha ha ha wow those pictures are ridiculous from my landlord. I am surprised he wrote to you in English. I have only spoken to him in Russian. I didn't even know he spoke English. He is a good guy. We have had a mysterious leak in our shower for the past month. All of us have spent a long time trying to figure out exactly where it is coming from. I think I finally figured it out this past week. I took a shower for the first time today without having to clean up water afterwards. It was awesome.
I love being a missionary, but sometimes it is hard to connect with people because they are so threatened by the fact that you just stopped them on the street or knocked on their door. They won't really open up and just look at us missionaries that are people who want money or something. I am jealous that all of you have the chance to share the gospel with people around you in such a non threatening way. I had a couple opportunities to do that this past week and it was great.
Last week, when we came home for lunch, our landlord was working on our shower. After lunch while Elder Falk was doing the dishes I went into the bathroom and started to help him. After a few minutes of talking and getting to know him the conversation turned to the Gospel. He asked me if I ever drink and I told him about my morals and values. After a few minutes I noticed that we had both stopped working and were sitting there talking to each other in the bathroom. I grabbed a book of Mormon and began to explain about it and what it was. He took the book and promised to read.
Last week we ran into an inactive man on the bus. He asked us if we would come over and help him move. We went over a couple days later and began to help him pack up his stuff. I started getting a little frustrated because the member wasn't really doing anything to help. I was thinking about just leaving and letting him do it himself, but then I noticed a middle aged woman across the street watching us. I heard her ask the member "who are these helpers that you have?" He responded by saying "just some friends." After he walked away I walked across the street and started talking to this lady. She was possibly the nicest lady I have ever talked to in my life. We had a great conversation about families and I ended up giving her a book of Mormon and my number.
In both of these situations I wasn't wearing missionary clothes, just service clothes. If I would have walked up to them on the street or knocked on their door they most likely would have turned me away. However, they saw us helping and "Going about doing good" and became interested in what we were doing. That is the amazing advantage that people who aren't on missions have. They have the opportunity to strike up gospel conversations and gain peoples trust in a non threatening way. Having natural conversations with people about the church is so much easier and affective than talking to them on street or knocking on their door. I am excited to have many more experiences like that ones I had last week throughout my life.
Something is happening in Vilnius. I am not exactly sure how to describe it. For the first time on my mission I feel like people like us. When we walk down the street people are saying hi to us. People are nodding or waving at us from across the street. Teaching has been so slow in Vilnius for so long, so Elder Falk and I have had a goal just to go around and do good for people and if we have a chance, teach the Gospel. We have had a lot of success helping people and talking with people. It has been a lot of fun. We have just been doing little things for people, but we have seen big things come out of it.
Last week I saw a girl taking a picture of her boy friend by a statue. I stopped and asked if she wanted me to take a picture with both of them together. After taking the picture we said goodbye and walked away. A couple seconds later they were running down the street and stopped us. They asked who we were and what we were doing. We had a great conversation with them and then ended up taking a picture with all of us together. We have seen them a couple times now around town and every time they stop and say hi. They may not be prepared now to hear the Gospel, but at least they know who we are and think we are normal.
As you can tell life it good. We have another baptism this weekend in our District. His name is Felix. He is a man the sisters have been teaching. He looks like someone hit him in the face with a 2 by 4, but he is the man. He has a strong testimony and is ready to get baptized. This is the 3rd baptism this year in our branch! We only got two all of last year so we are excited.
Thanks for all of your love and support. I love all of you! Have a great week. Stay positive and love your life.

Love
Me

Elder Thatcher 4/17/11

2011-04-19T21:12:00.000-07:00

Well Hello from pikku venejä... Well this week has just been kind of weird... I really don't know why but ya, it's been just a hard week... I have never had such a hard time concentrating on anything before in my life... it has been really hard but I have done pretty well at just keeping it to myself but really it has been a bit of an uphill climb to the end, I guess I can't expect anything more... I will just do my very very best and I will just do the things I know I need to until it passes :) As for everything else it is pretty good, I am feeling much better and my cold is pretty much all gone... except I think I got Elder Arnesen sick... ANTEEKS! well no big deal maybe he won't kill me so much now when we go running in the morning :) Well LPR is pretty great I like it but ya it's not Oulu or Vaasa but I can't really expect it to be when I have been here a little over a week and my total stay will be like 3 weeks. As for Russian I can say like 10 words maybe but well I know how to say Hello my name is Elder Thatcher. After that it's pretty much conversation over... I can say nice to meet you and goodbye though.... so we don't get to far just an introduction and goodbye. Oh I do know how to say how are you but I don't know what they say after so it's pretty useless but it's fun. Some speak English and so if they aren't interested I try to learn a word or something from them.

Let's get to your questions shall we.
1. I write to Maria because Maria (awesome recent convert in Oulu) and Sisar Airaksinen found the get Robbie baptized blog and have been reading that so I would try to write something in Finnish but I don't know where you got the whole Australia thing from...
2. The baptism was good I am hoping to throw a few pictures on this email... katsotaan jos ehdin.
3. No :( we haven't been able to get a hold of Nadia... her phone doesn't work and well she lives like 40 minutes away from LPR in a place called Imatra so we can't really make it out there everyday but I might ask a member to try to see if she still lives at that address out there... I really want to find her and have Elder Arnesen and Elder Carr teach and baptize her!
4. YES!!!!!!! I'm pretty excited for that.
5. Yes I will be leaving alone from Finland and I don't know if there will be other missionaries on the same flight as me... I guess it's possible... but yes I am flying solo. kind of scary :) no it will be fine... just being alone for the first time in a while will be a bit different... separation anxiety anyone?
6. The weather is getting much warmer yesterday it was like 15 C so we went out in just white shirts for the first time this year since last fall. YAY!!! It is a bit colder today so the jackets came back out but things are well and so it will be fine :)
7. Sure :)
8. OK... why do I have to get another one... just in case? But ya that's fine but I don't want to spend the whole first week home in a Doctor's office/offices.
9. I don't know I will email Dad about it.
10. Yep the cold is gone.

Well we are teaching a lot and things are going very well here in LPR so I am loving it and just working hard! I am sorry this is kind of short today but well there really isn't too much to tell, everyone just is talking about me coming home so I am going to talk about missionary work :) and so because there isn't too much to tell! I want you all to know that I know this Church is true!!!!! I KNOW IT WITH ALL MY HEART!!!!!!!!!!!! Although hard times come like a weird week like last week for me I know that as we use the knowledge we have and as we pray and keep the commandments everything will work out and we will come out better on the other side. Just like here in Finland a dark cold winter breaks after a long hard struggle into the beauty and warmth of spring! I love my mission! I love my life! I love this country and all who live here! I know this church is true and I hope you have a great week and that you stay safe and have fun! Muttei liian hauskaa!

Rakastan teitä (I don't mean streets :))

Rakkaudella Vanhin Thatcher

***

Here are some pics of the baptism the cake we made for the baptism and a picture of us tracting with 3 :) KIRKKO ON TOTTA!!! I love you and let me know if there is anything special you want from Finland :) I LOVE YOU

Rakkaudella Vanhin Thatcher

Elder Lisonbee's Final P-Day 4/11/11

2011-04-11T20:36:00.000-07:00

I cannot believe it. It is very hard to believe that I will be going home this week. Tomorrow is my last day in the area, and then I travel to Asuncion and sign out of the country and do all that stuff. Pretty ridiculous. I am just about all packed up already, so all I have to do is say bye to everyone. Man is it going to be a difficult departure. Some of my converts are going to the airport to say bye, the Sena Family, I dont know if you remember them. BUt yeah, that will be very hard. Along wiht some other people from my first areas. And my last area. It will be tough but I will be able to do it somehow.
Then, we will just have a blast this weekend. We will have to have a lot of fun to keep me from crying haha.
Well, I guess thats good that I get to help move in. I hope it is getting close. So I get to live a few days in the little temp house you are living in right now? Thats cool. Maybe I will just sleep in Andreas new big awesome house.
Well, Friday sounds like it will be a lot of fun. I am excited to see you all and be able to spend time with you again. I miss the times when we used to all just sit around and talk or watch stupid shows like Extreme Make-over Home Edition or whatever. I cant wait to be able tot do that again. Although I am going to miss the mission and these people so intensely, I feel like it is about time to be with all of you again. I am ready.
Well, Dad, thank you SO MUCH for everything you have done for me on my mission. I feel like the most blessed son in the world, and so undeserving of all the love and support you poured on me these last two years. Both you and mom have been truly amazing and I will never be able to thank you enough. Then, as I get home you will continue to bless me and help me beyond what I deserve. Someday I will pay you back for everything, in one form or another. I love you so much and will never forget your selfless, generous love and service towards me and all your children in all moments of our lives. You are an amazing, outstanding father. Thank you for everything.
Elder Lisonbee

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Apr 04/11/11

2011-04-11T20:35:00.000-07:00

Family,

Hello from Riga! Isn't my mission awesome? One day I can be in Lithuania, then the next day I can be in a whole new country! How many other missionaries get an opportunity to serve in 3 different countries? Not very many. Before you get too excited, I have not be transferred here. Elder Falk had to come up to Riga to do some Visa work, so I tagged along. We have an appointment at the migration office at 5 and then our bus leaves back to Vilnius at 6:30. We won't get home until late, but that’s life.
So probably the most exciting news this week is that I got to see Dennis and Joni! I guess I should say Elder and Sister Neuenschwander. It was hard not to call Joni, Joni. We both kept slipping up and calling each other by our first names. It was weird for someone to hear someone call me "Matt." That's just not my name anymore.
Elder Falk and I drove to Kaunas on Monday evening and then took a taxi to their hotel. We got there about 15 minutes before they did, so we spent the time waiting and talking in the lobby. I was surprised that I was a little bit nervous to see them. I never thought I would be nervous to see my family. I think I might be a little bit nervous to see all of you as well. As soon as I saw Joni she broke into tears and gave me a big hug. I think it's safe to say that is the first hug I have received from a girl with my mission president watching. President Dance joked a little bit about it because my face turned red.
We then went to a little native Lithuanian restaurant for dinner with the Dance’s and the Assistants. It was fun talking with everyone and catching up. I am happy I served as Assistant as well because I was comfortable to eat around the Dance’s. I think Elder Falk felt a little bit nervous. We then took a short walk through old town on our way to meet with the other missionaries.
That night Elder Falk and I stayed at the Lithuanian speaking elders place in Kaunas with the Assistants. There wasn't any beds or couches for me so I slept on the floor on a towel with my coat as my blanket. It wasn't the best sleep I have gotten. Needless to say I was happy when I finally watched the sun rise.
We then had a wonderful zone conference. Joni and Dennis spoke for about an hour or so. They did a great job. Joni talked all about the importance of family history and what they are doing on their mission. Dennis gave an amazing talk as well and did a great job at getting us all excited about doing missionary work and keeping records. I sat next to Joni during lunch and then after the conference we took some more pictures. It was fun introducing them to some of my friends and district.
My worlds most definitely collided, but it wasn't as weird as I thought it would be. It was actually really normal. I am thankful I got to see them both. It was a lot of fun and it was something I will never forget about. When I got home I said a quick prayer and asked God to help me stay focused and then Elder Falk and I went back to work.
This last week we watched conference. We watched the Saturday sessions on Thursday and Friday in English and then on Sunday while the members and investigators were watching it in Russian we went into a room and watched the Sunday afternoon sessions with some other English speaking people from America. Conference was awesome. I can't believe I used to be bored while watching conference. If someone is bored, they aren't paying attention.
Ali the recent convert came up to me after conference and said (In broken English) “It was been so good to listen to our living prophet. Although, I didn't like that some people weren't paying attention when he was speaking. They need to listen when a prophet of God is talking." Ha-ha it was awesome. He has such a good understand of the Gospel and the importance of a living prophet.
I don't think I could choose a favorite talk. I liked them all, but I definitely had some really important questions answered that had honestly been bothering me a little bit. I loved Elder Holland’s talk and how he addressed how if we are listening with the spirit, we will always hear something that is meant for us.
I have been thinking about people going less active and inactive the last couple of days. Especially after Dad’s email when he talked about those people in our ward who have left our church. One thing I have realized this week is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is so simple. Yet, we have a tendency of making it so much harder and complicated than it really is. Life in general is that way. We are the ones who complicate it. Take loosing weigh for example. How do you loose weight? You burn more calories than you take in by eating healthy and exercising. How do you receive Salvation after this life and live happy in this life? You have faith, repent, be baptized, receive the Holy Ghost, and endure to the end. We “Endure to the End by repeating this same process over and over again in our lives. By repeating this process we grow in faith and prepare ourselves to make other important covenants with God. It is not a stair case you only climb once, but something you do over and over again. I could go deeper into each step but that is it. That is how we gain salvation and happiness, and yet we all find it so hard to do sometimes.
The church is true. I received another testimony that the church is true this week by looking at how our church is run. The basic make of the church is a testimony builder to me. Christ is leading this church. He works through a Prophet. The prophet has counselors. There are 12 men below them, 70 below them, more quorums of 70 below them and so on and so forth all the way down to the ward level. It is a perfect system. Of course there are imperfect people, but the church itself is perfect to me. There is no greater, more effective, efficient, or awesome organization in the world. It has to be true.
I also think it is cool how every different area of the church is governed the same way. I have a mission President, the mission president has assistants, then zone leaders, district leaders, and then all the missionaries. It is brilliant. With this system everyone grows, learns and is protected together. To make it better, no one esteems or puts themselves above anyone else. The greatest among us is our servant. I love it. I am excited to be in this church the rest of my life. I can't even understand how complicated it would be to meet the needs of 14 million people, yet through this system the Church does it. Amazing.
I also love how receiving a testimony and keeping that testimony throughout your life is so simple. What do you need to do? Read the scriptures, ponder, and pray about them. If someone will do that with a sincere desire they will come to know it is true. If they continue to read and pray throughout their lives they will ALWAYS stay on the right path. Yes they will fall short once in a while and sin, but they will always understand and know the way back onto the path. To top it all off Christ is waiting with open arms to embrace EVERYONE back onto the path. It's so simple. Read and Pray daily and then everything else falls into place. It's when we start forgetting to do the small and simple things that eventually everything else comes crashing down.
I hope you don't think I am trying to preach to you. This is actually what I was thinking about the whole 4 hour bus ride. Unfortunately I didn't have any paper to write what I was thinking down, so I am taking the first opportunity I can to write my thoughts down. It just so happens the first opportunity I had was in this email. I know you already know all this, but it is something that I am just figuring out. I just wanted to share with you how cool I thought it was.
Thanks for all your love and support. Thank you for your letters and thank you for everything you do for me. STAY POSITIVE AND LOVE YOUR LIFE.

Love
Me

Elder Thatcher 4/11/11

2011-04-11T20:34:00.000-07:00

Yes I have now served in the North, West, South, and now I am here in the East! I am loving it too! Well I am with Elder Arnesen from Pleasant Grove and with a great little greenie named Elder Carr from Boise Idaho. LPR is a great place and I like it a lot... it was hard to leave Oulu... I loved that place with all of my heart, the hardest thing was saying goodbye to Maria! Dang that was really hard and I saw her Monday at FHE and then right after I hopped on my night train to go to Helsinki for the trainers meeting. Oh, that was hard, but she is great and she gave a talk in Church on Sunday so I am sure it went well I was praying for her! Well I don't want to dwell on that anymore it just makes me miss Oulu... so moving on... I went to Helsinki where we picked up Elder Carr and then we made our way East and after a few hours on a train we arrived! Well things are really going well here in LPR we have right now 5 baptismal dates and one for this weekend with a great Finnish woman named Päivi. She needs our prayers so be sure to pray for Päivi as well! I will try to send some pictures next week of the baptism. As for my cold I am doing a little better but it is still bothering me... I can't quite seem to shake it. Well things are going well I love my compis they are great and humble and so awesome! Elder Arnesen must be a huge stud he is training in his 5th change!!!! So I am here just helping and loving life! There is a certain person I am searching for... a lady I met when I was in Roi but we met her again in Kajaani on splits once, her name is Nadia and well she is golden and well I don't know, I am just hoping we can get in touch with her... I think there are still a few miracles to be seen here in Finland for me so I am trying to 1. find a young Finnish man to be my "replacement" and 2. I want to leave with Nadia having a baptismal date! So I would like to ask for your prayers so that we can have some more success. Well things are really great and I couldn't be happier. I am just glad I am still in Finland!!!!!!!!!

Well as for your question no they don't speak Russian here, well they do, but just mostly the tourists from our comrades to the east, they are nice and a lot come here to study and work so there is definitely a lot of Russian but it's not like the majority or anything, but they do have a fun dialect here so it's fun to learn new ways of saying things :)

As for the song that would be fun if you want to I am fine with that if that is what they want to do. That would be a lot of fun. As for me yes I would love to do all those things and whatever it may be as long as I can spend time with my family! One thing I would like to do is to go to the Temple maybe the day after I get home (if I don't fall asleep in the Temple) but I do want to spend time with you and I want to visit the Temple once a week and well I have a bunch of great things I got from Conference and through prayer to help me stay strong when I get home. But well I am very excited to spend time with you and to do great and fun things! But we can talk about that on April 30th.

So be sure to hug Dad and Jinii for me on their Birthdays, they are great and I will make the cake Mom sent me for my B-day on one of those days! But on the 16th we have a baptism so that will be kind of a cool thing and that is how I will celebrate their Birthdays :) Well not too much planned for this week... the baptism but that is about it! oh and a District Meeting... pretty much no more travel so I don't have to worry too much about that anymore.

Well it sounds like you have gotten a lot of snow!!! It's not bad here it's in the pluses but always pretty windy so it's pretty cold still but no more snow. Well tell Amber and Becky congratulations and wow it's just really weird how much has probably changed over the past couple of years but well that's OK, change is an every day occurrence. Well I love you! I hope and pray you know that. I know without a shadow of a doubt that this Church is true and I am just grateful for these few last weeks. I know it's true and I am grateful for the miracles that happen everyday! I am just looking forward to these few weeks of miracles! I love you and I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer, this is His Church! We should give up anything and everything to know Him as we do that we will find lasting and eternal happiness! Pitäkää hauskaa... mutta älkää liaan hauskaa! Rakastan teitä (I don't mean streets) ja tiedän että kirkko on totta! Take care and have a great week :)

Rakkaudella Vanhin Thatcher

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Apr 04/04/11

2011-04-05T07:21:00.001-07:00

Family,

Do you remember over a year ago when I trained Elder Falk? Guess what? We are back together! He is the man. It is really fun to be back with him and see how much he has grown over the last year. Elder Falk served for about 3 months and then ended up going home, but has recently come back to the mission field and I have the opportunity to be with him again. He is a great teacher and a great missionary. What makes it even more fun is that Elder Falk is my District Leader. It is fun to sit back and watch him take the wheel.
This has been a little bit slower of a week, but that's alright. It happens. Our baptismal date Dimitri is doing well. We passed him over to the Lithuanian.s last week. He is progressing well. I am confident he will be baptized in the next couple months. As for our other investigators, everyone is doing well. Veronica was sick this last week so we weren't able to teach her. I guess she is leaving for Germany in a few weeks, so we pushed her baptismal date back to May 14. She is so cute.
Ali of course is still the man. He is so sincere and has so much desire. He loves bearing his testimony, but since he is new he isn't exactly sure how to do it. Last week as he was standing, bearing his testimony about prayer, he decided that it would be a good opportunity to say a prayer in front of everyone. So he said a 5 minutes long prayer in front of everyone, and then continued his testimony. Eventually the branch president passed him a note to sit down. He just gets so excited about everything and doesn't know what is "normal" and not. He is awesome.
I am excited to watch conference this week. We will watch it in English sometime next week probably and watch it in Russian with our investigators and branch this Saturday and Sunday. I can't believe that it is already time for conference. Didn't we just have it? It sounds like the whole family had a fun time together. I will have fun watching it with my family here.
President Dance called a few days ago and said "Elder Nielson, I got a request from an emeritus general authority who wants to take you out to dinner. I have a hard time saying no to them. I want you and your companion to come to Kaunas Monday night and have dinner with your Aunt and Uncle." Elder Falk and I are leaving this afternoon, eating with Dennis and Joni and the Dances, spending the night in Kaunus, and then going to zone conference the next day. I am excited! I hope Joni is feeling better. I sort of feel like my worlds are colliding. My family life is combining with my mission life.
About a month ago I designed a ring. I drew it on a piece of paper and then gave it to some Latvian missionaries to take to a ring maker in a city called Liejapaja. I finally got it this last week! I love it. It is a solid, dark silver band with some design around the outside of it and then written in the middle it says "Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania" in Russian cursive and then on the inside it says "Baltic Mission 2009-2011" In Russian. I love it. 6 other missionaries have now bought this ring also.
We helped a recent convert move this last week. He name is Vera. We have been teaching her brother Sasha for the last few months. Unfortunately they don't have very much money, so they moved about 30 minutes outside of the city. Because of this they won’t be able to come to church very often. Hopefully we can go visit them once in a while. Their home teachers should also still be going out to them.
I can't remember if I told you about my Brazilian friend Erick. Last week as we were contacting we ran into a member from Brazil. He is here playing professional soccer for a team in Lithuania. He was baptized in Brazil about 8 months ago. We met him by the bus stop last night and we went to church with him. He is way funny. His girlfriend should be moving here in about 4 months and then they are getting married in the temple. He is planning on staying here for about 4 years, or however long his contract lasts with his team. The problem is he doesn't speak English very well. It turns out I have forgotten everything from my 3 years of Spanish as well. I sang him the Trix song in Spanish though. He liked it. I am excited to have him in the branch.
I think that is about everything for this week. My life is great. It is really warm here right now. We finally took off our winter coats and are walking around in suit jackets. It's the best. I love all of you. Thanks for everything you do!

Love, ME

Elder Lisonbee 4/4/11

2011-04-05T06:50:00.000-07:00

Hey mom,
Well, no this will not be my last email. I will get to email one last time next Monday as well. THen the following monday I will have already been home about three days... yikes...
My final week in the mission field:
This whole week, I am going to do everything I can to just work the same ways and try and get people ready for baptism. We have a couple people right now that are progressing and could possible be baptized the week after I go home. The next missionary who comes along will have a couple nice little presents waiting for him. ha. So, all in all, this week is basically normal with the exception of a little packing and throwing away. There is a missionary from this area leaving on his mission in about 2 or 3 weeks, so I told him he can come over after I have packed all the stuff I am taking home, and he can sort through the stuff I am not taking to see if there is anything he wants. Most my stuff is pretty much destroyed though. I will take some pictures, especially of my shoes. My heel is literally touching the pavement... or dirt, every step I take. The sole of the shoe has ceased to live.
So, Sunday and Monday I will finish packing all the way and buy a few more souvenirs. I have buy-ed. ( I literally do not know the past tense of buy... I sat there for like 30 seconds trying to remember and I honestly do not... Bot? ha... pathetic..)
Tuesday is say buy to everyone day and just have as much fun as I can, get as many pictures and videos as I can, get people to sign my mission version of a high school year book and things like that. I have a nice little party planned with a family. We are going to make steak and eat and party.
Wednesday we go into the office.
8:30 sign out of country.
11:00 Souvenirs in Asuncion
12:00 Lunch
1:00 Going away party at Presidents House
5:00 Temple with President and Sister Madariaga
7:00 Dinner at a awesome retaurant called Paulistas (same as Rodizio Grill)
Thursday Hang out until 5 in the afternoon when my plane leaves. I will prolly be at the airport at about noon though. There I have talked to a few families that are going to go and say buy to me there. See me off. Pretty sure I already fear that moment... Sad day.
Friday... arrive in Salt Lake... wow.
So next week is pretty crazy. Its still just surreal to me. Hasn´t hit me yet.

Anyways, the baptism went really well. The lady, Irmina, was really nervous. She didnt ever say it but you could see it in her eyes. I wanted it to be a good baptism, because she is awesome and it is my last, so we invited everyone like crazy. And everyone went. There were almost more people at the baptism than there are at church on Sundays! But we assigned something to many members who almost all willingly accepted. Little spiritual messages and prayers and all that jazz. We even got her nephew, who was ordained a priest 2 weeks ago, to do the actual baptizing. The only thing I did was confirm her, it was great and surprisingly spiritual. It all went really well. After the baptism one of the old grandma members came up to me and said "Man, it sure was awesome when you did the whole hands on the head holy ghost thing. I want to get baptized again so you can do it to me! You sure know how to talk. The spirit was strongly felt." I chuckled and thanked her. It was a nice little comment.

Anyways, I cannot believe it is over. I know that is a cliche thing to say and everything, but I literally CANT believe it. Like, it doenst compute in my brain how it is possible that I have already been gone TWO YEARS. I remember like it was yesterday when we were in teh MTC and the guy directing gave the word that we could stand up and say buy now to everyone and then exit out the doors on the left. Do you remember how I immediately stood up and started walking out without saying anything to you guys? and a whole bunch of people started laughing at me... I felt stupid haha. That was two years ago.

Well, I still have one more email next week, I look forward to reading your LAST EMAILS of the mission. I hope everything is good with you and you are all less distracted than me. I threw my metal spoon away the other day on accident with my yogurt. My comp was like... "Did you mean to throw this away oooorrr..... yeah...." Haha I am doin my best to stay focused!!

Anyways, love you a lot and cannot wait to see you. Tell the girls to try not and embarrass me too much. It wont be effective. I have been humiliated numerless times down here, my family wont be able to top it haha. I can just see them trying something... haha Alright well see ya next week. Love you
Trent

Elder Thatcher 4/4/11

2011-04-05T06:49:00.000-07:00

Well conference was truly awesome huh?!?! Holy Moses it was GREAT!!! We were able to see all the sessions but the Sunday afternoon but no need to fear we got permission from the AP's to watch it today, so that is what we will be doing :) Well this week was pretty crazy and well ya it was just I dunno weird and I have a pretty bad cold so I have felt pretty horrible all week but Conference more than made up for anything that was wrong and I really think the things of the week prepared me so much better for Conference and I just felt the spirit so strongly!!! IT WAS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!! I got a lot of things I needed to hear. Except I am a little worried about the whole GET MARRIED deal I think I'm going to take a little bit of time :) Well anyways that was a really great weekend and yes on Saturday we got change calls and I am leaving Oulu :( I always hate moving... but I knew it was coming... I am going to really miss everyone here especially the members and Samo and Maria and wow Maria's girls I am going to miss them so much! I just love all the people here... I really wish I had like 5 changes left and I could just stay here in Oulu, Oulu was definitely one of my favorite places and I can't wait to show you Oulu when we come back :) but yes so I am leaving and I am heading south and then I am going EAST... I am going to a city called Lappeenranta... it's easier this way... we will just call it LPR, it's right near the Russian border and I heard it's a pretty Russian place... I guess I will get to practice my Russian a little bit :) Well I am excited and I am going to be with a fairly young Elder named Elder Arneson and he will be training a greenie, so I get to be a little advisor as the AP's called so I am going to just go and help them for 3 weeks and then I jet off, I am excited although of course it will be hard to leave Oulu and the people here... we saw so much success and great things are happening but I know it's the Lord's will and I am just grateful that 1. I get to stay :) and 2. that I get to help! I love this work and I love this Church, every time I watch Conference I just want to be more like the Brethren, they are just so amazing and I just can't help but smile and feel the spirit when they talk! I know that this Church is true!!! I KNOW IT!!!!!!!!!!! Well how about a certain Randall K. Bennett getting called to the 2nd quorum of the 70? I assume it's the same Rand Bennett we know... I guess now it's Elder Bennett... CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!!!! That was cool though and so I was excited to hear that, so things are going well here we are going to Family Home Evening with The Airaksiset and Maria tonight so I can say good bye... that I'm sure will be hard but I know that the Lord has things in store for these my last 3 weeks here. I am excited and I heard that they have had a lot of success there in LPR lately so it will be fun to help other come unto Christ :) I always love doing that!!! Well let me answer your questions quickly.

1. I did get the book and I sent it in a package home so it is on its way back :)
2. Well that just depends on the week sometimes the whole week sometimes just one or two nights
3. There are several Santa's we have met quite a few :)
4. I am doing fine as of now I think, so no worries but I do still need to send some stuff home etc.
5. Heikki is no longer getting baptized his son got in the way :(
6. Finnish and Estonian are pretty close actually pretty darn close some of the words are the same and some are similar some words are even the same but they mean different things, I heard for example that henki which in Finnish means spirit or ghost like pyhä henki is the holy ghost well in Estonian henki means wife or something like that, as for communicating with Estonians I've heard you can but it's hard, I have never tried so I dunno but I don't think I will be able to speak with Matt because he's in the Baltic Mission Russian speaking... :)
7. They were all so great I couldn't choose... but I am looking forward to still watching Holland's talk I bet it's great... it always is. and of course Priesthood Session was just... WOW!!!
8. The weather is pretty nice a few degrees above 0 C and it feels really nice... it's been a little rainy so it's been quite nice :)
9. I haven't heard from him... I wrote him I am just waiting to hear back... if he writes.

Well I leave for LPR on Wednesday morning so I am just going to pack get some needed things and say my good byes and then I will be in little Russia :) well it will be fun and I am looking forward to it all, and although I am nervous to go back, conference gave me a great boost, a much needed boost and I have some goals and things that I want to do to help me before and after I get home. Well there isn't too much else to write so I would just like to bear my testimony that I know that this is Jesus Christ's true Church, I know it and I feel it so strongly that I could never deny it! I have seen so many miracles take place every day in my life here in this amazing country! I know that the Atonement is real and that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world but not only did He suffer to provide a way for us to repent He provided a way for us to become transformed through His atonement. I have been truly transformed as I have served my Lord and my God here in Finland and although I may be leaving pretty soon from this my field of labor it is not the end but yet a new beginning, I know I can serve the Lord in other ways, I testify that as we truly lose our lives for His sake, we shall find them. We shall find a life we never thought possible a life we would have never dreamed about, a life that comes only through sacrifice and consecration, although I am not perfect and I have not arrived yet I know that as we put our trust in Him that created us that we will never have anything in our lives that we can't handle. I know that as we keep the commandments that our loving Heavenly Father has given us his great power, the very power of Heaven and I know that through that power we can bring miracles to pass, no my mission doesn't end in 3 weeks nor will it end when I leave this mortal Tabernacle, no I will serve the Lord and serve His Children until He tells me to stop. Let me say in closing that the greatest joy you will ever experience is when you are in the service of others and when you no longer care about yourself, then and only then are you Christlike in the true sense of that word. Love and Serve! I do indeed know that this Church is true and that it will lead us to exaltation, in the name of Jesus Christ an High Priest of good things to come, amen!

I love you and I hope you have a great week and remember to be safe and to LOVE!

Marielle jos luet, haluan sanoa kiitos taas, oli mun etuoikeus opettaa sinua ja tiedän että kirkko on totta! Pidä lujana! Ja pidä hauskaa... mutta älä liaan hauskaa.... :)

Rakkaudella Vanhin Thatcher

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Mar 03/28/11

2011-03-29T13:44:00.000-07:00

Family, WHOOO.... this was a sweet week. I want to start off by telling you about the baptisms and everything that happened Saturday. Saturday morning we got a random call from a guy named Dimitri. He said “Hello elders, I want to meet at the church." In perfect English. We jumped on the bus and went to the church to meet this mystery man. Dimitri is 33 years old and has a wife. He is Ukrainian, born in Latvia, lived in Lithuania his whole life, and speaks English better than Russian. He is the man. We had a great lesson with him. He has so many questions! I had to stop him half way through and said “We really want to answer your questions, but let’s take them one at a time. He kept asking a great question, and then before we could answer he would think of another one. I committed him to be baptized on May 7th and he accepted! He is very sincere and wants to find an answer to know the Book of Mormon is true. He is great. We will be passing him to the Lithuanian Elders because he speaks Lithuanian better then Russian. After our lesson we ran to the Office and had a second district meeting. President Dance is hitting us hard with some Preach My Gospel training. Because of this, for the last month or so we have two district meetings a week. The sisters taught us all about receiving revelation through the Book of Mormon for ourselves and our investigators. It was way good. The sister’s rock. After our district meeting he headed to the church for the baptisms. By time Elder Moffat and I got there Ali and Jelena were dressed and ready to go. Jelena was so excited she was running around sliding in her socks. Both of her children were there to see her get baptized. Elder Moffat and I took a picture with Ali. He looked at us and said "Ahhhh my first teachers, ever since I met you I have been the happiest person alive." The branch President baptized both of them. The branch President took a while to say Ali's full name because his full name is a ridiculous long Muslim name. The next day however on Sunday we all had a little scare. At 10:00 we were supposed to be starting Sacrament meeting but neither Jelena or Ali were there. Ali was running late and the man who was supposed to bring Jelena to church decided not to come to church at the last minute, so we had a member go pick her up in his car. Because they were late we switched the schedule around and had Sunday school first and Sacrament Meeting in the middle. The spirit was way strong during that meeting. Jelena was so excited to get the Holy Ghost. After she got it she stood up off the chair, jumped into the air and yelled “YAAHOOO." It was pretty fun. She then ran to her seat and started crying. The church is true. I will send some pictures. Do you remember the little girl I told you about? Her name is Veronica. She is the little sister of a member. We have been teaching her the last month or so. She is turning 8 on April 29th. We are planning a baptism for April 30th. She is so cute. I asked her if she wanted to be baptized and with a big smile on her face she said "YES." Her brother Jefim is so excited. It is actually a cool miracle. Their parents have sort of been Anti the church ever since Jefim got baptized. They didn't want him to go on a mission or her to get baptized. However, Jefim's Dad went on a business trip last week and sat next to a really successful business man who was LDS. After talking with this man he gained a lot of respect for our church. When he came back from his trip he gave permission for Veronica to be baptized and Jefim to go on a mission when he finished school! Veronica is so excited. I told her to read the first chapter in the Book of Mormon. She came running up to me on Sunday with a big smile on her face and said "Guess what I did?" After making a few guesses she finally said “I read the Book of Mormon." I asked her if she understood it and she said "Not really, but Jefim helped me." This girl is way smart. She speaks Russian, Lithuania, is learning English and Hebrew. She attends a private Jewish school. She is awesome. We also have another kid who came to the baptism and to church. His name is Thomas. He is 16 years old. He knows Jelena (the lady baptized) She invited him to her baptism and he came! At the baptism he started talking to 2 of the 1 year girl members. They became pretty close and he came to church the next day. He even texts us last night to say "Hey." You can tell the girls have a way big crush on him. Anything that will help him come to church right? I remember when I first came to Vilnius this was the hardest city in the mission. For the first transfer I was here it was definitely one of the most difficult times on my mission. For over a year or so nothing has been happening in this city. It is amazing to see the change that has happened. Our district is getting a ton of people to church, we are finding investigators left and right, random people are calling us and accepting baptismal dates, the members love the missionaries and trust us, and all the missionaries in this city get along great. I am having the time of my life right now. A few transfers ago President Dance asked us to pray for the people in every single prayer, that they would soften their hearts. We have been doing that and now we can see the blessings that have come from it. I know that it has been nothing that I did. All the missionaries right now are here to work, we are obedient, and we find joy in the work. Because of this we are being blessed. Big things are coming out of Vilnius! It sounds like miracles are happening at home as well. It was great to hear about Karry's baptisms and to see the pictures. They both look so happy. Thanks for updating me with everything. It was great to hear from Marc and Ashley. Ashley thanks for your email. It helped me out a lot. You were inspired to write that. It helped me out a lot and I know it will continue to help me in the future. I love all of you! Have a great week! Love, Me

Elder Lisonbee 3/28/11

2011-03-29T13:43:00.000-07:00

Hey mom,
Well things are fine down here still. We have a baptism this week with a very very prepared woman named Irmina Santa Cruz. We found her through a reference from a member and she is ready to be bapped "as soon as WE are ready" she said. I kinda chuckled at that... Anyways, we are teaching her all the lessons and commandments quickly and are going to baptize and confirm her this Thursday. Right in time for General Conference. I am so excited. I remember thinking about 20 months ago.. "Wow, when I watch my last general conference I will have about 10 days left in the mission." I just laughed at the thought of that and how that day will never get here. Well, its this weekend, and I refuse to believe that that is possible.
It is too bad about the Sena family, sometimes I pretend like it will be possible to come back and go through the temple with them.. But I mostly know that it is just a vain fantasiacal desire. Maybe next time. ....
Well, we have one more email basically. Next week will be my last week of missionary work. That makes me nauseous.
Anyways, things are good and yeah I have a great recollection of the events of my mission. I have written some things, especially my first year I wrote a lot. But more than that I have taken a lot of pictures and videos. I will be able to tell you a couple stories and experiences. Then y´all will get sick of hearing them and then I wont have to remember them anymore.. because they will just make me sad. Ha.
Anyways, talk to you next week. Thanks for the email. Love you.
Trent

Elder Thatcher 3/28/11

2011-03-28T13:07:00.000-07:00

NO MORO PORTO!!! How was every ones week? I hope it went well because I am still trying to recover from last week... WOW! I will do a brief review of what just happened... first I will give you some fun facts... starting Monday and ending last night I spent two nights in my own bed... we crossed two zones, spent at least 20 hours in a train or in a car and we visited 5 cities and I didn't get a full nights sleep this whole week :). So last Monday we left Oulu at 15:30 and got to Kuopio a little before 20:00... we spent the next day in Kuopio and we left for Jyväskylä Tuesday night where we spent just the night then it was off to Seinäjoki (we went to Seinäjoki and not Vaasa because Heikki wasn't ready for his interview so we didn't go) we worked in Seinäjoki for about 5 hours and then went to Kokkola where we did a baptismal interview and it went well and then we got on a train and got back to Oulu at about 22:20... ya the train was late... and that was our Wednesday, then we had to get up at 5:30 and drive to Rovaniemi where we had a great District Meeting and then of course we bought a huge jätti perhe pizza! Then we had to go visit good ole' Joulupukki (Santa) so we went there and Santa was on a break... lame huh... well anyways we took pictures shopped and just enjoyed the time up there, then we got a call from the office telling us that a new senior couple was coming up to Oulu (they will be living in Rovaniemi but they came for the conference) anyway, they told us that they would be staying in our apartment... now remember that we hadn't been home all week so we had to hurry back from Rovaniemi and clean our apartment as fast as we could and get it in proper order and then we had to go pick this new couple up along with all the missionaries for the conference... I must say it was only by the tender mercies of the Lord that it actually worked out and we got everything done... we didn't have any food either but the Calls (other senior couple) took care of that. But we ate and then took them to our apartment and then we came back to the chapel with the other 20 or so missionaries... on the way there the 1st counselor in the Branch Presidency texted us and told us the alarm was going off at the church we told him not to worry and that there were missionaries there... we finally got to sleep and that was that... then Saturday was just crazy and the wedding that we helped at was just crazy and ya I will have to tell you about this week sometime in person because it would just take too long and really enpä Kala jaksa! :) well anyway we are alive and still ticking so hopefully things will go well. As for this week we are headed to Vaasa for a District Meeting there and then we are supposed to go to Helsinki for a meeting and to the Temple but it might be cancelled... so maybe not but that's OK because on the day we were supposed to go there is a baptism here in Oulu, one of the Sister's investigators is getting baptized, her name is Jenni and she is really awesome, I don't really know her too well but she is really awesome! So that should be cool... katsotaan mennäänkö vai ei... but it's either Helsinki and the Temple or a baptism so it will be cool either way!

Well we did get a teach with Maria in this past week though I went with Elder Shumway... it was good to be with him again! But anyway it was really cool! She was just so happy!!! seriously I think just seeing what comes from baptism makes my time here in Finland just so worth everything! Just to see the change in people! She's great and her girls were there and they are just hilarious!!! So great! it was funny too because we wrote Maria little cards for her birthday and the girls love reading them, it was funny too because I wrote my little catch phrase thing and I really can't remember where or when I started saying it but Finns think it's hilarious so I always say... "pidä hauskaa... mutta älä liian hauskaa" which means have fun, but not too much fun... I guess that is the mark I will leave on Finland :) but anyway it was super cute when her little girls kept saying it ha ha they are great!!! We are also going over with the sisters for FHE tonight and we are going to teach about Temples and we are also going to eat with the Airaksiset and Maria... I might need some prayers for that because Sisar Airkasinen always makes tons of food!!! :) it's good so I am excited and it is nice when we have the Sisters there as well, so that they can help with the eating... I hope at least... ha ha we had a DA yesterday and they didn't help too much, we ate Moose and both Elder Gorringe and I had 3 plates and the Sisters had like one... let's hope they bring their game faces to the DA tonight :).

Well I don't really know what else to really say but that I am so excited for General Conference!!!!!!!!! It's like the Super Bowl for missionaries!!! WOW IT'S AWESOME!!!!!!!!! I am excited to have questions in my mind and in my heart and through the words of the Prophets get answers to my questions!!! Holy Hannah the Church is true!!!!!! Let's not forget that! I love it so much and I have never been so happy as now when I am in the service of the Lord!!! Well I hope you all have a great week... I will let you know next week what will be happening for my last 3 weeks... I hope I can stay in Oulu... but I doubt that will happen but I will go where the Lord wants me to go! and I am going to expect the miracles that our Father in Heaven is willing to give us! I know the Church is true! Keep going strong and don't give up! NEVER GIVE UP!!! There are great things and a lot of happiness ahead of us! Let's keep going! I love you all and I hope you know that and I hope that you are all safe and happy! Remember to do the simple things to unleash the power of Heaven!

Rakkaudella Vanhin Thatcher

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Mar 03/21/11

2011-03-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

Family,

I just got off the phone with President Dance. Usually when he calls he has something important or big to talk about. I figured I was probably getting an early transfer or something. As soon as Elder Moffat handed me the phone he said "Elder Nielson, quick question for ya. Where is that delicious pastry shop in Tallinn?" I am not sure why he didn't call one of the Estonians. I have been out of Tallinn for 9 months, but it was fun to talk to him.
We had another great week. I think I start off every email that way. I don't really know what else to say. I decide if it is a good week or a bad week, and I have never decided to have a bad week. I have noticed that you find what you are looking for in this life. I remember Dad teaching me about optimism. We were getting on a chair lift and I felt like I was falling off the chair. I asked dad for help and said “I am only half way on the chair." I am not saying this to show how optimistic I am, but just to show that even after all these years I remember Dad taking the time and talking to me about the benefits of being optimistic. Thanks.
We were able to get a lot of investigators at church again. The branch is really excited about missionary work right now. It is fun to see that many investigators show up to church and different activities. They are flocking to us like the salmon of Capistrano :). We had a branch activity on Saturday and we were able to get 8 investigators there as a district. Totally we only had 20 people show up. It was too bad we didn't get more members, but awesome that half the people that came were investigators.
It is fun to see all the different investigators at church interact with each other. On Sunday I saw all of them in a big group talking with each other. I walked over to see what they were talking about and they were teaching each other doctrine. It was sweet. I grabbed a couple of members and told them to go make sure they kept preaching correct doctrine.
Ali had his baptismal interview on Sunday and passed with flying colors. (I don't really know what that phrase means) After his interview he went up to another investigator named Felix and said “Felix, I just passed my interview to be baptized, when are you going to be baptized." Felix said “I don't know.... maybe on the second of April." Haha that was news to all of us. First he needs to quit smoking, but it is fun to see investigators encouraging each other.
All in all Vilnius is awesome. It's the land of milk and honey. The weather keeps teasing me. One day it will be way warm and the next day cold. Winter doesn't really want to leave. That's alright though. Soon it will be nothing but sunshine and no suit coats.
This week I was thinking about how much I still need to learn on my mission. It is incredible to think that literally every single moment we have in this life is a teaching or learning moment. We can always be learning something or teaching someone. Usually those two things go hand in hand. It’s all about what we want to put into it and get out of it. I love being around people because there is so much to learn from people around you. I am thankful for always being around very smart, experienced, spiritual giants. I am also grateful for all the small teaching moments that I have had throughout my life. I have soo many memories of being in the car with Mom and Dad and having them take the opportunity to turn the situation into a teaching moment. Sometimes I didn't really take what they said to be important, but then later in my life I would find myself in a situation and remember the lesson I learned one day while riding in the car with one of them. It's incredible. I couldn't have asked for better parents.
Have fun at Karry’s baptism this week! Baptisms are awesome. We will all take part in 3 baptisms this week. It is cool to think about how many people are getting baptized throughout the whole world today.
A few weeks ago I taught our branch president how to give someone "bones". He taught it to a few of the members and the investigators. Now after anyone does something cool or makes a good comment they give each other "bones." I am expecting to see a lot of people giving each other "bones" this weekend.
I am getting another hair cut today. Wish me luck.
I love all of you! Thanks for everything you do. I loved getting the pictures you sent. Tell everyone I say “Hey."

Love,
Elder Nielson

Elder Lisonbee 3/21/11

2011-03-22T08:26:00.000-07:00

Hey mom,

Everything is about the same here with me. I am just the same and just finishing out my time that is left doing the things I am supposed to be doing, trying not to think about home or anything. It´s a pretty weird feeling to be honest..
As far as the work. Everything is good. We are working well now with the Branch Council. I am trying to teach them how it works and everything, they seem to be receptive and grateful. We have established visiting assignments, home teachers and varios other beneficial improvements to the branch. Its a small little branch, but there are quite a few willing members to help us.
We have also started making lists of acquaintances with all the families in the branch of people who are not members. Through it were able to find some prepared people. So that is good. We will baptize this lady pretty soon I think. She is an older lady, probably around 60 or 70, but eager to go to chruch and learn and follow. She will be a good convert because she also works in the house of the district president.
Apart from her, nobody REALLY solid. But we are looking. We are also preparing one of Elder Burrs converts for the temple. We taught her all the temple prep classes and she had her interview yesterday with the Branch President. She is good to go. I am pretty sad that my awsome convert family, the Sena Family, wont be sealed until June or July. I baptized them AFTER I had already completed a year, unfortunately.
Anyways, things are still going good. Thanks for always writing me. I love and miss you.
See ya in 3 weeks.
Trent

Elder Thatcher 3/21/11

2011-03-22T08:21:00.000-07:00

Well I hope you get these pictures I am sending... The computer here won't let me plug my camera in for some reason so this is from Elder Gorringe's camera... a few pictures of the baptism and a picture of Elder Gorringe and I hugging the Tori Poliisi in Oulu. Well The baptism was AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Wow and Maria was so nervous bless her heart, but it was awesome and the service went well and the water was even too warm it was a bit of a shock but it was good and she is a member now! It was my privilege to baptize her and then yesterday Elder Gorringe confirmed her a member of the Church!!! IT WAS AWESOME!!! The spirit was there and was so strong and Maria's little girls were so cute as well Venla 5 and Veera 2 and a half (the two girls on the right in one of the pictures) were so cute and so funny! They loved it and they love coming to church so it was awesome! It was cool too because another of Sister Airaksinen's neighbors was there as well and she loved it and she came to church yesterday so we are hoping to help her make those steps to baptism... well today is Maria's birthday too so that is neat we are making her some cards and are going to get her a gift... I am just in awe!!! To see her now... WOW!!! She has just changed so much and the gospel has truly blessed her life and the life of her two girls! I LOVE IT!!! THE CHURCH IS TRUE!!!!!!!!!!! Well today will be a short P-day... We are going to hop on a train at 15:30 headed to Kuopio... then we have a FULL WEEK OF TRAVEL!!! OK so everyone pull out your handy dandy maps of Finland conveniently placed in the drawer near your computer... and follow this week... today we leave and 5 hours later get in to Kuopio... then we stay there for splits until Tuesday night at which time we will take a train from Kuopio to Fascicle (which actually isn't even in the North Zone, so we are crossing into the Tampere Zone for a night with them), after our night in Jyväskylä we will then take a train to Vaasa bright and early at 7... we get into Vaasa and we have a few hours there to do a baptismal interview (more on that later, it's an interesting situation) Well from Vaasa we have to also on Wednesday go to Kokkola for an interview and then after that we finally get to head home... we should be home later in the evening, so we can go home and crash!!!!!!! Then Thursday morning we have to leave with the Sisters to Rovaniemi for a District Meeting there, we have to leave at 6:30 and there we will also go visit Santa and so forth, well then we have to drive back another 3 or so hours to Oulu where the next day we have a North Specialized Training Meeting and a few appointments then on Saturday we are helping at a wedding for Samo (a recent convert from Iraq) and Iida when they get married... WE ARE BUSY BEES!!!!!!!!! HOLY COW!!!

So that is our week and we need some prayers, one that we will survive :) and two that we will be able to do this interview in Vaasa, they have a baptismal date named Heikki and Heikki is deaf, so we are going to need a bit of help from above.

Well Sounds like my friends are doing well... sounds unfortunately like some are the exact same... well I hope not, but I was heart broken to hear about Clay.... that would have broken my heart! But he is a strong man and it sounds like he served really well! I knew he would! He is so awesome! I am so grateful that he is a friend of mine, he was always such a great example... Well sounds like everyone is in love... WEIRD!!!!!!!!!!!!! This email today was a lot of stuff... it was really weird! Well things are going well here and I am loving life and loving every second of my mission! This work is true and this Church is true!!!!!!!!!! I KNOW IT!!!!!!!!

I hope you enjoy the pictures!

Also to answer your questions.
1. YES
2. The weather is warmer, snowing sometimes bright about 2- neg 5 C so it's OK :)
3. Baptism went well!
4. Nope I am good
5. investis are pretty good

well I gotta go!!! HURRY HURRY HURRY!!! Always :) I love you and tell everyone HI for me! KIITOS

Rakkaudella Vanhin Thatcher

Elder Campbell is home!

2011-03-16T22:22:00.000-07:00

He got home on March 9, and here is a picture of the family at the airport.

Elder Lisonbee 3/14/11

2011-03-15T10:00:00.002-07:00

Ha, yeah the last few weeks are definitely the hardest so stay focused and have that sincere deep desire to work with difficult people. I am doing my best to keep teaching with all diligence and stay busy the entire day. I dont really have a problem obeying any rules, or leaving the house and working all day. My biggest temptation is just to be in the houses of the members for more time than I should be. They are all really really awesome people and all really like me a lot so its fun to be around them. They feed us and talk to us and all this stuff, so we have to be strong and just get up and leave.
Things are going well though. We had 3 investigators in church yesterday. 2 of them were the mom and daughter from El Salvador. They are cool, and so smart, but sorta strong in their beliefs. We had a really long lesson with them trying to explain profoundly the plan of Salvation. She has some seriously deep and profound questions that we should not have to explain to any investigators at this point of the teaching process. But we slightly touched on the topics anyways, and in the end I just dragged her back to getting a testimony about the Book of Mormon first. It is hard for her to accept, but she has an open heart and a desire to learn so we are sticking with her a little bit longer. We will see.
Anyways, things are going well. I was reading a journal entry today from back when I was in the MTC. I had wrote, "wow, I only have 4 weeks left here in the MTC then I go to Paraguay!" It feels like yesterday that I wrote that. Now, if I were still writing in my journal, I would probably say something like this. "wow, I only have 4 weeks left here on my mission, then I go home!" It is seriously impossible to believe. I remember the day I opened my call like it was yesterday, and thinking how I had so much time left before I actually got to leave on my mission... Now it is over... It doesnt seem possible.. It is going to be really, really hard for me to leave this country. I have already talked to a few converts and dear friends who plan on going to the airport to say bye to me... That will probably be the hardest day of my life... I dont like to think about it.
Blah, but then I will go home and see all of you. What a roller coaster of emotions I will be experiencing in a few weeks here.
Thanks for the quick note Dad. Send some more pics of the house when you get the chance. Love you.
Trent

Elder Thatcher 3/14/11

2011-03-15T10:00:00.001-07:00

OK so first things first... It doesn't really matter to me when I report... I thought the 15th was mother's day... I would probably prefer to do it asap, but whatever works, I don't know how long I will talk for though... it may be a little longer... so I don't know whichever one works best. Also a couple of my companions parents want to go so could you give me the information... eli the church address and the time. kiitos.

As for what I will be doing for those three weeks it is still unsure... I will probably be in a threesome, but I really don't know and I will probably be leaving Oulu... so ya, I will tell you when I know and change calls are conference weekend so we will know after that!

That is sad to hear about Japan... we only hear through a couple members... actually Sisar Airaksinen and Maria, sounds pretty bad though, dad said that it was a 9.0 and lasted for 5 min. and then a bunch of after shocks and then a huge tsunami... I am just glad you are all safe. It looked like you all had a lot of fun it California... sounds fun!!! As for Maria... WOW!!! SHE IS AWESOME!!! SHE IS SO SOLID!!! She has already planned out her baptismal service and everything so it is great! She is getting interviewed for baptism on Thursday and then BAM! She's a jäsen! HOLY COW THE CHURCH IS TRUE!!! Well things are going pretty well too here with our other investigators.

We were in Helsinki for a Leadership Training Meeting and it went really well! It was awesome! Seriously the spirit was so strong!!! and our mission is going crazy!!! WE HAVE about 32+ baptismal dates right now...things are just EXPLODING!!! It's awesome, we have never had so much success and President said that "something miraculous is about to happen" WOW!!!!!!!! I AM LOVING LIFE!!! I would have never believed two years ago that the mission would be at this point! I will tell you someday about the miracles and more about the numbers and averages and how amazing the mission is doing right now!!! and the North is doing amazing too, yesterday two got baptized in Kokkola and in the North we have 12 or 13 dates and they are all pretty solid! WOW!!!!!!! I am just in awe with what the Lord has done!!!

So it's crazy that Tollsty is engaged, he sent me an email and a picture of future sister Tollstrup and WOW!!! IT'S CRAZY! I can't believe he is getting married, I am glad though that I will be there... do you know what day the wedding is? Weird!!!

So I am going to send some packages home so I might need a bit more money in my account so that I can send some packages and I can buy some things I need and I still need to pay off my office debt at the mission office... and for customs when I fly home, how much should that be? Well the Church is true!!!!!!! I love it and I am in the best place!!!!! I am in the right place! The work is going forward and well!

Keep having fun and be safe and know that I love you!

Rakkaudella Vanhin Thatcher

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Mar 03/14/11

2011-03-15T09:59:00.000-07:00

Family,

I had a cool experience at church yesterday. I was sitting in Sunday school next to a lady who I had never seen before. I knew she was a member though because of the way she was answering questions. After the lesson I asked where she was from. She said she was from Moscow. I asked if she knew Elder Neuenschwander. She said “Of course, he is in our branch." The man who was sitting next to her looked at me and said "how do you know him?" I explained that he was my uncle. This man was pretty excited to hear that. He expressed his love for Dennis and how much he has done for the people over here. We then took a picture together. I can't remember their names though. He is in the district presidency. I am assuming he will show Dennis the picture when he gets back. I am really excited to see Joni and Dennis in a couple weeks. I feel like it was only yesterday I was talking to them in the M.T.C. My District will love to hear from him.
Speaking of church, our district was able to get 7 investigators at church this week! It was sweet. That is the most I have seen in a while. Three of the investigators have baptismal dates. Things are going great in Vilnius. Last year this city only had 2 baptisms. We should get 2 baptisms on the 26th of March. I can't wait. Of course Ali is still the man. He volunteered to give the closing pray in priesthood. Just beautiful. Miracles.
Matt Sontage and his family came down to Lithuania as well this last week. He is the young family I have pictures of in Estonia. He works for the embassy. He is in the mission presidency. He gave an awesome talk about protecting our families from the Lamanites. It was fun to see his family. They are way cute. The little boy Parker came up to me and said “Hey how was being the leader in Riga?" haha he is cute.
I went on exchange last week with Elder Frank. Elder Frank was in the MTC with me. Like always, he quoted his favorite quote from Mom. He loves talking about when I saw you guys outside the temple and the first thing Mom asked was "okay, what kind of cookies do you want?" And then he yelled "Snicker doodles."
We worked in his area. He works in a little town outside of Vilnius called New Vilnius. It was fun being in a small city again. I have spent my entire mission in the capital cities, except my first transfer. We knocked into an older lady and taught her and her husband in English. They didn't speak any Russian. The lesson went well. The spirit was very strong, but they weren't interested to meet again.
We then knocked into a middle aged woman who let us right in. I am not exactly sure how to describe her to you, but she was very excited to see us. I gave her a copy of the Book of Mormon and told her we wanted to give it to her for free. Tears filled her eyes and she came running towards me to kiss me. I didn't really want to get kissed so I directed her attention to Elder Frank. Elder Frank received his first kiss in the mission field. They are going back to teach her next week.
Miracles come from obedience. We have been pushing teaching people who live in your area lately. When we found out Ali lives in the sister’s area it was little bit hard to give him up. He is a golden investigator and really fun to be around. I knew we would be blessed for our obedience though, so we gave him to the sisters. Last Saturday an investigator referred one of her friends to the missionaries in New Vilnius. It was a great lesson and they gave him a baptismal date. At the end of the lesson they found out he lives in our area. This mans name is Sergej. Sergej came to church the next day and is scheduled to be baptized in April. Blessings come from being obedient. We have a lesson with Sergej tomorrow.
I am so happy it is warming up. We have been able to teach people on park benches the last couple of days. It has been great. We have also been able to go running in the mornings again. People’s hearts are beginning to melt.
I love being over here. I love serving a mission. These people here are incredible. The members just have solid testimonies. Miracles happen every day in the Baltic’s.
It sounds like Mom had a fun birthday. I am happy she got to spend it in Arizona. I loved the pictures! Everyone is getting huge! (In a good way) I can't wait to get to know them.
Okay I love you! Thanks for everything you do!

Love,
Matt
P.S. don't forget to update me on college application stuff.
P.P.S.S. I just put 2 P’s and 2 S's, but your way is better. (Inside joke)

Elder Lisonbee 3/7/11

2011-03-08T15:14:00.001-08:00

Hey mom,
Well first things first. I got transfered to an area called Piribebuy. It is quite a ways out there, but close to a city called Caacupe. The virgin capital of Paraguay. You should see the ridiculous temple she has here. Yes, a literal, enormous temple. Dont worry I will get plently of pictures and videos of that bad boy. It is pretty awesome and cultural. But mostly just apostate.
Anyways, it is a really cool little city with some really great, generous loving members. I got REALLY close with the members really, really fast. So that is good. One family has already got me whole going home party planned out with steak and cake and everything. It is going to be sweet.
The area also feels like it is very workable. Not like my last one. There is so much room for improvement, and I feel like I can help a lot because of the leadership positions I have held on my mission and the opportunities I have had to be instruscted by mission presidents and seventies on the way things are supposed to run. I am going to get the ward mission plan running here and get the ward council working great. Then force the members to work and do visits and we will turn this little branch into a ballin hopin joint. I guess there are usually only about 30 members, but yesterday we had 56 in church. So good start. We will keep it going up.
The best part of all though, is that I am not in any kind of leadership position anymore. I am just a plain old senior companion. It is soooo nice. All I have to do is worry about the work and the area and my comp and thats it. My comp is in his 2nd transfer, from Orem, Utah.
That is sad to hear about Danny. You make it sound like he is miserable. I hope it isnt as bad as it sounds. I am excited though to get home and play all the crap with him again. Basketball, Video Games etc. I cant wait. Remember the morning I went into the MTC? Me and him just shot hoops in our suits one last time? Sad day... I think about that all the time and miss it so bad... 5 weeks.
Anyways, president Arnold said a lot of things in the meeting and in our interview, but I guess specifically some of the nice things he said about me went like this. "Elder, I am certain that if I were to ask Doctor Bourne about you he would tell me what a great family you come from and what a great young man you are. And you know what? I would agree with him! Because you are! You´ve got it in ya buddy. You are an excellent missionary, I can see it. This mission has got the leadership it needs to bring us out of the whole we are in." etc. Then in a different part he went off and bore strong testimony after telling a sick story about how he called Pres. Bourne as Stake President about how the Lord knows each of us and that He called ME to lead this mission. But he of course said it in apostolic way, making it sound so awesome and edifying and inspiring. It was pretty cool. I have it all written down somewhere, but that was some of what he said. He is a very powerful man. I dunno if I mentioned last week in the email, that at the end of the big leadership meeting we had with him, he bore the more powerful testimony I have ever felt or experienced. He said that he no longer has faith, because it is knowledge. Which makes me think he has seen, literally seen... something.. amazing. ha. It reminds me of the story of the brother of Jared, that his faith was so strong that he couldnt be kept without the veil, and it was lifted and he saw Christ. I kid you not when I say I have never FELT anything so powerful in my life, I have never felt a testimony so intense. It was so awesome.
Anyways, things are going pretty good. Just trying to stay focused and strong until the very last minute. There is a lot of work to do here so I dont think it will be too dificult. We have some really cool investigators from El Salvador so we will see what happens with them.
Anyways, thanks for everything and I love you. Cant wait to hear from you next week.
Trent

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Mar 03/07/11

2011-03-08T15:13:00.001-08:00

Family,

I can't remember if I told you about a man named Algirdous last week. I am pretty sure I did. He came to church yesterday for the second time. He is just the man. He heard that we wear suits at church, so he went and bought a suit with what little money he has. We were able to meet with him a couple times last week. He is one of the most prepared people I have ever taught. He agrees with everything. He is so good. The members just absolutely love him as well. He has about half of the member’s cell phone numbers. He even refers to the church as "Our church" when he is talking. He might as well be a member. At church he doesn't stay around us like most investigators. He is moving around talking with everyone and making comments in class.

Yesterday during fast and testimony meeting I leaned over and told him to go bear his testimony. He said "CAN I?" I said "Of course, just wait for Vera to sit down, and then go up." He walked right up to the podium and bore and awesome testimony. He talked about the truthfulness of the restored Gospel. He thanked Elder Moffat and me and then he announced to the whole branch how excited he was to get baptized on March 26! It was sweet. He even closed in the name of Jesus Christ, which is huge considering he was Muslim his entire life until about 2 weeks ago. He doesn't smoke, drink and is willing to live every commandment we throw at him. I realize I say this a lot, but he really is the man.

We also found out this last week that he lives in the Sisters area. So we will be passing him over to them. He is living with a few friends, but wants to move because he says they drink and won’t accept the word of God. I am happy the sisters will be teaching him though. They could use a solid investigator. We are all on the same team right? I can't wait for his baptism.

We just had so many miracles at church. There is a lady named Jelena who has been an investigator for a long time. I have done a baptismal interview with her three times now, but she always comes with a new concern. At the end of the last interview she said she was sick of missionaries pushing her into baptism. I told her that no one would push her anymore and then she could come to the decision on her own. Last week after Ali bore his testimony and told everyone he wanted to be baptized, Jelena announced that she also wanted to be baptized! This is the first time that she came to that conclusion on her own. If everything goes according to plan our branch will have two baptisms on March 26! Miracles.

We are working with an active member of the church named Miraslav. He is solid. We have been meeting with him once a week and getting him excited about missionary work. Last week I gave him a Joseph Smith brochure and told him to give it to one person that week. Haha during fast and testimony meeting he stood up and bore his testimony and told about his experience. I guess he met a girl on a bus and asked her on a date. During dinner on their first date he pulled out the brochure and gave it to her and taught her a first lesson. Haha that night he got a text and she told him she didn't want to date. He stood up and bore his testimony on the importance of doing missionary work. He then told the whole branch that if she wasn't prepared to hear the gospel, it wasn't worth dating her.

Last week I went to a leadership training meeting in Riga. I am not in leadership, but President Dance invited me anyways. It was really good. I am happy I got to go. The best part about it was being able to see all my mission buddies. We all drove down Monday night and then came back Tuesday night. It was a short trip, but fun. I also had an interview with President Dance and got a new Temple Recommend. I can't believe I went through the temple two years ago! That's nuts. The interview went well. I passed. It was fun being asked all those questions again. Usually I am the one asking people those questions. What is even cooler is my temple recommend is in Russian.

It is sort of getting warmer. The sun is out. I am mostly happy because it is staying light longer and getting lighter earlier. I can't wait until the sun is up all day long.

I think that is about all I have for this week. I love you all. Stay classy.

Love,

Me

Elber Lisonbee 2/28/11

2011-02-28T15:21:00.000-08:00

Haha hey you cant go to dinner for my birthday without me!! Wait for me! 6 weeks!
Ha but anyways, I have had a pretty intensely epic week this week. The work itself has been relatively normal and boring, nothing too exciting to report. We are a few investigators but will see how they progress. We should also know changes tonight what will happen with me in my last six weeks of my time here. (I get weird feelings every time I think or say or type that, in my tummy) I am pretty anxious to see how I am going to end, as a zone leader, or a district leader or what. I will accept whatever I am asked to do.
Anyways, the most exciting news of this week is that a general authority came to our mission this week. The area president, president Arnold, and made some BIG changes here in the mission. We actually recently just got out of one of the most amazing meetings I have ever been a part of. I have never felt the spirit so strongly in my life. The man is incredible, and I think has literally seen the Lord or something because his testimony was ridikulus. He came and just reproved with insane power and authority all the things this mission is doing wrong. and there were a lot of them. Specifically with obedience. There are a lot of disobedient missionaries here, and he condemned it. We made changes with rules, ways to work, diligence, schedules, everything. It is crazy. Things will improve now. I might just only get to see the beginning before I get ripped out of the whole setting.
However, the coolest part of all is that last Thursday I had the opportunity to have a personal interview with him, with president Arnold. It was seriously a life changing experience. He speaks with SO much power and motivation. He knows president Bourne as well, and was actually the general authority that called him as stake president. He told an amazing story about that. He said some very nice things to me as well and made me feel great and also firmly reminded me how bad we need to get the wheels turning here in this mission.
As a result of his visit, we have so many new rules and other things though. Its not even the same mission. It is so crazy. In the meeting though, we all swore an oath, or covenant, that we would obey with exactness until the ends of our missions. It was intense, the way he worded it was so, so intensely powerful and condemning (for those who failed to obey after having sworn) He said "those who are not willing to obey, DO NOT raise your hands!" and gave a warning. It was crazy. Anyways, its going to be a sick six weeks.
Anyways, that was the most exciting part of this week. Any specific questions about it, just ask me, I will be happy to answer them.
I am pretty excited about the house. I would really like to see some pictures of mom and dads house. Andreas and Brandons looks great. Super nice for a first house eh?
Anyways, I am sure I am forgetting something but, like always I am out of time. But I love you all a lot and alwasy look forward to reading your emails.
I will let yall know what happens next week with changes.
One love.
Trent

Elder Campbell 2/28/11 - 9 days

2011-02-28T15:20:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone,

Man I can´t believe it´s already the last week of the change.

Yesterday we had an awesome surprise when we got to church. There was a guy named Luis Angel there waiting for us at the entrance and he told us that it was his first time but that he wanted to get baptized! A year ago in Guanajuato he listened to the missionaries and went to church 4 times and was about to get baptized when the missionaries got changed and he moved here. We talked to the bishop and called Pres. Villarreal, Elder Rubalcava interviewed him, and he got baptized along with Ernesto and Monica! It was a wonderfully joyful spectacular marvelous day.

This is my last complete week as a full time missionary, it still hasn´t really hit me that I´ll be home in a week and 2 days. Good luck with the new baby, I´m excited to meet her! Hey I have a very important question - Did the groundhog see his shadow? Because I want 6 more weeks of winter! Next Monday I´ll probably still have a chance to write a quick letter because I´ll be in the mission office. Tuesday morning we´re going to the temple and in the afternoon we´ll have the going home devotional with Pres. Villarreal. I don´t know what else to write. So til next week I guess!

Love,
Elder Campbell

Elder Thatcher 2/28/11

2011-02-28T15:17:00.000-08:00

Well that is crazy to hear about President's replacement... he sounds like a good guy from the info I got and the info Elder Gorringe got in his email we think we've got all the details... wow that's crazy!!! He must be a pretty good guy to get a call to Finland as the mission President! Well that is neat.

So I have decided that yes I will stay 3 more weeks and that I will probably be home at the end of April then. So that is the news and info as of now but I don't know, nor do I know what will happen, President said that he is going to try to find someone to stay 3 weeks with me so that I won't have to be in a threesome. So we will see what happens... unfortunatly that most likely means I will leave Oulu then at the end of this change and go somewhere (I'm guessing in Helsinki) for three weeks with someone that was scheduled to go home with me. Well if that is the case I hope I get to go back to Haaga... that would be cool and they have only sisters there now so katsotaan... it would be cool to go back to where it all began... hopefully with my MTC compi Vanhin Linn... that would be a great last 3 weeks!!! MIRACLES!!!!!! Well we will see what happens but I will give you more of the details when I know.

Speaking of miracles!!! MARIA HAS A BAPTISMAL DATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! She will be baptized on teh 19th of March... But she is still a little unsure about everything so please PLEASE! Keep her in your prayers, she needs it. She is so awesome though and has two super cute little girls that are like 2 and 4 and they are so funny always waving at us in Sacrament meeting and WOW!!! WE are just excited! So we are looking forward to that! Well as for our Iraqi friend we are still waiting on that decision hopefully all is well and we can teach him and that he can get his citizenship and visa so he can get baptized! He speaks english by the way and Saman or Samo speaks english, he's marrying a Finn so is learning Finnish and speaks Arabic, Curdish and like 5 other middle eastern languages... HE IS A STUD!!!! I LOVE SAMO!

Well my birthday went well and it was fun, we didn't have a lot of time to do anything too special but we had Family Home Evening with Maria and her kids and the Airaksinen's and they were nice and made cards for me and sang to me... it was nice. So that was about it... there really isn't much else to do as a missionary on you birthday... well I did exactly what I wanted to do... I preached the gospel... It was a great birthday! :)

Oh I did get Grandma's cookies... they were really really good and they were still soft... they were really good!

Well this next week is pretty crazy again... TRAVEL TRAVEL TRAVEL! We are going to Kajaani on Wednesday for District Meeting then we are in Helsinki on Thursday and we leave Wednesday night... then we come back Friday and we have to then go Vaasa and Kokkola for baptismal interviews... BUSY BUSY! We then will come back Saturday hopefully in time for our Movie Night activity at the church, we are going to watch the Testaments... so we are really busy and then next week is leadership training meeting and we will be in Helsinki almost the whole week... BAM!!! so it's a bit crazy!!! But the Church is true! :) It will be fun and I am sure tiring :)

I have some questions or some things that I want to ask you.. so before I forget...

1. So there is a Sister missionary here from Layton who knows Garrett and Taylor her name is Kaydee Brown... haha it was funny she was telling me how she had a hard core crush in Garrett in Middle School... so there you go haha I thought that was funny.
2. Can you order the Liahona in Finnish so that when I get back I can still get the Liahona in Finnish? That would be really awesome... KIITOS!
3. I have some questions for Mikey actually about electronics and such... like if I were to bring back a keyboard that has these letters ÄÖ äö would it work in the states or is there something that we could do so that I could use those letters like a program that we could install or what... then what about like movies etc. in Finnish could I play those back in the states some how... I now about like region codes etc... but ya... so those are just a few questions :)
4. Have you applied to school for me yet... there are such things as deadlines... ya I don't want to miss those :)

Well I love you and I know this Church is true! Se pitää paikkansa!!! I know it! I hope you have fun in California and I hope that you enjoy the sunny warm weather, I love you and hope you have a great week!

Rakkaudella Vanhin Thatcher

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Feb 02/28/11

2011-02-28T15:16:00.000-08:00

FAMILY,

Miracles. That's all I can really say. I can't describe how happy I was to read your emails and hear about all the miracles that are happening in our family. We are so blessed. Our family rocks. I am so happy to be a part of it. That is so good to hear about Kare bare. (Am I allowed to call her that? Or is Alex the only one?) I know that our family is so blessed because we are living according to the Gospel. Like we read over and over and over in the scriptures, as we are righteous the Lord supports and blesses us. I always feel so blessed when I talk to my companions and hear about some of their difficult family circumstances. Thanks for raising me and allowing me to grow up in such an awesome environment.
Hmmmm.......Deron Williams in gone............ This might work out well for us. It sounds like they got a lot for him, so that is good. I have faith in my Jazz. That would be cool if Karl Malone comes and coaches for them. Then they could go win a championship, because "Karl Malone has always wanted him a championship."
Things are awesome in Vilnius. This has been a great week. I had nothing to worry about, except missionary work. We were able to focus and work hard and we were blessed because of it. We taught 18 lessons this last week! That is the most lessons that have been taught in Vilnius for over a year and a half. I have never gotten over 12 while in Vilnius. We have some pretty amazing people coming out of the wood work.
The other day we ran into a man name Algirdous, or Ali. He is from Kirghizstan. He is Muslim, but has been wanting to look into Christianity. He moved here a few weeks ago and now lives in Vilnius. We talked to Ali on the street and pulled him back to the teaching center. We had a wonderful lesson with him. He is very humble and ready to listen and learn. He speaks Russian because Kirghizstan used to be apart of the Soviet Union. To make it all better he came to church the next day. He absolutely loved church. He said he has been to the Catholic Church, Russian Orthodox, and of course Muslim, but he has never felt like he did at our church. He said "God in here." The members love it. Everyone came up to him and did a great job making him feel at home. Ali accepted to be baptized on March 26! He is the man. He has a way funky accent when he speaks Russian, but he is still the man. President Dance wants us to be careful and find out more about his family back ground though because apparently in some of the more radical Muslim parts of the world, joining another church is punishable by death if he ever goes home. We will see.
We also came across an interesting guy named Andrej. He was introduced to us by drunk Viktor. Viktor lives next door to him and gave him a Liahona magazine. When we showed up to teach Viktor, Andrej was there waiting to be taught. The only problem was Viktor was pretty drunk. Elder Moffat distracted Viktor while I talked with Andrej for a little bit and set up another meeting with him. All in all it was a good experience.
Andrej is.... a little bit weird though. I am not positive, but I am pretty sure he is a drug dealer. Last night we went to teach him and there were a bunch of people in his house and they were all arguing. After a couple minutes a very large man came out and kicked us out of the stairwell. As we were walking away a very sketchy looking Gypsy came up to me and asked if it was okay to go up there. We will see what happens.
We had a great branch activity last week. Elder Moffat and I did a presentation on commitments. The members seemed to like it. During my part of the presentation I talked about how as a mission we were trying to give investigators baptismal dates from the first lesson. None of the members seemed to like that very much. A rather loud and influential man in the back stood up and started to try to argue his point. This was getting all the members pretty riled up. With a very loud voice I silenced all of them I then looked at the man in the back and said “Do you believe that President Dance has been called of God?" He said "Yes" then I said “Then we have nothing to discuss, President Dance received revelation and this is the best way to carry forth missionary work." No one had a single word to say about it after that. It was pretty sweet. It is good to know they all support President Dance. I don't know what I would have done if that man would have said no. He is the branch President.
It is finally starting to warm up a bit. It is still way cold, but it is a little warmer. I am really excited for spring. If we can start teaching a lot during the winter, by time spring roles around it will be that much better. Missionary work always picks up in the summer. People’s mood seems to match the weather!
Okay I love all of you! Thanks for being awesome. I am happy you got the pictures! Have a great week!

Love, Matt
p.s. Congratulations Marc on your navigation slot. That is sweet. Also tell Abby good job for finally crawling. I knew she could do it.

Elder Campbell 2/21/11

2011-02-22T10:59:00.001-08:00

Hey everyone,

This week went by soooo fast I can`t believe it`s already Monday again. The transfer is basically already over, one Elder calls it the 4th week phenomenon: the world spins faster and before you know it, the transfer is over. I`m starting to believe him.

Yesterday was stake conference and Elder Miguel Hidalgo from the 70 was there. We invited a bunch of people and more than 10 said they were going to come but we waited at the church like 20 extra minutes and none of them got there so we had to leave them. We were really surprised and happy to see 2 investigators come up to us after the conference, apparently they knew how to get there and just went on their own. The conference was good, Elder Hidalgo is a powerful speaker. He talked about perfection and how it really is possible. He gave the example of airports and explained that if an airport runs at 99.98% quality, 1 out of every 5,000 planes would crash. He said that would be like a crash every week! Not many people would trust airplanes if that were the case.

This week Ernesto and Monica are getting married and baptized finally. They are the ones who were waiting for the permission from Ecuador and it turns out that they got the permission a few weeks ago but set their marriage date for the 26th! So really they could have gotten married and baptized a while ago. Oh well what`s important is that they do. We didn`t baptize this week, the 2 people that were going to get baptized had problems getting married and the daughter went back to living with her boyfriend. Hopefully this week goes better.

I worked in 4 different areas this last week. One day I was with Elder Mendoza in Chamapa, another day in Culturas with Elder Monjarraz, and another couple hours in El Molinito, then 1 with Elder Quiroga. We found some really interested people here in our area and hopefully they progress because we don`t know what`s been going on lately. We`ve found lots of people that seem really interested but then they don`t keep their commitments and some don`t even answer the door when we go visit them.

That's all for now, I'll see you before you know it!
Elder Campbell

Elder Campbell

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Feb 02/21/11

2011-02-22T10:57:00.001-08:00

Family,

Another transfer and another change in my companions. I am now serving with Elder Moffat. He is from Provo, Utah. He has been out for about 6 months or so. He is the man. We have had a lot of fun over the last few days getting to know each other. We got a call from President Dance last week, he made Elder Reeves a District Leader. He then said, Can I talk to Elder Nielson? As soon as I got on the phone he said "Congratulations Elder Nielson, you graduated your first student. I have another one for you." Then he told me all the things he wanted me to work on this next transfer with Elder Moffat. He is a great missionary. He just needs a little help with his confidence. The other bit of news is I am out of leadership! Everyone is telling me that I have been "put into retirement." It feels really nice not to worry about anything, except missionary work. I have been in leadership since my 4th transfer. It is nice to give the keys to someone else, jump in the back seat and enjoy the ride. I soon realized though that I will always have some aspect of leadership responsibility. Last night President Dance called and we talked for about 30 minutes on a few different issues in the zone. It is good to know he trusts me enough to talk about things in the zone, even though I am not a zone leader.

Elder Mofffat and I have had an eventful last couple days. There is a couple in our branch named Yurri and Valentian. Yurri was baptized almost a year ago. I worked with him and taught him a lot last year. It is nice to seem him becoming such a strong member. He had an operation this week. The branch President called and asked if we would go to the hospital with him and his wife and pay for the medication and then he would reimburse us. We had to be at the hospital at 5 the next morning and we didn't get to leave until about 10. It was fun talking with Yurri and Valentia though. They struggle with a few issues, but all and all they are very solid. Baltic hospitals are very very gross. I promise you I will die before I ever go to one. They are way sick. After our hospital trip I came home and took a nap for a bit, since we had been up since 4.

Things are going well in our area. There is a recent convert woman we teach named Vera. That means "faith" in Russia. She rocks. We have been teaching her for a while now. Every time we teach her, her brother sits on the couch next to her and plays his game boy. (He is 45) Over the last few weeks though he has begun to change a little bit. Last week he put down the game boy and actually listened to the lesson. Last lesson he actually participated and then he came to church yesterday. The branch was really good with him. Everyone went up and talked with him and made him feel at home. I am pretty excited about him. He is sort of frustrating to teach because he complains about everything. Last time he told me he couldn't read the Book of Mormon because it was too cold. After a lot of discussion he agreed to read the first chapter.

We have also been teaching Viktor again. He is still struggling with alcohol. He already quit smoking about 5 years ago, so he is capable of doing it, he just needs some help. He was able to come to church yesterday so that was cool. Between Sunday school and priesthood we realized Viktor wasn't around. We looked for him for a while, but couldn't find him. After a while he came walking out of the Branch Presidents office with the President. The Branch President pulled him aside and they had a good talk for a while. It is nice to see the Branch President so involved with our investigators, but I would like to be involved a bit more. Our investigators don't really fall under his stewardship until they are baptized.

Things are going really well here. Thanks for all your love and support! Sorry this letter is a little bit shorter! I will write more next week! I love you all! Have a great week!

Love,

Matt

p.s. - President Dance called. Who wants to hike the tram with me this summer?

Elder Campbell, Feb 14, 2011 (23 days left!)

2011-02-14T21:47:00.001-08:00

Hey everyone,

So this week I got 2 letters in the mail! Hopefully nobody sends any more because they probably won`t get to me before I leave. Today is "el dia del amor y la amistad" which is the same and Valentine`s day but I like the name in spanish because it`s more descriptive. I don`t even know who Valentine is.

This week went better. We found some really awesome people and saw how the Lord guided us to them. One is named Guadalupe, who has a little hair cutting place. We passed by one day and contacted her and asked her if she wanted to listen to us and she was like, "yeah why not". After we explained the restoration of the gospel she told us that for a long time she hadn`t believed in God but that her mother always told her to pray and go to a church and get closer to God. She told us how finally a few nights earlier she had been praying asking God to give her a sign that He really does exist and that`s when we showed up. She accepted baptism but has a strange situation where she is separated but not divorced and living with someone else who is also separated but not divorced from his first wife. We`ll get that figured out somehow.

Another is Maricarmen, an 18 year old girl who got married when she was 16, left her husband shortly thereafter because he was abusive, and had her baby girl who died 5 days after being born. She told us that she didn`t really believe in God anymore but that she wanted to change. We taught her about the Plan of Salvation and explained how the Atonement makes it possible for her to see her daughter again. She started to cry and asked, "What do I have to do?" We explained baptism and she accepted. She couldn`t come to church because we found her on Friday and Saturday she already had a trip planned to San Luis Potosi but she`s going to come with us to stake conference this weekend and get baptized the next.

We also found a lady and her daughter who were listening to the missionaries a year ago but moved and lost contact with them. They went with us to church yesterday and we`re going to marry the parents and baptize the mom and daughter this next week! The Lord is definitely blessing us after a lot of disappointment.

We´re going to do divisions with a few elders in the zone this week. Elder Rubalcava`s going to stay here and I´m going to the other areas where it`s even more hilly than here. I`m going to have buns of steel by the time I get home at least.

That`s it for this week, love you all! Happy Valentine`s Day!
Elder Campbell

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Feb 02/14/11

2011-02-14T21:46:00.000-08:00

Family,

This week started off very sunny and warm. Almost all the snow melted. I was pretty excited. I was foolish enough to get my hopes up to think that spring came early. Ohhh how wrong was I. It was pretty pretty cold and snowy the last few days. However, the sun is shining today and it is a gorgeous day. Not as warm as SLC, but still pretty warm.

Elder Reeves and I had a good week of finding. We spent a lot of time knocking on doors, contacting on the street, area book work, less active hunting, previous investigator hunting, and active member lessons. It was awesome. We were able to find some really cool people. We had a baptismal date, but he is Lithuanian, so we passed him to the other Elders.

I think I told you about him. His name is Remus. Elder Poulter and I found him last week on exchanges. He is a very humble man and has an awesome wife and a little girl. Elder Reeves and I had a great lesson with him and challenged him to be baptized. The next lesson, I taught him with a Lithuanian elder, Elder Lindell. We had an awesome lesson with them. Most of it was in Lithuanian, but I talked a little bit in Russian. I always enjoy mixed language lessons because it reminds me of the 6 transfers I spent with non Russian speaking companions. It is fun, because I literally get to pray for my companion the entire time. Usually, it is a really spiritual experience. I am pretty excited for this family. We found out a little problem, they aren't married. They have been living together forever and have a child together, but never got married. Elder Lindell will have a fun time working that out. I am excited to see how they progress.

A few days ago, Elder Reeves and I went down and worked by the airport. That area is a very very poor part of Vilnius. It was perfect. Everyone was way more humble and willing to listen. As we know from the scriptures, humble people are much more accepting of the gospel. We went down there to find an inactive woman. We showed up to the apartment building and looked at our list to see which number she lived in. It said 321. Elder Reeves said, there is no way 321 people live in this building. Sure enough, there were more apartments packed into this building than I have ever seen before. It was a very interesting experience. We found the inactive lady. When we knocked on her door she told us to come in. We walked in and found out that she is completely crazy. She did, however have an LDS picture of Christ on her wall, next to a picture of her when she was baptized, and a book of Mormon on the table. She looks like she used to be way solid. Poor girl. After that, we decided to go do some knocking in the same building. The first door we knocked on let us in. As we walked into the apartment, we couldn't help but notice, that there were at least 200 rabbits all over the place. They were in cages and just walking around. Luckily I had just looked up the word for "Rabbit," so I said "Cool rabbits." She said, "Thanks, wanna buy one?" We quickly found out she was also pretty crazy. The next man that let us in was a narcotic and was completely messed up on drugs, the next guy was drunk, the next lady was deaf. To be honest we were pretty close to giving up, but we kept knocking. On the last floor a lady opened the door, but said she wasn't interested. However, she wanted to help us, so she came and knocked the rest of the doors with us. She would just walk into her neighbors apartments and said “Hey, these boys want to talk to you about God. Are you interested?" It was pretty funny. We kept trying to talk to her about our message, but she wasn't interested. Finally the last door of the building was a very old lady. As soon as she walked in, she said “I know you guys! I have been to your church. You are the Mormons." It turns out this lady was taught a long time ago by missionaries. She is too old and fragile to leave her house, but she convinced the lady who was walking around with us to come to church and meet with us. She kept saying "Diva, you have to meet with these young boys, it will bless your life. You can rest your soul." So, this week we are going back to teach Diva.

Today is super clean preparation day. We have been cleaning all morning. It feels way good to have a clean apartment. Today is also Valentines Day! Happy Valentines Day. I am pretty sure this will be the best one ever. Elder Reeves and I are going to have a nice day together. We will go out to eat later tonight, and then eat ice cream after we go knocking. It will be nice to spend some quality time together. You know how busy life can get. We need to have an evening to reconnect.......

I did a baptismal interview yesterday for a lady named Elena. Missionaries have been teaching her forever. This is the 3rd interview I have done with her. She is ridiculous. I am pretty sure she is Bipolar. Missionaries will have an awesome lesson with her, she will be ready to be baptized, and then when she shows up for the interview, she always had a new concern. Yesterday she told me she drank champagne and that she wasn't willing to live the word of wisdom. Hopefully she can figure it out soon. Her family would be great in the branch.

Alright that is probably all for me this week. I am for sure sending a camera card today with pictures. I copied all the pictures onto a disk, in case the card gets lost, and then I wrote explanations for them all. I hope you enjoy them! I love you all. Thanks for everything you do. Thanks for being the people you are.

Love,

Matt

p.s.
Mom- I love you. Thanks for being a great example to me of love and teaching me how to connect with people. Thanks for always serving me. You have always done so much for me. I don't think you have a selfish bone in your body. Thanks for teaching me Charity.

Dad- I love you. Thanks for teaching me patience and what it truly means to be a man. You and mom always spent so much time with me. I don't ever remember you missing any big event in my life. Thanks for putting family first.
Marc- Thanks for always looking after me. I love how close we have grown. Thanks for always letting me tag along with you and your friends

Ashley- Thanks for always taking the time and talking with me on the phone and helping me figure out my life. I am still learning from you. You have always been one of my best friends.

Melissa- You are an awesome mom to your kids. Thanks for being my second mom when I was younger. I always felt so much love from you. I hope my wife can be half the mothers that you and Ashley are.

Mace- Every time I am working out, I picture you next to me saying "Is that all you've got? Graycie can do more push- ups than you!" Mace I have never heard you say one bad thing about any one. You truly are one of the most patient and loving people I know. Thanks for your example.

Alex- You always push me to be a better person. You have been a great example to me of hard work and doing your best. You and I have always connected on a lot of different issues. I couldn't have asked for a better brother in law.
Amanda- Thanks for putting up with Marc. Haha just kidding. Thanks for joining our family. I was on my mission when you and Marc got married, but I am excited to get to know you better. Whenever I show mission friends pictures of my brother and his wife they say “Wow he did good for himself."

Jacob, Isaac, Gracye, Lyla, Abby- I love you all. I can't wait to wrestle with every single one of you. (Don’t worry I will give Lyla and Abby some time to get older.)

Grandma and Grandpa- You guys have always given me a good example of how a marriage should be. I can truly feel that you love each other so much.

Grandma Nielson- I love being around you. You always make me feel special. Thanks for always folding the tissues so that it looks like there is a baby in a blanket. I can't wait to go get custard and chicken with you.

Dakota- Why did you always run away?

Turbo- I never really liked you.

That one cat that pooped on Melissa- Why did you poop on my sister?

Dorothy- Is Dorothy still alive?

Elder Thatcher 2/14/11

2011-02-14T09:15:00.001-08:00

Hey Mom!

Well actually no they don't celebrate Valentines day in fact they do celebrate something and that is Ystävänpäivä... or in English Friend's day... YAY! So happy friends day! Yep I think it's pretty funny too... I really haven't heard anything about my extension... hopefully I will know soon... I really want it of course but even more than that right now I just want to know!!! So that I don't have to wonder anymore... katsotaan! I hope I know soon and of course I hope I get it but the Lord's will be done and that is the best for everything so I will do that :). Wow Jinii is having a boy!!! That is so cool!!! I am excited for them! That will be neat! Well I am pulling for Mickey Mouse then if those are the two options :) John is a funny boy!

The Calls are from Layton actually so maybe she knows them... Boyd and Diane Call are their names, they are great! and carless right now... someone stole their jackets while they were doing a service project with the young single adults... so we are their rides well hopefully they can find their keys... those are pretty important. Well thankfully those were the only really major things in their jackets so... but that is a bummer for them... the cookies weren't too soft but they tasted good!!! I am going to write both Grandparents today when I have a few spare minutes.

Well that is good that Mari and Craig love him... I am sure he is great but well I think we all know how I feel about that... no need to speak any further about that...

Well this swede speaks Swedish :) haha and yes he speaks English very well and he is learning Finnish well as well. We spoke though mostly in English because he has only been here for a few weeks now but we did speak some Finnish as well :)

Yes we are traveling a lot!!!!!!! We are out of town just once this week and that is a miracle!!! We are going to Kajaani so I am excited to go back there and see the members and see that good little city again... it's a great place. But yes we travel a lot just last we went to Helsinki and back Kokkola and back and Kemi and back so that was fun and it was fun because we took the car to Helsinki on the Night Train with us... so that was fun and an adventure but everything went well in Helsinki and we enjoyed our meetings and such.

The weather is colder a bit colder it was -26 or so yesterday and obviously colder at night it was so cold that when we went out yesterday to go to Church the display screen in our car took like 10 or 20 minutes to work properly :) it was cold!!! but last winter was TONS WORSE!!! But it is pretty cold, but unfortunately we haven't been able to see the northern lights... it's just too bright in Oulu.

Maria is doing really well, she doesn't have a date yet but she is so awesome and ready she just needs to make that leap of faith... baptism scares her a bit... but hopefully we can help her out. Saman's friends are doing really well just the same sort of problems that most Muslims have so katsotaan. But things are going well :)

Yesterday I had to give a talk in Sacrament Meeting because a recent convert told us he couldn't so one of the bishopric told me to talk... so again on Saturday night I find out I am giving a talk in Sacrament Meeting... I felt like it went well, I talked about missionary work and how I chose to come on a mission and how it has blessed my life. It went pretty well, and I hope others liked it. Well that was about the highlight of my week that and travel travel travel! It's been pretty crazy but I love it! We have some great investigators and some wonderful potential investigators and it's been pretty stressful with Zone Conference coming up so we are doing a lot of planning for that... Well I love you and I know this Church is true!!! I wish I had more time but I have to run!!! I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HAVE A GREAT WEEK!!!!!!!!!!!

Rakkaudella Vanhin Thatcher

Elder Lisonbee 2/7/11

2011-02-08T13:14:00.001-08:00

Hey,
Well we had a good week this last week. We were able to baptize our investigator. It was quite an epic and challenging day. Baptism days are usually like that. But we had seen the Sunday before that the baptismal font had not been drained, or so we thought (we later found out that the water slooowly leakes out of the faucet, and it had been doing so for roughly 6 months. The font was full, not only of water, but of algae or mold as well.) So they morning of the baptism me and my comp got to cleaning. We scrubbed that baby and got it shining. Then, as we go to fill it back up, the water that comes out of the faucet of the font is completely brown.. So, that was bad, and at this point the pump to take the water out had decided to break down, or stop working momentarily, or something. But we couldnt get the brown water out of the font using the drain, so, we had to do it with buckets. After we did that, we went on a search how to fill it up with clean water. We found two houses and ran them from both the mens and womans bathroom and into the font. We had been cleaning all morning so we decided as it fills up we will run back home and eat lunch and when we get back it will be almost full and we can finish things up and go out and work until the baptism. But, of course, it didnt work out so smoothly. We had originally timed the speed the font filled up and knew that it would take 104 minutes to fill the font to the desirable level. Well, return about 100 minutes later, we find that the water had shut up about 13 minutes after we had left. There was about 13 inches of water in the font. We were like... well, ef... SO, we start thinking of how else we can fill it up. We go to the neighbors around the chapel and ask if we can connect our houses to their water supply and run them to the font. Everyone says no because nobody has enough water to do that. Everyone was having the same problem we were already and were very cautious with their water, because it sucks running out of water... So basically, we investigated, we tried fixing thigns, we climbed the water towers and messed around with all the valves and supposed back up water supply that was should have been there but wasnt. Then, after having no success, we realize that it is about 4:45 and we were yet to communicate with Pamela (the baptism for that night). So we book it to our house, get dressed, adn run to her house to see how she is doing and if she is all ready to go? Well, she is not at her house when we get there and the baptism starts in one hour. Her dad says she went to the grocery store to buy bread and wont be back for an HOUR! So, we book it to the grocery store which is about 15 minutes away walking at missionary speed.. We dont find her there. I meanwhile was calling her like every 10 seconds but the calls either werent going through or they would for about 1 second and then the call would drop. Then it would say her phone was turned off. So we were freaking out. Book it back to our area. I call her again and finally she picks up. Hey! I am in my house! I just got here, she says. So we run over there and she is all ready to go, dressed all fancy and everything. Tell her some things and that we will meet here in the chapel in about 30. So, everything goes well, we get the pictures, the members help out a lot and give some great talks and the whole presentations part goes great.
My favorite part, however, was the baptism itself. Now if we think back to the morning, we had only filled about 12-13 inches of water into the font. And that is how it stayed until 6:30 that night when we were supposed to do the baptism. Luckily, she is a skinny, young, fun little youth that was willing to do it lying down. So, we go into the font, She is sitting on her butt with her legs our in front of her, her feet against the wall, and I am kneeling down next to her. We do the whole dealio, the prayer and everything, and as I go to dunk her, her hands and head dont go under, (her head because she just didnt put it under well, and her hands because they didnt fit under the water while they were holding mine with that shallow of water) So we had to change things up a bit. I told her this time after I said Amen I would just let go of her hands, she could cover her nose and I would just support her head and lift it back up and out when she had gone totally under. So, we did it and it all went very well. Afterwords she was very happy and it was a great night and experience. It was also probabaly the funnest baptism I had ever done. I had never done it before on my knees with the person laying down on the ground. I told her she had to touch her head on the bottom of the font. Haha it was all very humorous but a very good night.
So, that was my Thursday of this week. Pretty epic and memorable. I got it all written down in my journal. My first entry since August!! :) haha... fail.
Anyways, apart from that things are going great. We continue to work and look for the chosen few to accept the gospel. Everything is great. I love you all very much.
Elber

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Feb 02/08/11

2011-02-08T13:12:00.000-08:00

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Feb 02/08/11
Subject: If there is poop, then there has to be a pony

Family,

Sooo the key board I am writing on is way lame. It feels really weird and the buttons are all hard to push in. I am sorry that my email got to you late last week. I am not sure what happened. There must have been a problem with the Internet server. I wonder if you will get this email on time.

This past week was a little bit of a trial for us. We had so much going on in our area and felt so blessed, then we lost everything. In a matter of one day we lost every single baptismal date and progressing investigator we had. I have no idea what happened. I have been slammed pretty hard on my mission, but never like that.

Viktor was doing sooo well with quitting smoking and reading. But, when we went over to his house last week with a member he was dead drunk. I guess there was a problem with Viktor and another man that lives with him. Viktor pulled out a knife and the cops were called. Because of this he started drinking again and wasn't in a position for us to teach him. The member we went with told us not to go over to his house any more. He told us that when Viktor is ready he will come to us. We will see what happens. I agree with the member. This is the second time that Viktor has been drunk before a lesson. So we are dropping him for now.

Katja and Vladim didn't answer their phones at all this week. That was pretty hard because Katja had so much potential. I am not sure what happened. She just won't answer her phone or our texts. Maybe her heart will be softened. The other Viktor said he wasn't interested to meet because he can't see a difference in our religion and any other religion. I tried to explain over the phone, but he wasn't willing to listen.

Well, those were some pretty depressing paragraphs. I will be honest, this was a pretty hard week, but we are rebuilding and we are doing well. This is a tough city, but I love it. We will just keep swimming. Obedience brings faith and our faith can work miracles. Because of this we are making sure we are being extra obedient and submitting to the Lord in all things. I know everything will work out.

Yesterday we had zone conference in Kaunas. Kaunas is about 2 hours away from Vilnius. All the missionaries piled into a van and we had a guy drive us there. It was a fun ride. I sat next to a sister who went to my high school and who I knew pretty well. We had a fun time talking about the good old days.

We have had a lot of great experiences while knocking the last couple of days. We have been spending a lot of time out in an area called Solvanaoriu. Every night so far we have got in knocking or found someone who wants us to come back. We don't have any progressing investigators out of it yet, but they will come. One man we talked to spoke English great. He said he lived in Idaho for a couple of years. Elder Reeves was pretty excited about that. We also knocked into a very very humble and poor man named Remus. He has a beautiful family. He has the cutest little girls in the world. All his kids are younger than 5 years old. He is having surgery on his hand this week, so we are going over on Thursday to see how he is doing.

My life is good. I am very happy and I feel so blessed for everything the Lord has given me. I am happy with what I am doing in my life right now. I am always happy though. I feel like I learned at a very young age that it is my choice whether or not I want to be happy. The glass is always half full. It bugs me when people walk around being negative and complain all the time. There is so much good in the world and so many reasons why we should be happy. So stay positive and love your life.

That is about all I will write this week. Thanks for all your love and support. I think about you all often and I am praying for you. Tell Joni thanks for her letter. I got it a couple days ago. It was good to hear from her. Tell everyone I say "Hey." Also remind Grandma about her promise to wait for me. She better be ready to go get some custard when I get home. I love you all.

Love, Me

Elder Campbell 2/7/11 - 30 days left!

2011-02-07T17:12:00.000-08:00

Hola!

Thanks for all the emails I feel so popular today! Hey we got a new bishopric in the ward here too! Bishop Peñaloza is in the army and had to move so a new bishop was called. I love working with new bishops because they´re always so animated and full of ganas? (I don´t know to say that in english) to do things. That´s a cool story Mom it would have been interesting to be there.

This week was alright despite the 4 days that we only were able to work half day. We had another baptism planned for the Dad of the family that got baptized last week but he avoided us all week and went to visit family over the weekend to get out of going to church yesterday. Oh well the work goes on. We had 2 investigators with us yesterday, Ernesto and Monica, a couple who want to get married and baptized. The only problem is that Monica is from Ecuador and they have to wait for a permission to be able to get married that will get here on Feb 26. We invited like 3 other families and had members pass by for them and we even passed by in the morning to remind them, but none of them showed up :(

Today we played soccer with the zone again. Hopefully it doesn´t make me as sore as it did last week, it was painful to walk until Thursday. Everything´s moving along, Elder Rubalcava and I get along great and the missionaries in the zone are working hard. We have a goal to baptize 48 people this month as a zone and yesterday we baptized 10 so we´re on our way! This work is awesome love you all!

Elder Campbell

Elder Nielson 1/31/11

2011-02-02T09:40:00.000-08:00

Sent By: Matt Nielson
On: Jan 01/31/11

Family,

Do you want to know one of the coolest things about missionary work? One day you can just be getting slammed by everything and everyone around you, and then the next day you don't have enough room in your arms to accept all the blessings the Lord is giving you. I am grateful that the Lord gives me an opportunity to experience the hard times. Those times are truly “The dark before the morning,” or the “Pain before the healing.” I love this work.

Elder Reeves and I have had a great week. When the week started we were a little bit nervous because we hadn't been able to get a hold of Viktor for a while. We knew he had started drinking again and he wasn't answering his phone. We were finally able to get a hold of him after a few days and set up a meeting for the next day. We had a great lesson with him. He was very humbled by what had happened. We had a pretty intense lesson with him about changing his life. I asked him if he was happy. He said no. I testified and told him about how big of a difference I had seen from the Viktor now to the Viktor over a year ago. A year ago he was coming to church, reading the Book of Mormon and keeping the commandments. We told him that he will never be happy in this life without the Gospel. He sort of broke down at that point and told us about his desires to change. I told him we would call every day to help support him. He said "That's not good enough." I said "okay we will meet every single day." We are now meeting with Viktor every single day. He has made great improvements over the last few days. He hasn't drank anything in a while and has been reading and praying every day. Unfortunately, he couldn't make it to church because he had to go to the funeral of his friend, but next week.

At church on Sunday I was talking to Brother Fawles (The first member of Lithuania) and he asked when we were meeting with Viktor again. I told him we were going by every day. I asked him if he could help maybe 2 times a week or so. He then asked “Can I come help every day?” So this week we will be meeting with Viktor every day with Brother Fawles. If you ever want to know what I am doing at 6:00 my time, I am teaching Viktor.

After District Meeting on Tuesday I went on exchanges with Elder Frank. Elder Frank and I were in the MTC together. It was a blast spending time and talking about the good old days in the MTC. We have both grown a lot. It was fun to see that growth in each other. We had a great teaching day as well. We were able to teach 2 new lessons and both accepted a baptismal date.

The first mans name is Viktor. We walked out of the teaching center and immediately ran into a middle aged man name Viktor. We pulled him back to the Teaching Center and had a great lesson. He isn't the most solid date in the world, but that is awesome he accepted a date. We are meeting again with him this week. Wish us luck.

The next baptismal dates name is Katja. Katja is a 19 year old, punk rock, very pretty Russian girl. She was contacted with her boy friend on a bus about a year ago. We got her name and number off a potential investigator sheet. We called and asked if she and her boy friend would want to meet up. She said she wasn't dating that guy any more, but she wanted to meet. I will be honest, I was very very sketched out by this girl at first. Usually if a young, pretty, 19 year old girl wants to meet up they aren't interested in God at all. I called a young 20 year old guy in our branch named Jefim and invited him to the lesson. I became even more nervous for the lesson when I saw Katja walk into the teaching center. She has orange hair, a nose ring, and wore very short shorts.

When we sat down I asked her if she believed in God. She said “Of course, I wouldn't be here if I didn't believe in God.” I asked her what she expected from our lesson. She said “I want to know why all missionaries are always so happy. Every time I see you, you have a big smile on your faces.” She then said “I also have been thinking a lot about death. I am worried to stand before God after this life. I don't know what I would say to him. I came today to figure out how to change my life so that I can stand without guilt in front of God!” ......................... All of us just sat there for a second. We had no idea what to say.

We started off by explaining about baptism. We also talked about eternal families and how she can strengthen her family. We told her about the Book of Mormon and gave her a copy. We then invited her to follow Jesus Christ and be baptized. She said "sure why not." It was one of the most powerful lessons I have ever been on in my mission. I asked when she could meet again. She said, “Well I need to read and pray about this book first, there is no point in meeting if I haven't done those two things first.” She is awesome.

The next lesson went great as well. I called and asked when she could meet again. She said “How about in 30 minutes.” I quickly called Jefim and we had another great lesson. She said “I haven't read too much of the book yet, I have been busy.” I asked her how much she had read. “I am only on page 30!” She read 30 pages in 3 days. Her Baptismal date is for February 26.

Last and not least we taught a young 17 year old Russian kid named Vladim. We also invited him to be baptized and he accepted. After the lesson I asked him what he was doing after this. He said “I gotta go back to school, I left to come meet you.” haha He is way good. We were only able to teach him once though, so we need to meet up and see how solid he is. We now have 4 dates.

I went down to Riga on Friday for zone leader council. It was really fun to go back. Riga feels the most like home to me. It was really fun to see all the other Zone Leaders and talk with them. It was especially nice just to sit back and enjoy the council instead of presenting. The Assistants did a great job.

I think that might be everything from me this week. Thanks for all your love. I love you. Thanks for emailing me Marc. You are the man. That story was so funny. We had a good laugh about it. Keep it up. We are still praying for you. Everything is going to work out great. Have a great week!

Love,
Me

p.s. Thanks for the picture. It was good to see everyone. I am making a copy of my pictures onto a disk and then I will send you those next week.

Elder Lisonbee 2/1/10

2011-02-01T09:04:00.002-08:00

Hey mom,
First off, the the interview with Presdent Madariaga went really well. He did help me a lot and let me know exactly what I need to do to stay focused and finish my mission as a very strong and successful missionary. I told him the last thing I want to do is get home and have regret for wasting these last few, vital weeks. I have the change to be the best missionary I have been my whole mission because now I speak the language better than ever, know all the secrets to teaching and finding and everything, so I need to use my experience to make some big changes.
He told me that there are 3 things I need to do.
One, obey with exactness. That is how I will get the spirit with me and that is how I will be able to .make differences. Having his guidance and influence in my daily life will rid me of any "trunky" thoughts I may be having and help me stay focused.
Two, I need to focus on the new missionary methods for teaching known as the 8 fundamental principles. If I can master them, make them become a way of life for me, I will be a very powerful and efficient missionary. So, my companion and I have already set goals how to study them everyday and imply them in our work. Its gonna be sick.
Three, he told me to really focus and work hard on having Ward Coucils as often as possible. Every 15 days if possible. Really get the ward involved in the work and actively trying to find investigators. With the new mission plan that has been created and implemented in the work down here is going to make huge differences if the missionaries and wards will take it seriously. We help a ward council yesterday and talked a lot about it. Things look great as of right now and we will see if we can motivate the members enought o do their part.
So, If I do those things I will be able to finish my mission in a great way. I also had the opportunity to work this week with one of the assistants. He gave me some great ideas too. But what I liekd most is that the best way I can teach my missionaries is to be working alongside them. So he encouraged me to do more division and help them with more things. He told me how I have the right to go to their houses in the mornings to help them plan or to do weekly planning or whatever it may be. But the key is to lead by example. I think that will really help me to stay focused as well.
Alright well I gotta go. I lvoe you a lot and will talk to you later.
Love you.
Trent

Elder Campbell, 1/31/11 - 37 days!

2011-02-01T09:04:00.001-08:00

Hey!

This week has been pretty nuts, my body is soooo tired. My new area is pretty much all hills so we go up and down all day and as if we don`t get enough exercise we wake up and go to the gym at 6:00 in the mornings. Today we played soccer with the zone and I don`t think I`m going to be able to move tomorrow. That`s ok though because we have concilio tomorrow so I`ll just be sitting all morning anyways.

Yesterday we had 3 baptisms here, the Dad of the family was the only one that wasn`t able to come because he had to work but he`ll be getting baptized this week we hope. In church yesterday the Relief Society and Priesthood class was combined and a member of the high council showed a power point presentation of the organization of the church and stuff like that. On one of the slides it showed the picture of Pres. Scott shaking a young man´s hand, the one that they put on the missionary application website and I was like "Hey! That`s my ex-stake president!"

My new companion and I get along just great. He`s helping me endure to the end. We`ve found a lot of people here that want to get baptized the problem is that they are just living together and we have to get them married before they can get baptized. That`s all I can think about for now, hope you all have a great week!

Love,
Elder Campbell

Elder Thatcher 2/1/10

2011-02-01T09:03:00.000-08:00

Mom thank you for the email I hope you didn't get offended by my stop being trunky comment... I realized after that that might not have been very nice so I apologize :) I love you! Well first things first I will answer your questions

1. Yes I got all of the things you sent me (well that were sent to Kajaani) I got them from the Kajaani Elders at District Meeting and so I got the Ipod and everything!!!!!!!!! KIITOS!!! It is wonderful!

2. Everyone is well in Vaasa I got to see some members when I was there and I was able to interview Ling (another Chinese guy) for baptism! ha ha it went really great and he was baptized Saturday. so it was really cool... but the travel was a joke (more on that later)

3. Elder Gorringe has been in Finland for about a year and 3 months or so...
4. Maria's kids are 4 and 2 I think... two little girls.

Well I think those are all... at least the ones you wanted to know about.Well things have been going pretty well here we went to Vaasa and that was really fun... but no lie I felt like I was traveling with Dad! and this is what I mean... So we left Tuesday morning and we had to wake up at the crack of dawn... (4 am) and so we could make our train that was scheduled to leave at 5:35 and unlike most trips to recollection with dad we were there with plenty of time to spare we relaxed sat on the train and relaxed the time passed and the train hadn't left, they told us we were waiting for the conductor... he was late and then he just didn't show... SO THEY CANCELLED THE WHOLE TRAIN!!!!!!!!!!! Yep so we tried to switch our tickets and we ended up just talking to the conductor for the 6.45 train and he just gave us new tickets... nice... so we thought all was well until we got to Seinäjoki and we were obviously late and we had missed our train to Vaasa and the next one was cancelled... yep cancelled but they had a bus connection to Vaasa so we switched our tickets and then finally ran to the bus and we finally got to Vaasa... that is a very abridged version of the story but I will have to tell you all about it sometime :) wow it was crazy! but Vaasa was great and it was fun to see the members and be with my greenie again :) Elder Ballam is doing really well and is loving life! They are doing great things in Vaasa still! WOW! Well that whole day was long too because we drove up to Pietarsaari with them and spent the night there like I said CRAZY DAY!

Well things are good we are hoping Maria will have a baptismal date soon... she is so golden and so perfect!!! SHE JUST NEEDS TO GET BAPTIZED!!! So we will see... We are off to Kuopio this week for a couple days and we are really excited about that! :) Kuopio is on the east side of the country and is just below Kajaani. It is especially big for Elder Gorringe because he just came from there so he is excited to go back.

Wow so President Wall!!! That is so cool!!! Tell him congratulations for me and tell him how much a good mission President can mean to his missionaries!!! I am sure he already knows that but wow it's true, President Brown has been an amazing example to me!!! Speaking of President Brown he was up here in Oulu for a District meeting and interviews etc. and that was all on Friday and then he came to study with us on Saturday morning! WOW!!!!!!!!!!! IT WAS AWESOME!!!!!!!!! It was really cool being able to study with the Mission President! Well anyways let me know where President Wall gets his call to... and those stories were really cool... is that inner city Salt Lake or what?

Well I love you! I hope you know that and care for you so much! Keep me updated about the U and the Y and what my status is there. I love you and I KNOW THIS CHURCH IS TRUE!!! Be examples of the believers! SPREAD THE GOSPEL!!!! It's possible even in downtown MORMONVILLE!!!!! IT'S TRUE!!!!!!!!!!!! HAVE A GREAT WEEK!!! I LOVE YOU!

Rakkaudella Vanhin Thatcher :)

KEEP SMILING!!

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Jan 01/24/11

2011-01-25T14:55:00.000-08:00

Family,

Earlier in my mission I used to love preparation day. I used to look forward to Mondays the entire week. In all honesty though I am getting pretty tired of preparation day. I would much rather be out doing missionary work. Preparation day just slows down the work. The only thing I like about it is I get to write and hear from all of you. I have even started scheduling lessons once in a while on preparation day. It is nice to get done the things that need to get done like groceries, emailing, buying stuff, but other than that it just drags on and distracts missionary work.

Well how was that for an opening paragraph? It has been getting colder in Vilnius. This came at a very fortunate time because our fridge broke this week. We had to take all our meat out and put it out on our balcony. If the weather hadn't gotten colder all our meat would have gone bad. Miracles.
How are all of you this week? It sounds like Dad has been busy going back and forth to Kansas. Becca is in Kansas right now. Her mission covers the Liberty Jail. You should go look her up. That is great that everyone is so busy. Keep up the good work.

We didn't have a chance to meet with Viktor this week. We went over to his house with a member, but he was drunk and wasn't in a position to talk. That was a little bit frustrating, but it's okay. It was fun to spend time with the member. He came out and talked with people on the street with us. His name is Brother Fawles. He was the first person baptized in all of Lithuania. He is just the man. I think he has served in every calling you can serve in. He is now the first councilor in the branch Presidency.

We had our special training this week with President and Sister Dance. We talked about giving commitments and following up. After the training he had all the missionaries take turns teaching me, him and Sister Dance. It was fun because all the missionaries had to teach about the Law of Chastity.

The Law of Chastity is way easy to teach in Russian. The only way we know how to teach it is simply and straight forward. Missionaries always struggle teaching it in English though. The Russian Sisters taught me first. They were so awkward with it. I had to stop them halfway through and say" Sisters stop being awkward, just teach me the law of Chastity. They pulled it together by the end.

It was fun spending time with President and Sister Dance again. I miss them. We all sat around and ate pizza together. I decided to ask President Dance deep doctrine questions while we were eating. We ended up having an awesome discussion. I learned a lot from the training.

We have been helping members home teach a lot the past couple of weeks. Our home teaching companions name is Genadie. He is the Elders quorum president and just a rock. Unfortunately, he is moving to Ukraine this week to get married. Because he is moving he has been pushing to get all of his home teaching done. We went with him 4 times last week. Every single lady we went to fed us a big dinner. It was way nice. I felt like an American missionary. Some of the meals were awesome, some were..... interesting.

Man, alcohol is so dumb. I am so sick of seeing people ruin their lives because of alcohol. It is way sad to see solid church members slip up because of it. We went and stopped by a man and his wife this week. As soon as we walked in their tiny little apartment you could just feel that something was way wrong. They were both just dead drunk. The worst part is there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. We just said hello and then good bye and walked out. We talked about it with Brother Fawles. He is going to go help them out.

We had a great week of teaching this week. Each week we keep teaching a little bit more and a little bit more. We sat down and set a few goals that can help us teach even more. I am not sure why Vilnius has been so slow for so long. This place is just waiting to take off. There are so many prepared people just waiting to be baptized.

We went and helped a man named Boyd Hale do some translation stuff. He is an American man from Black Foot living in Lithuania. He is here because He "is a slave to love," as he says. He married a Russian woman about 7 years ago and has been here ever since. He is a little bit crazy, but he has a good heart. He is the only high priest in all of Lithuania. He has had an interesting life. It is interesting to listen to him tell stories. He is a great missionary. He is always talking with people on buses and inviting his neighbors to church. A few people in Lithuania have been baptized because of him. He made as a way good breakfast of eggs and potatoes.

There is a young guy in our branch named Efiem. He was baptized about 1 1/2 years ago. He is a really solid member. He has a little sister who is 7 years old. She is a little cutie. Efiem and his parents want us to start teaching her. Efiem’s parents aren't members, but they think his littler sister will be a better person if she has the Gospel in her life. This is very true. She is awesome to teach. She just gives way solid answers. I asked her way we pray and she said "Because God is our Heavenly Father." I have never started off a lesson with a 10 minute discussion on Disney Princesses. She knows her princesses well. They are her favorite things. I tried to tie Princesses and the gospel together. She didn't really get it though, haha I guess my Russian isn't up to par yet.

Okay I hope you all have a great week! I love you all. Thanks for everything you do for me! Tell everyone you see I say "hello." Tell Nick he needs to write back soon.

Love,

Me

Elder Campbell 1/24/11

2011-01-24T20:34:00.001-08:00

Hola from Culturas!

So we got a big surprise on Saturday when we got the changes. Elder Leavitt answered the phone and Elder George said, "Well you already know your change, you`re going to Las Vegas and your companion, well you have to find her. Elder Campbell is leaving and going to Culturas with Elder Rubalcava." We were both like "what?!" I totally figured I would be in Toluca for my last transfer but I guess the Lord had other plans. I`m back in DF again! Well not exactly, I`m in Naucalpan which is part of the state of Mexico but it`s basically the DF. Elder Rubalcava is a great elder from Orizaba, Veracruz. He has about 17 months in the mission and it`s funny because he was in the first group of missionaries that I picked up from the MTC when I became secretary. I can`t believe that was so long ago. The ward that I`m in is supposedly the largest ward in Mexico, with over a thousand members on the ward member list. Elder Rubalcava tells me that only a little over 100 are active...

I was pretty sad to see Elder Leavitt go but it`s ok, we already have plans to do stuff after the mission. His last week wasn´t what we had hoped it would be. Jessica had her baptismal interview during the week and didn´t pass so she wasn´t able to get baptized on Sunday. It was another week without anyone in church, Elder Leavitt was saying that maybe he should have just stayed in El Oro! The other elders in our ward did baptize someone though so we were able to be a part of that at least. It was hard to say goodbye to the members in Toluca, they`re awesome.

I`m excited to be here in Culturas, there are 24 missionaries in the zone and I`ve already worked with a lot of them before so we get along great. I don`t know what else to tell you about, hopefully next week I`ll have more good news. Thanks for the emails!

Love you all lots,
Elder Campbell

Elder Thatcher 1/24/11

2011-01-24T20:33:00.000-08:00

I am pretty sure I am in Oulu to stay but who now? I might move again but I highly doubt it... Yes, Samo was baptized Saturday and confirmed yesterday it was a great experience. A great story and a miracle! Well he is a great missionary too and well this whole Branch is just great!!! I love it here in Oulu, I am grateful that I can be here and serve these great people! We finally got our new sim card so we can receive phone calls and text messages! YAY!!! The past 2 weeks it has been broken, so it is a relief to get a new one!

Well this week we are headed to Vaasa and from there to Pietarsaari before heading back to Oulu... We have to leave here tomorrow morning at 5:35... OUCH! but it will be good to be back in Vaasa!!! What a great place!!! Well anyway that should be a fun trip and then we have interviews Friday like I said so that is kind of our week coming up... We have a great investigator named Maria she is so awesome and we are teaching her a bunch it is a hard situation she has 2 kids and a couple months ago her husband just got up and walked away, it was obviously very hard but the world's best member missionary Tanja Airaksinen just happens to be her neighbor and so there we go and we are off! The teaches always go really well and things are going well with her and the member like I said is super great! It's a great situation!!! So have you applied to the U for me yet? let me know what happens... Well it has actually been really warm here in Oulu probably warmer than in good ole SLC... it's like only -2 or -3 today so we are doing well and sitting pretty :) IT'S A HEAT WAVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well thank you for the story and the pictures! The faith of small children is amazing! No wonder the Lord exhorts us to be like little children. Well I know that this Church is true! I KNOW IT!!! I am so grateful that I get to share that knowledge with the people here in Finland and here in Oulu! Keep smiling and never give up and remember I love you!

Oh Mom Elder Gorringe's Mom wanted to email you so if you get one you will know why... I love you and hope you have a great week!

Rakkaudella Vanhin Thatcher

January 17, 2011 (51 days left!)

2011-01-17T17:44:00.002-08:00

Hola from Mexico!

We finally got people to church yesterday!!!!! Jessica is an investigator that we`ve had for about 2 months. She told us she wanted to get baptized about a month ago but the problem has been getting her to church. Something always seemed to come up. Last week we took a member with us to talk about baptism and going to church just to remind her and get her more excited. It worked! Yesterday we passed by for her at 7:30 in the morning and she was ready and excited. She is going to get baptized this Sunday after church!!!!

Isabel Piña came with her two little kids, Vicente who`s 7 and Jocelyn who`s 4. Her husband`s job is kind of difficult so he wasn`t able to come with them but he`s looking for another job where he`ll be able to go to church on sundays. We had a sweet lesson with them on Saturday night where we talked about obedience to the commandments and the
commandment of keeping the sabbath day holy. The Spirit was really strong and we found ourselves promising things we hadn`t planned on saying. Isabel accepted the invitation to come to church and an awesome member couple that lives a few houses away offered to drive them to church in the morning. Also the bishop asked one of the investigators that Elder Perez and Elder Sanders brought to church to give the closing prayer in sacrament meeting! And it was his first Sunday there! He did a good job though, he`s on his way to baptism too!

Elder Leavitt and I did divisions this week with a couple of other elders. Elder Leavitt went up to El Oro with Elder Slyvestre and I stayed here with Elder Chavez. He`s a good elder, from Puerto Vallarta, plays the piano and sings really really well. He`s afraid of dogs though and I think they know it because I`ve never been chased by so many dogs as when I was with him. It`s Elder Leavitt`s last week which is crazy because I was with him when he hit the point I`m at right now and it feels like it was just last week. Which means that these last weeks are going to go by just as fast.

Thanks for the thoughts and prayers, everything`s going swell here in Toluca. From what I hear things are going well there too and I hope you know that you`re all in my prayers and that I love you guys!

Elder Campbell

Elder Thatcher 1/17/10

2011-01-17T17:44:00.001-08:00

Wow ya a bit of a shock huh??? Well things are going really good in Oulu!!! The change was a little weird because we were "shotgunning" Oulu and one of the Elders had to leave Sunday anyways so I got to go up a bit early... it was pretty crazy and rushed but it was OK. Saara is doing well she is scheduled to be baptized the 5th of next month so we are praying hard for her... as for going back we will be able to go back because my companion will have to give her a baptismal interview so that should be fun!!! Wow Kajaani was a great place! Oulu is great too! It is very very big! and a huge branch! Do you remember Elder Lampinen the Finn I served with for three weeks in Vaasa? He is from Oulu and so was my trainer's and my mini missionary Teppo Lietsalmi he is also from Oulu so I got to meet Elder Lampinen's parents and give them some pictures of us and talk about him. Teppo is great and he always wants to come on teaches and ya this ward is great!!! So hopefully we will have a baptism on Saturday here in Oulu!!! It's such a cool story! This guys name is Saman he is from Iraq and the previous missionaries here found him and he at the beginning was a drinker and smoked and all sorts of bad things and he was Muslim... He met the missionaries and changed completely he quit smoking he stopped drinking etc. etc. and he gained a testimony of the Book of Mormon... but because he was Muslim he really couldn't get baptized, but then his family changed, his situation changed and now he has gotten a permanent Visa to stay in Finland he is practically engaged to a member right now and he is on his way!!! Yesterday he got an interview from someone in the Mission Presidency and he is a go for BAPTISM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What a miracle!!! So we are going to talk about the day tonight when we teach him, probably this week or next week!!! WOW!!! SO COOL!!! His story is amazing and miraculous and so is his faith! The man is a stud!!!

Well Elder Gorringe is my new companion and he is such a stud!!! I love the kid to death haha! He is actually just from West Point Utah. So an hour or so up the road... so not to much of a foreigner :)! Man things are going really well here! I love it! The work is going forward so fast!!! IT'S TRUE!!!!!!!!!!!!! umm about my packages I haven't heard anything but I will talk with the Kajaani Elders about it. umm for my birthday package I wouldn't mind maybe some beef jerky and some gum... I don't need a ton but just some. and no candy please :) KIITOS!

Well I don't really know what else to say haha we have just been driving around Oulu a lot trying to find our way around things :) We are lost a lot but we have a good map so the only really problem is our old member list... well that will all work out. Man I love my mission it is the best and it has truly changed everything about me!!! Wow how grateful I am for this experience!!!

Well things are all going pretty well here and we are keeping pretty busy. Say hello to Sisar Koskinen if you talk to her again... she is a lady that you would want to stay in touch with! She's incredible! So are all the members in Kajaani and well all through out Finland! I love this country I just love it all! The church is true and this is simply the best!

Ya Hafer should invite you to the wedding haha if not he said he was sending me an invite haha you can go in my behalf.´

Well I love you and I know this Church is true and I hope that you have a really great week!!!

Rakkaudella Vanhin Thatcher

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Jan 01/17/11

2011-01-17T17:41:00.000-08:00

Family,

Has it really been a week? That is just ridiculous. Vilnius is awesome. I love this city. It is way warm here right now. All the snow is melting. I feel like it is spring already. Last year at this time it was -28. Right now it is 0 degrees. It is sweet. All the natives keep telling me that February is going to be really cold, but I don't believe them. They are always way negative.

It is way dark and gloomy right now, but I love it. I remember last year it bothered me that is was so dark and cloudy and that everything was gray, but now I feel right at home. When I walk down the street I feel like I am walking around my home city. When I am with the members and other missionaries I feel like I am around family. Everything just feels really normal to me. I just feel at peace.

This was a great week for us. We are starting to get the ball rolling in this area. At first it was a little bit slow, but like a ball rolling down a hill it just keeps getting faster and faster. Last week we had 0 investigators and 0 baptismal dates. This week we now have 1 solid progressing investigator and 1 baptismal date. His name is Victor.

Victor is a guy that I taught when I was here in Vilnius over a year ago now. I doubt you remember me talking about him. He lived with a family who are members. Elder Briggs and I found Victor through this member family. We taught him for a couple months and then he stopped progressing because he could never come to church because of work, so we dropped him.

When I came back to Vilnius I remembered about Victor and gave him a call. We went over a few days later. The members he lived with all moved to Russia, but he is still renting their apartment from them with a black family from Africa. When we first got to this house I was pretty shocked to feel how different it felt inside of it. Last time I was in that apartment there were pictures of Christ on the walls and a wonderful family there. There was a great spirit in the house last time I was there. This time however it was dark, cold and incredibly dirty. There was rotting meat on the counters and it smelt as if the toilet had been backed up for a month.

When Victor came to the door we was shaking really bad and looked as if someone had beaten him up. We sat down on the couch and started talking with him. It was a pretty humbling experience. He talked about how much worse his life had been since that family moved out. He talked about how he started drinking again and that he was most likely going to loose his job. He then looked at me in the eyes and said "Nielson I don't want to live anymore." I had no idea what to say. It was pretty humbling to see how much pain was in that mans face and to see his circumstances around him. We just sat in silence for a few minutes. I don't really know what I said back, but I remember I told him that Christ understood exactly what he is going through and that only through Christ can he be healed. We testified to him that his life is out of order right now because he has forgotten about Christ and relied on his own strength. We left after he promised to start reading and praying again.

A few days later we went back to teach Victor. As soon as we saw him there was a completely different light about him. He even smiled when we saw him. We sat down with him and read together out of the book of Mormon. As soon as we stopped reading he bore his testimony about the truthfulness of the book of Mormon and how he knows that Christ is our Savior. I looked at Elder Reeves with a look that said "Challenge him to be baptized." Elder Reeves then pulled out the doctrine of baptism and challenged him. Victor immediately said "Yes." He then told us he wanted his daughter to be a part of this and to talk with us. I asked him when we could meet with him. He said "I don't know let me see." He then pulled out his phone and called his daughter right there in front of us. He told his daughter about us and told her how much his life has changed and the spirit he feels while meeting with us. We agreed that this week we are going to meet at Victor’s house with his 30 year old daughter! Miracles.

What makes it all better is that Victor came to church on Sunday. The branch members were great with him as well. I have never seen a branch work that well with an investigator. They all wanted to sit next to him at church and talk with him after each meeting. I love this branch. They understand exactly how to fellowship investigators and the importance behind it. I am pretty excited for Victor. His baptismal date is set for February 19. The only potential problem we might run into is helping him quit drinking. I know he can do it though.

We also started teaching the black people that live in Victors same apartment. A man named Papie and his wife live there. They don't speak any English and very broken Russian. It is a little bit frustrating teaching him. Papie is pretty prideful as well. We will see if it goes anywhere.

I got a hair cut today. The missionary hand book says I can't have a shaved head. I agree and support this rule. Apparently the hair cutting lady wasn't listening when I told her that I wanted it cut a little bit. As soon as I sat down she pulled out the clippers and shaved right down the center of my head. It isn't to the skin.... but pretty close. I was way mad. We will see what Sister Dance has to say about that. They will be in Vilnius this week because our zone is having some special training. I am pretty excited. It should be great.

Last night we taught a guy with the Elders quorum president here in Vilnius. He is the man. His name is Genadie. He is moving soon because he met a girl at the Kiev temple and they are going to get married. After the lesson he came out knocking with us for about an hour. It was way fun to have him there. People love him. As soon as they hear him speak without an accent they just open right up to him. It was sweet. We didn't find anyone, but it was still fun.

The branch here in Vilnius is also doing a great job home teaching. The branch President is pushing for 100% this month with all the active and less active members. He isn't really focused on the in actives right now. We are helping all the members do their home teaching as well. This last week we went out with a couple different guys and taught a few lessons. It is great. I have never seen a branch be this focused on home teaching before. It is awesome. The Branch President is just throwing down with all the members.

Okay that is about all the time I have for this week. Thanks for everything you do! I love you all. I hope you all have a great week!
Talk to you soon.

p.s. That is awesome Pete came over for dinner. It was way crazy to see a picture of him in our house. He is just the man. I am still learning from him. I still remember the day he picked me up from the airport. I just thought he was the coolest and best missionary in the world. He and Zach (Mattee) are just a wrecking ball of spiritual goodness.

Elder Campbell, 1/10/11

2011-01-11T12:51:00.000-08:00

Hola,

I finally got my birthday and Christmas packages!!!!! Tell everyone thanks for the stuff they put in.

We have some really good investigators that have already said they want to get baptized but we just can`t get them to church! The rule is that they have to go to church at least twice before they get baptized and the only person we`ve been able to get to church has been Susana once but now that we changed to 8:00 church it`s been more difficult to get her to come with us. So that`s the struggle right now.

That`s all for this week, love you all and I`ll be home before you know it,

Elder Campbell

ELder Lisonbee 1/10/11

2011-01-10T11:40:00.000-08:00

Hey Family,
How is everything going with you all this week? We have had a pretty good week. We were able to see a Little bit more success this week and teach quite a few more lessons. We decided to make a few changes in the way we are doing things because how we were doing them wasnt working too well, and I think It made a Little difference. We were able to take 4 investigators to church and finish off the week with 4 baptismal dates. That is the best we have done since we have gotten here. The rich Paraguayan-Australian is still around sorta. We dont go there to much because he is very catholic, but we havent given up on him yet. We are going there tomorrow to watch the Joseph Smith movie on his nice 64 inch TV. So I am pretty pumped about that. Then, depending on how he takes that will determine if we want to keep teaching him or if his heart is just too hard to accept the restoration at this point in his life. It is frustrating teaching people like him because he has so much knowledge and potential to be such an amazing convert, but his pride and small misunderstandings of certain OOLLD doctrines like the apostasy and certain scrips from the Bible keep him from being able to accept modern revelation and the Book of Mormon. But, his time will come. He is too smart to not eventually be converted.
Then, with our other investigator. The lady and her son. She is still gonig pretty strong. Her son not so much. She went to church yesterday andseemed to really like it. She just is a Little complainer about any stupid things she can find. So she is annoying, but progressing. We usually have pretty spiritual lessons with her and are able to slam out her stupid doubts beyond anything that could leave some Kind of doubt in her mind. We just fill her brain with scriptures and all sorts of awesome evidences. She is loving it for themost part. We will see what happens. Then our other investigators are still sortof new so it is difficult to tell what will happen. But, if they are still around by next week I will let you in on all the fun.
Well, today the secretary from the office called me and got my information and your emails so that he can make my flight plans and send them to you. So, whgen you get those could you forward them to me so I have an idea of where I am going. Those are just the rough drafts, but they almost always stay the same in the final versión of the flight plans. Anyways, that was a pretty crazy phone call. One I thought I would never get. Time flieeeeeess.
The mission president lives in a VERY nice house. Nicer than the naniloa one. It is pretty dang nice.. My crazy expience of being alone last week happened in San Lorenzo. The President lives in Asuncion. Del Maestro is the name of the chapel that I work in. Or the neighborhood. But it is part of the city of San Lorenzo.
The other mission does take part of Asuncion but I think we have most of it. We occasionally will run into some of the missionaries but not very often. We actually saw a few of them today at Pizza Hut. We went there for our activity and it was delicious. I actually think we went into the South Mission so that is prolly why we saw them. I have also seen them in the past when I have been in areas that are on the border of our mission and the other one. But really it doesnt happen too often. I dont know where thier office is, but I know that it is relatively close. SOmetimes we borrow their van or they will borrow ours. I dont have anything ot do with that stuff because I have never been an office elder, but I know that they communite and stuff.
Anyways, I think that is about it for this week. Everything is going pretty well with me. Something crazy is that I am actually LESS trunky right now in my mission than ever before. Its like now that going home is actually a reality that is upon me, I all of a sudden dont want to as bad.. Ha. I mean of course I want to,but its just different now that I actually am coming to the end. I dunno, Its just pretty crazy. But things are going great with us and we are going to continue to work hard until the end. THis is the last week of this change and then I start my 15 change out of 16. I can say I go home next change… That is ridiculous. Ha. Anyways, thanks for the emails and the brithday package. I look forward to it. There is a possibilty that the home address on the flight plans are INCORRECT because he didnt even ask me anything abou tthem. I might call him back, maybe not, but if not just respond letting him know about the equivocation. Alright, well I love you guys and miss you a lot and look forward to next week.
Elber

Elder Thatcher 1/10/11

2011-01-10T08:28:00.000-08:00

Well what a week I had... Well we started off on Monday getting a baptismal date with a woman named Saara!!!! She is so solid and she came to church yesterday and it went so well!!! We had a lot of miracles happen and a lot of people are getting interested!!! Miracles are happening in Kajaani! Well interestingly enough I am in Oulu now... yep we got change calls Saturday and I got surprised with a change to Oulu, I am actually "shotgunning" it with another missionary so the two missionaries who were there are leaving one is trading spots with me and is headed to Kajaani and the other is going to Helsinki... it was a shock!!! ha ha I am going to miss Kajaani a lot, the members there are so so so so so strong and great they are the best and it was neat to see the work go forward there. We have a car here so that is nice. It was kind of crazy because I found out at 10:30 Saturday night that I was leaving and I had to leave yesterday so they could show me the ropes and train me a little bit before the other elders head off and before my new companion comes on Tuesday, my new companion is a stud!!! His name is Elder Gorringe, I am really excited to work with him and it should be fun. I'm excited too because we get to travel a little bit, I get to go back to Vaasa and Kajaani and we get to go to Kuopio as well so that will be really fun! I am still a little shocked and I feel like I am drinking out of the fire hose right now getting all the information about the ward and the area before Elder Grimm the missionary who is here leaves tomorrow. Well things are going really well and hopefully we can get things on track and that things will go forward! :) before I forget I want to give you my new address here in Oulu it's:

Tellervontie 3 A 10
90570 Oulu

So you can send packages and things there. umm ya so it's been a crazy week there is really no way I could tell you all the stuff that happened, maybe someday... oh ya Saturday night they told me too that I was giving a talk in Sacrament meeting so I prepared and it went really well, even though I was busy packing all morning, so I guess I just prepared a lot in my head :) but it went well and all the members were pretty shocked that I was leaving... Man I love them, they are truly the best! Well the Lord needs me for some reason in Oulu so I will go.

as to your questions...

1. Ya last year it made it and it was pretty dry but edible.
2. If you want you can send a cake mix or I could just get something here... (DON'T SPEND A LOT OF MONEY!!!)
3. I can read it and I am in the process of translating it.
4. I did buy some boots.
5. Interestingly enough it has been really, really warm. Today and yesterday it was around 0 Celsius!!! and the whole week about the same so it's really not cold at all.... coldest winter in 500 years ya right... knock on wood I didn't just jinx myself :)
6. I haven't heard yet maybe next week... I will give you more information to your question later :)
7. I actually did have a few things in mind... one is a CD called "nearer" it's a bunch of hymns redone, it's really good! It's made by Shadow Mountain Records, they have a net address too it's just shadowmountainrecords.com... then one of those Sigg water bottles like the one you sent last year that music one that was black... well that one broke but one about the same size in just a solid color would be great. Then just my ipod and some memory cards but you said that they were coming so thanks!!! Please keep it small and simple and DON'T SPEND A LOT OF MONEY!!!!!!! also I always like pictures and letters but nothing to draw my thoughts away.
8. I don't think so but there maybe some things I need to get... katsotaan
9. Nope I just love you and appreciate your thoughts and prayers but everything is really great right now :)
10. I never got the envelope with DVDs and pamphlets.

Kajaani was a wonderful place and I will tell you all about it someday and when we got to visit you can meet Perttu and Saara and Sisar Koskinen and all of them! Wow it's just a great place. and Oulu is too a lot bigger than Kajaani but it's a really great place and I am really excited!

Well I think that's really all for this week! I love you and I know that this is true and it is right!!! Keep going and never give up!!! The Lord will provide a way!!! He has for me! and He will for me!!! Although this is a pretty big task in front of me I am excited to do my best and then I know the Lord will take care of the rest!

Rakkaudella Vanhin Thatcher

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Jan 01/10/11

2011-01-10T08:27:00.000-08:00

FAMILY!!!!

Well, like you know I am in Vilnius! HOME SWEET HOME. I am so excited to be here. I love Vilnius, the people, the city, members, missionaries, everything. My companion is also just the man. I understand I say that about everyone, but he really is. His name is Elder Reeves. He is from the little town of Firth Idaho. He is a BIG football star back at home. He has a full ride scholarship to Idaho State. He isn't has big as Elder Mattee, but he is big.

We get along way well. That is actually going to be the challenge of our companionship. We are already best friends. We just want to tell stories and talk all day long. He is a great missionary and has a strong desire. He is in his 5th transfer. He isn't a zone leader, but he will be one day. That is actually why I am with him. President Dance wants him to start getting ready for leadership.

It feels so good be back here in Vilnius. Church on Sunday was a blast. It was way good to see all the members. I was surprised that the majority of them remembered me. When I walked in the branch President said "You’re still on your mission? Gosh, go home already, what have you been here for like 3 years?"

Our district rocks as well. There are 6 of us including two sister missionaries. Our district is the most coveted district in the mission. All of us are older missionaries except Elder Reeves. It will be sweet.

The work is a little bit slow right now in Vilnius. It was been for a while now. We don't have any progressing investigators. That is why I wanted to come here so bad to see if I could help pick it up a little bit. There were just sooo many inexperienced missionaries here. That should all change now though. Everyone in our district has been out over a year except Elder Reeves.

I had an interview with President Dance last week. It was awesome. He gave me a lot of good advice. We talked all about what things I had learned from being an assistant and different things he wanted me to continue to develop and work on. It was really helpful. It was a really long interview. It lasted almost an hour.

The new assistants name is Elder Okoren. He is a good a guy. He is way intense. He is Russian speaking.

I don't have any time today. I am sorry. My Internet stopped working for 20 minutes and we are a little bit rushed anyways today! I love you. Thanks for everything you do. I will send a better email next week!

Love,

Matt

Elder Campbell, 1/3/11

2011-01-04T07:13:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

I can`t believe it`s already 2011. President Villarreal called Elder Leavitt last week and when he said he didn`t know how many days he had left Pres. Villarreal told him that he needs to count the days. So as for me tomorrow is the 22 month mark and I have 66 days left if I counted right.

New year`s was much more enjoyable than Christmas was because I wasn`t sick. The President gave us permission to see 2 movies for new years with the zone so we watched "My favorite villian" and "Toy Story 3". They`re pretty good I was laughing lots. We also had a gift exchange, ate and played soccer, it was fun.

We`re still struggling to get people to church here. During the week we had like 5 people lined up to go with us on Sunday but then Saturday night they all fell through and no one came again! Yesterday was the first day at 8:00 in the morning instead of noon which seems like it would be worse for getting investigators to church but with the luck we had at noon, 8 has to be better I`m hoping.

Stay warm! Enjoy the snow for me! Be good! Love you all!

Elder Campbell

Elder Thatcher 1/3/10

2011-01-03T17:45:00.000-08:00

Well this week has been pretty good... Kajaani is starting to light up we are starting to teach and get investigators!!! We have two teaches today and four tomorrow... hopefully all go through, a couple are pretty shaky. The Lord is blessing us so much and is helping us in every aspect of the work. I love this work and I know it is true! I really love this place and these people and I just love doing His work. Nothing absolutely huge sticks out in my mind from the past week, except for a little miracle from yesterday. So in church we taught Perttu (our recent convert who got baptized almost a year ago) and he wanted to talk about the Holy Ghost and especially the promptings of the Holy Ghost and we talked a lot about how the promptings from the Holy Ghost are sometimes just simple things like a thought or so on. It was very cool to talk about that and the spirit was really strong! We talked about how sometimes it's hard or awkward to follow the promptings of the spirit... long lesson short it was good and we felt the spirit. Then later last night we were tracting and this man walked up with his daughter and he was putting stuff in his storage area and it was just kind of an awkward situation but we're Americans in Finland so they feel awkward and we think it's normal :) but we walked by just thinking another time... but then I felt just a kind of feeling like hey we need to talk to him... I then wanted to talk to him... most of the time just from my past experience when I feel this way they just say no but I always feel better about it after. So we talked to him and it went really really good and we got his number and we are going to teach him... The Lord works in mysterious ways! I love it!!!! Well that was pretty cool and this whole week has been like that, like a woman with two small kids we are going to teach tonight, last time she was alone and we didn't have a member so we just taught briefly at the door and we gave her a Book of Mormon, she is solid!!! We are excited and things are going really really well!!!

So Jinii Congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is wonderful... I can't believe how many nieces and nephews I have or am going to have... it's a challenge to keep count. Man I have been blessed with such a wonderful family!!! About my extension the in field rep as President Brown called him still doesn't know for sure but he said to call him in a week or two so we will see and hear hopefully sooner than later... it's to the point where I just want to know... I'm always super nervous to read President's emails because I don't know! But hopefully it will come soon. Oh we saw the Northern Lights this past week, we were in the city so it was harder to see them but we got it confirmed by a few Finns and then we biked across Kajaani trying to hunt them down to see them better but we couldn't, they were pretty cool though... like a green cloud. but I bet they would be really cool in Lapland when they are super bright and it's darker. But cool to at least say that I have seen them.

I can't say that my new years was too much more exciting, we had to be in by 6 so none of the drunk firework loving Finns would blow our heads off with a rocket... I was surprised by the stuff they sell here, some were really big! But we were home and we cleaned and made home made hamburgers and had a drink called pommac, it's really good soda and kind of like sparkling cider. Well that was about it ha ha.

I can't believe how old everyone is!!! McKeila is 13... NO WAY!!! That's crazy!!! The package I got was the other Christmas one and still no signs of the other envelope... Krystyna.

Well it is definitely getting colder it's not horrible right now, but this week they said it should hit -30 C... yep that's cold and even colder so I think soon I will break my record of -36C, we'll see I guess but things are going well and I hope and pray that things are going well for all of you and I pray that you will be safe and watched over! I know this Church is true and I am so grateful to be a member of it and to have my family in the Church! You are all amazing examples to me and I will never forget that! I LOVE YOU!!!! And Mom I will always be your little boy! no matter how old I get I always get to be your son! I love you and hope you have a safe and great week! I hope you know that I will in the service of the Lord!

Raggedly Vanhin Thatcher!!!

p.s. enjoy the pictures! from Christmas and New Years :)

Elder Lisonbee 1/3/11

2011-01-03T14:27:00.001-08:00

Well, hey family.
How is everything going with you guys this week? I think it has been two mondays now since we talked on the phone.. That was pretty awesome wasnt it? Ha...
But things are going really well here. I had a zone leader meeting this morning. It was really awesome and motivating. I probably got so much more out of it because I didnt have to travel all night on a bus to get to it. I got to sleep in an actual bed. But because I am training I went by myself in a Taxi to the mission presidents house and my comp stayed with another companionship. Then afterwards I went back to San Lorenzo on a bus with a bunch of other zone leaders, but then I had to get off alone in the middle of the city and walk faaar all by myself. It was intense. Obviously it was fine and everything, but it was the first time in a long time that I was alone in a big dirty sinful city. So I just sped walked all the way to where the other missionaries were waiting for me. Man, I could have thrown it all away in that moment... I decided to just finish the mission out though without any serious sins. Dont worry.
Anyways, as with investigators we are doing alright. That lady didnt go to church yesterday because she went to bed really late, because she couldnt sleep, and took a sleeping pill to help her sleep. Basically it knocked her out until about 1 o clock in the afternoon the next day. But she is still awesome and is probably going to be baptized here in a couple weeks. We are also working with her son now too, he is 17 and pretty awesome. Future missionary! Then, we also got a reference to this really rich family where we taught a guy named Javier. He lived in Australia for 7 years so we did all the lessons in English so my companion could participate. The guy knew his shee though. He is a strong practicing catholic that actually studied the doctrine and could fight with us. We had some pretty long lessons with him this last week discussing the great apostasy and eternal marriages and every other deep profound doctrine that could be imagined. We had to use the bible to fight with him because he isnt so sure that the Book of Mormon is necessary. This is probably my first investigator that has a ligitmate deep profound knowledge of the catholic church. He just spits mad "facts" about the catholic church that we in turn have to just pone him. It is making us study a lot though and really prepare for the lessons because if not, he is going to make us look like fools. We have studied deeply the great apostasy though this last week and are probably professionals at it now. We could spit references from all places of the bible about the apostasy AND the restoration and all other sorts of sweet scrips. Its pretty intense though. And it is all in English so that is even cooler. Well, I guess it is more in Spanglish. Neither him nor me can really speak English completely fluently. Hah but it is pretty good.
We continue to look hard though. We are gonig to try and do something different this week to see some better results. Everything is going good though.
The house looks awesome and I am stoked to come home to it. (In 110 days right mom? haha)
Alright well that is about it for this week I think. It sounds like you are all doing really well. I love hearing about all the great things you are doing and trying to do with learning and applying gospel principles to your lives. It makes me happy. Good work with that. And if you have any questions about the apostasy, just let me know, I would be happy to answer them for you. Ha.
Alight well have a fantastic week. I love and miss you all a lot. Talk to you next week.
Elber

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Jan 01/03/11

2011-01-03T14:26:00.001-08:00

Family,

Yet again New Years week has proven to be very exciting. It was jam packed with zone leader council, problems with missionaries, drunks, investigators, and of course miracles. These are a few of my favorite things. Unfortunately I will only have time to tell you about some of them.

Where in the world is Elder Nielson? Well I will tell you. I am in Riga center. President Dance threw a little bit of a curve ball last week. We got transfers figured all out, but he decided to transfer the whole mission except the Russian speaking missionaries. Our transfer will be happening this Thursday. He did this because Estonia is switching their whole money system over to the kron. Because of this he wanted to keep the branch President in Narva (Who is a missionary) the same because the process of switching over was sort of complicated. The switch was happening at the New Year so he wanted to wait until he transferred everyone.

Also it makes it more complicated because we still have not decided what is going to happen with me. After last meeting President Dance looked at me and said "I don't know what to do with you Elder Nielson, Where do you want to go?" There are about 3 different options that we are flirting with right now. One is keeping me as Assistant for one more transfer. We will see what happens. We are having another meeting tonight so I will know tonight. So stay tuned for next week. :)

Teaching this week was very slow. New Years is a pretty big deal around here. No one wanted to meet with us. Not even the members of the church. What made it harder was the majority of the people on the street were way drunk. We came home around 5:00 on New Years day and spent the rest of the night in. Also both of us have been pretty sick so we were commanded to stay in a couple of evenings by Sister Dance. However, we are both healthy and ready to dominate this next week. We just have to get past Russian Christmas on the 7th and then we won’t have to worry about any more holidays for a while.

On New Years Eve we had zone leader council. It was one of my favorite ones by far. We had a way intense doctrinal discussion on the differences between the gathering of Israel and the restoration. It was pretty intense. (ha-ha I never thought I would use intense to describe the gathering of Israel.) We also talked about working with members and English class. It was a good one.

We thought we had agreed with President Dance that we were go to lead the discussion on English class and that he would lead the discussion on working with members. However, after we got done setting goals for the mission President Dance looked at me and said “Now the Assistants will talk about working with members." The funny part about it was we were not prepared at all to talk about that. Somehow with a lot of help from the spirit we pulled out one of the best presentations we have done together. For some reason the day before I had printed off a talk about working with members to read during personal study and I happened to look up and print off all baptisms throughout the mission for 2009. We were able to analyze why some cities were baptizing more and came to conclude it was because of how much each city works with members. We were very happy with the way it turned out. Following the spirit is awesome!

We planned to finish at around seven. Then some missionaries from out of Riga were going to spend the night at the mission home and the rest would go back to their apartments in Riga center. At first we were going to only have 5 missionaries sleep at the mission home, but we ended up going late and didn't finish until 8:30. President Dance was feeling sick so he went to bed around 7 and sister Dance stayed up and finished with us. Sister Dance was worried about all the missionaries getting back to their apartment that late on New Years Eve so I suggested that we have everyone sleep over. She got a smile on her face and said "Whatever you think elder Nielson. So we had all 12 of the zone leaders spend the night at the mission home. It was way fun. We all slept in one room on pads on the floor. Fire works started outside around 10:30 and went until about 1 so no one could sleep anyways so we laid in bed and talked for a couple of hours. I can honestly say it was the best New Years ever.

We had a baptism on Saturday here in Riga center. His name is Edgar. He is the man. He is 22 years old. He is just a beast of a man. He competed in the last summer Olympics for the hammer throw. His hands are as big as my body. He is solid. We were supposed to have another baptism but the man, Anatolie didn't show up. We were all pretty worried and figured he had gone out drinking New Years or something until the teaching missionaries finally got a hold of him. I guess on New Years Eve he was in center by the Christmas tree with a bunch of people and some of the people around him did something stupid, so the cops came and arrested everyone around the Tree.

According to Anatolie he didn't do anything, but had to spend the night in jail and missed his baptism. He said he tried to ask them if he could call the Mormon missionaries and tell them he couldn't be baptized, but they just laughed at him. Haha so hopefully this weekend he won’t be in jail and can be baptized.

Okay I love all of you. Thanks for everything you do. Have a good week! Talk to you soon.

Love,
Matt

Elder Lisonbee 12/27/10

2010-12-30T08:12:00.002-08:00

Heeeey,
Well, I dont really have a ton to talk about in todays email. It was very very awesome to be able to talk to all of you on the phone. I really enjoyed it and it really felt like I was just sitting there in the living room with all of you. I dont know why this call had such a different feel for me. Before it felt more formal and uncomfortable, with stale questions and answers (haha) but this time It felt more natural to me and like we were all just sitting and around and talking in the living room like we used to do. It was really awesome. But definitely the trunkiest phone call I have had yet. I am pretty good at pushing trunky thoughts out of my mind now though so dont worry.
But we are continuing to work hard with some people. Only one of our baptismal dates went to church yesterday. She is an older lady that talked to the missionaries years and years ago. She was finacially well off, then I guess lost everything, which humbled her and made her come back to religious things. She always felt good talking to the missionaries before so she sought us out. We are pretty excited about her. When she got to church yesterday she was extremely out going and talkative with the members. Investigators are generally very shy and quiet, and uncomfortable, which is stressful for us and frustrating because it can often result in negative feelings that push them away from the church. But not her, she was awesome and everybody was asking us about her afterwards. We are going to get a lot of ward help in befriending her and hermanamiento ( I wish I knew how to say that in English) Anyways, I will keep you posted on her progress. We also had to drop one of the others because she was not progessing. She had promised us 3 weeks in a row she would go to chruch, but hasnt. I play by the three strikes your out rule here in the mission. You dont keep your commitments 3 weeks in a row, your out.
Anyways, I had a quick question. I thought it would be pretty cool to be able to go back to President Bourne, seeing that he is the one that sent me off, and has written me sparatically throughout my mission, to be able to have him also release me. I know it isnt that important and probably complicates things beyond neccesity, but just if it is easy and harmless. If not, I would probably just set up an appointment with him to have an interview and talk about the mission. So either way, I will be cool.
Anyways, thanks for everything that you guys do for me. Thanks for all the packages and love and support. It is motivating and encouraging. I also love hearing about the strength you are all demonstarting in your own lives. It is comforting to know that I will go home to people who love and share the same beliefs I do. No more fighting and arguing to defend these simple truths. Its going to be sweet. That alone seems like an overwhelming blessing.
Well, I guess that is about it for this week. I love and miss you all very much and look forward to seeing yall again. We will plan some sweet activities out in a couple months here when it is a little closer. Alright, but I hope you all have a fantastic week adn I look forward to next weeks emails. Loveyall
Elber

Elder Campbell, 12/27/10

2010-12-30T08:12:00.001-08:00

Dear family,

It was good to talk to you guys on Saturday. I don`t really have anything new to tell except one story about giving a blessing last week. On Wednesday afternoon Elder Leavitt and I got a call from a member who lives in another ward asking us to go give a blessing at a hospital close by us. We made it to the hospital and waited outside until the members got there so they could show us where to go. When they got there they explained how their little 2 month old boy has been on the verge of death since he was born. He was in intensive care so after getting in we had to put on the whole getup with mask and hat and everything, it was pretty intense. We gave him a blessing and the parents were very grateful.

Mom thanks for letting me know about President Monson`s visit yesterday, it always makes for good stories to tell people. Remember the time when I was assigned to speak in sacrament meeting about new year`s resolutions as the youth speaker the sunday after Christmas? Also tell Pace and Jace that the Christmas card is awesome, definitely
nickflynn quality. Hope you all have a great new year! Till next week,

Love,
Elder Campbell

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Dec 12/27/10

2010-12-30T08:10:00.000-08:00

Family,

That's weird, it seems like we just talked. Oh wait we did just talk! It was way fun to talk with all of you. It was fun hearing all of your voices and hearing about your lives. I love it. I don't think much has happened since we talked. This last week was pretty slow for us because Elder Worsley was sick basically the whole week. I had a lot of time to study, work out, ponder, and eat. I even got so bored that I made a soap carving of the Angel Moroni. Mom sent some of that Cetaphil soap to me, but I don't really use that any more because I haven't had a zit in like a year, so I put it to good use and made the angel Moroni. It didn't turn out bad figuring that I carved the whole things with a sewing needle.

Because it is Christmas and we are all trying to focus on Jesus Christ I want to share an experience that I had a little while ago with you. President Schwitzer came to our mission about two months ago and did a mission tour. While he was here I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with him. Before we started the tour he took the time to interview me and my companion. During the interview he asked me a fairly profound question. He asked “Do you know your savior Jesus Christ?" I answered yes and then he moved on. After the interview we had a 4 hour drive down to Lithuania so I had time to ponder what was said during my interview. This question kept coming back to me over and over again. In all honesty it is a question I have been struggling with for a while.

Like you know I have been a member of the church my entire life. Since as long as I can remember I have known the book of Mormon is true and I have known Joseph Smith was a prophet. At first I knew this because my parents told me they knew these things were true, and I knew they wouldn't lie to me. It came time for me to find out if this was true and like millions of other people I studied, pondered, prayed and received an answer. Along with this answer came knowledge that Jesus was my Christ and that he suffered for me.

The idea that Jesus is the Christ the literal son of God has never been hard for me to accept. I have fully believed this for a long time. This is why I am a missionary because I want to spread the good news of Jesus Christ to other people, but I couldn't say that I have known him.

This question began to tear to my heart. It began to take up every spare moment that I had to think about it. I began to have a desire to know my savior Jesus Christ personally and feel his love. I began to center my personal study on Jesus Christ. I began to pray in every single prayer to know him. I had a strong desire to know my savior personally.

This pattern of studying and praying continued for a long time. I felt a greater spirit in my life. My teaching became more powerful. I could recognize blessing from my heavenly father more openly, but I still didn't have the Love for my savior and the feelings of knowing him personally. I realized of course that this would take a life time to accomplish, but I wanted to begin to scratch the surface and begin to know that Jesus Christ loves me and that I love him.

I realized that the problem I was having is that I couldn't relate to him at all. He is perfect. It is no secret that I am not perfect at all. He endured all things. He suffered and died for all man kind. He is our Lord and Savior. In all honesty I couldn't feel a closeness to him because I could only see how much better he was than me.

I was reading in Matthew one day when someone asked the Savior which is the greatest commandment of all. The savior answers him and says “To love thy God with all they heart." At this moment I began to realize that in order to come to know my Savior better, first I needed to love him above everything else. I thought about how I could develop this love for him. I already had a good understanding that in order to love my companion I needed to serve him. Obviously I am a missionary and I am already serving Christ, but like Abel I wanted to "offer a more great sacrifice." I looked at my life and wrote down the things I needed to change and repent of in order to come closer to Christ. I began to take the focus off of me wanting something and focus it more on my giving something. That is love to my Savior.

A day or two passed and it was Christmas Eve. We came home like we were supposed to at 6:00 p.m. and then did our weekly planning. After planning I was bored trying to figure out what I was going to do for the rest of the night. I had a strong desire to clean our apartment. I looked around me and realized that our apartment was disgusting. So I decided that I wanted to deep clean our apartment. I put on some Christmas music, old clothes and a Santa hat and began working. I cleaned for a good solid 3 hours. I deep cleaned the kitchen, bathroom, living room, our room, swept the floors, fixed the toilet, bathroom door and unclogged the sink. It took a long time, but it was worth it. I finished in enough time to brush my teeth and jump into bed.

The next morning after I got up and said my prayers I walked out into the living room. There was a different feeling in our house. It is a feeling I can't really explain. It was a little bit different than I had ever felt. Yes it was Christmas, but I hadn't had that spiritual of a feeling in our apartment for a while. After talking for a bit my companion and I began to open presents. I opened up a present from Mom and Dad and it was a DVD entitled Miracle from Heaven. My first thought was "That was silly, when am I ever going to have time to watch this. I don't even have a TV let alone a DVD player to watch movies on." I then went and got ready for the day and ate breakfast.

After Breakfast I began reading in the Book of Mormon when Christ appeared to the people in America. I had this incredible feeling come over me. I have read this story man times, but it seemed so much more real than before. I felt like Christ was speaking right to me. I remembered about the DVD Mom and Dad had sent me and that there was a picture of Jesus Christ on it. I walked over, picked up the DVD, and examined the picture. The picture on the front is an incredible picture of Christ looking off in the distance with a very concerned and loving look on his face. For the first time ever I had a feeling come over me that I knew the man very personally that I was looking at. I felt a love for him greater than I have ever felt before. I had a stronger desire than ever to follow him and to be his humble servant forever.

I pulled out another picture of Christ and had the same feeling come over me. For the first time ever I can say that I know my savior Jesus Christ. I love him very much. I know that he loves me. I know that he wants the best for me and I want to do everything I can to give the best for him. He suffered and died for me because he understands he loves me and he understands what I am going through. It doesn't matter if I fully understand what he went through, as long as I recognize the significance of it. I know that I came to this knowledge through diligently studying the scriptures and praying to my Heavenly Father. I am grateful that he was willing to give me an answer. I am grateful for inspired men who listen to the spirit and asked inspired question. That question was so simple, but it put me on a search I didn't know I needed to go on.

I love this Gospel and I love my savior. I love this time of year because it gives me the chance to focus on my savior. It gives me a chance to focus on what matter most in this life. Thank you for all your love and support. Thanks for being in tune with the spirit and buying that DVD for me. I don't know if I will ever watch it, but that picture on the front has become my favorite picture of Christ. Thank you for giving me the chance to grow up in this gospel and allow it to bless my life. I love all of you more than I could ever explain. Thank you for everything you do!

Merry Christmas!
Love,
Matt

Elder Lisonbee 12/20/10

2010-12-20T21:12:00.000-08:00

Hey Family,
Well, we are talking on the phone this Saturday and pretty sure I am
ridiculously excited. I have got it all arranged with the bishop and
the key in a nice air conditioned room in the chapel. In his office.
So, I will tell you guys the time that you should call me, let me know
if there are any problems. 3:30 Paraguayan Time, which I believe is
11:30 Utah Time but I am not sure. You will have to check that. But,
3:30 Paraguayan time on the number that I sent last week. I really
hope there are not any problems.
Anyways, Elder Hobby and I are doing very well here. We are working
hard and trying to get this area going. It is pretty difficult
starting with literally nothing, but we are confident and faithful we
will see some results. We only have about a week together in the area
so we will see what we can do with some time. It is a little
difficult, but the members seem excited and are very happy that we are
starting a bunch of activities. We have a great relationship with the
bishop already which is always a good thing. I had to give a 15 minute
talk yesterday in Sacrament meeting on repentance, but I think it went
pretty well. We don’t really have any REAL solid investigators right
now. A few stupid little teenagers and stuff but nobody awesome to
report on. Hopefully by Saturday I will have someone cool to talk
about.
I don’t have much to say because we are just going to talk on the
phone this Saturday! Woop! I am stoked.
Well I think I will be calling on Friday for a couple seconds to
verify everything. But I will talk to you all on Saturday. Have a
great week and thanks for the emails. Love you all!
Elber

Elder Campbell 12/20/10

2010-12-20T21:11:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas!

Man I don`t feel 21. A bunch of families from the ward offered to feed us and told us happy birthday all week long since Elder Leavitt`s was on Monday but it still didn`t really hit me. Maybe it`s the lack of snow. We went with a family of recent converts and had a sweet family home evening with them. We watched the movie, "Joy to the World" and talked about the importance of Christ`s birth and how the greatest gifts we can give aren`t the kind that are wrapped in fancy paper with a bow, but the kind of gift that our Heavenly Father gave us by sending His Only Begotten Son. I finally understood the true meaning of Christmas!

We had a pretty crazy week, every day was another adventure. We went to the DF on Monday for changes and then back on Thursday for a concilio with the President. I lost my clip-on nametag in a bus somewhere on Wednesday. Friday night was the ward Christmas party and Saturday we came upon some random pyramid ruins in our area. We haven`t had much success in our area, even with another companionship working with us. Elders Price and Thompson left but Elders Perez and Sanders came and are living in our apartment and working in our area with us. Elder Perez is going home with me in March, he`s from Tampico and Elder Sanders just got here from the MTC, he`s from Arizona and is hilarious. Yesterday was another Sunday without any investigators in church which was a bummer but everyone was in a Christmasy mood which made it better.

About Christmas day we`re probably just going to find a member who will let us use their phone and then I can send you a text with the phone number. It will be on Christmas morning for sure we just don`t know at what hour, but I forget what the time difference is anyway. Did I tell you that we can only talk for an hour max this time? President Villarreal laid down the law. He was going to make it only 45 minutes like it says in the white handbook but he gave us extra time because he remembers what it was like having his sons in the mission. Just plan on it being Christmas morning between like 9 and 11 Mexico time.

Love you :D
Elder Campbell

PS here`s a picture of the Christmas tree in a box Mom sent me!

Matt Nielson On:Dec 12/20/10 3:34 AM

2010-12-20T21:10:00.001-08:00

FAMILY

Is it really Christmas already? That is nuts. Where is the time going? It sounds like everyone is have a good time together. I am happy for you. I guess I can start off by telling you about Dzintars baptism! It was awesome. He is just the man. I am so grateful he was baptized, especially because we were gone the last week before his baptism so we couldn't meet with him once. We just had to call him and keep checking up on him. His baptism went really well. He showed up about 3:30 and started getting ready. I went with him to the closet and we started picking him out a jump suit. He looked at it and said “it’s like we are going to the moon." Everything went great and he was baptized.
After the baptism they had a combined branch Christmas party. Immediately after it was over they started the Christmas party. I don't think Dzintars realized that the Christmas party wasn't for him. I think he thought it was all because he was being baptized.

The next day on Sunday he was confirmed. Elder Worsley and I got to stand in the circle and participate. He is sooo good. All the women in the branch want him. He has already been asked on a date by a girl. At his baptism there were about 3 girls just hovering around talking with him. He is going to make a great member of the church. I took some good pictures. I will send a camera card home in the next month or so and you can see all the pictures.

Everything went well with the other two zone conferences. We were gone all week and didn't get back until Friday night. Because of this we didn't have too many lessons. In fact we turned in all zeros for our number this week, except for 1 baptized and 1 confirmed. It was funny. I have never done that before. I am very grateful we were so blessed and were able to have one of our investigators be baptized.

Artur and Augita will not be baptized next week. They have not been able to come to church for the last couple weeks. We feel a little uncomfortable baptizing them when they don't have a good habit of coming to church. We don't want to baptize them and then have them immediately go less active. We are in the process of having them teach us. Next time we meet Augita is going to teach us about sin. The subject was her choice.

I called Artur last night. The man we have been meeting with for like 6 months. He said that his parents who live in Germany are forbidding him to meet with us. He told me that he can't come to church or meet any more and he can't be baptized. That was sort of a stab in the heart, but what do you do. Also Dzintars hasn't been answering his phone in the last couple of weeks. He came to a baptism with us and then after that we have not been able to get a hold of him. It sort of seems like all of our investigators just fell off the map. That is okay though, now we just have to go find some more. :)

Over the last couple of days we have been caroling in old town. The city of Riga has a show they put on ever year outside and have people sing and perform outside for all the tourists. We have about a 30 minute part in the show and so missionaries go up there and sing Christmas sons. It is pretty fun to watch. I say watch because I volunteered to roam the crowd and talk with people instead of singing. Granted I have a great voice, but I would rather talk with people. It has been pretty successful over the last few days. People are pretty willing to talk. The problem is that most of the people are tourists. I have met some pretty interesting people though. I love people. They are way funny.

That is about all the time I have this week. Sorry this letter is short, but I will make it up to you and talk to you on the phone in a few days! Have a great week! I love you.

Love
Me

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Dec 12/15/10

2010-12-15T08:16:00.001-08:00

HEEEYYYY!!!!

Okay I will start off with the business. This is the number you will call to get a hold of me on Christmas. 011-371-286-28351. By dialing 011 that will get you out of the country, then 371 will get you into Latvia and then my number is 28628351. Does that all make sense? I am not sure exactly what time you should call. Any time after 7:00 my time. I am nine hours ahead of your time. That is my personal number so you can call it any time. Elder Worsley has his own phone so we don't need to worry about over lapping times. My suggestion would be for you to call at seven my time. That way I don't have to sit around waiting for you to call all night. If there is a different time that works better for you just let me know and you can call whenever. That would mean you would call at 10:00. Just let me know what you think.
We had a wonderful time in Estonia. We drove up on Sunday night and spent the night with some of the missionaries there. The zone conference went really well. My presentations seemed to go better the second day than the first day. I am not sure why, people just seemed a little bit more engaged and ready to learn. I have learned that my presentations are only as good as the audience. If the people I am presenting to aren't ready to learn and won’t participate than my presentation is no good. This is especially true with me because I like a lot of interaction and discussion.
Wednesday morning we woke up and had a big snow football game with all the missionaries who were staying in Tallinn center. There were 12 of us. There was over 2 feet of snow that we were playing in. I forgot pants so I played in shorts, but luckily I had a big coat on. It was way fun. I have not played a good game of tackle football in a while.
Unfortunately after we got done playing the missionaries staying in the other apartment realized they couldn't find their keys. So we spent 30 minutes looking for them in the snow. The missionaries tried calling their landlord, but he didn't answer. They tried calling a lock smith, but no one was awake that early. They even went and asked the fire department if they could let me in, but they could only break down the door. They soon realized they were not going to be able to get into their apartment before zone conference. So, they came running over to our apartment and everyone donated clothing to them. I am happy to report that all missionaries were there on time and in suits. Not everyones suit fit them perfectly, but they still looked sharp. It was an adventure.
Dzintars is getting baptized this Saturday! We are going to have an interview in about an hour and then this Saturday at 4 he is going under. It was really cool. We met with him last Wednesday and he said he didn't know if he could be baptized because he hadn’t received that answer from God yet. We asked him if he had been praying and he said yes. We asked him what he had been asking for and he said “I have been asking that God show me the right path." We committed him to ask specifically to know if Joseph Smith was a prophet. The next night we called him and he didn't answer. We started getting a little worried, but kept faith. On Friday we called him and no answer. Finally on Saturday he answered and agreed to meet later that day. For our lesson we watched the Restoration movie. After the movie got over all we said was "So what do you think?" he immediately opened up and told us how we received an answer to his prayer. He asked God specifically and had a peaceful feeling when he did. He took that to be his answer! He is soo good. I can't wait.
I am not sure how much longer I will be serving as assistant. I have already been serving for 6 months. If I had to guess I would say this would be my last transfer, but I have no idea. President Dance has been keeping me in the dark. I don't think he really knows what to do with me either. I have asked him a few times and he just avoids the question. So this could be my last. I could possibly go one more, but that would be the longest I would ever go. I guess we will know soon.
I am really excited that Dave was asked to serve as assistant. He is going to have so many incredible experiences ahead of him. I am a little bit jealous that he gets to serve the last 5 months as assistant. Dave now has sooo much more experience than I had when I was asked to serve. I was only in my 7th transfer. I had not even been on a mission for a year. I had to learn very quickly. I am just starting to feel comfortable in what I am doing and now I am winding down. It is sort of funny how that works. Dave will do an incredible job. I wish he was my assistant.
We are leaving at 2 today to head down to Lithuania and then we will be all done with our Christmas zone conferences. It will be nice to just sit back and do normal crazy missionary work. I can't wait!
It sounds like everything is going well at home. I only had time to skim through your emails today. I printed them off though so I will read them in more detail on the way to Lithuania! I love you all. Thanks for everything you do! Next week I will email you on Monday like always! Have a great week! Talk to you soon!

Love, Me
P.S I am loving the 12 days of Christmas. Elder Worsley’s family also sent him the 12 days of Christmas so we are opening them up together! Thanks! I love you!
--
стареишина нильсон

Elder Thatcher 12/13/10

2010-12-14T10:25:00.002-08:00

No Hei!

Well this week has been pretty rough... I shot out the worst numbers of my entire mission and it has just been kind of difficult, but we were out of town a few days and last Monday was Finland's independence day so I guess I can't beat myself up too much. Well things are going fairly well, we had a great time in Rovaniemi, I saw Pasi and the Klaw's (the Burmese family) I hope to send some of those pictures I got with them in this email but we will see if that works or if I have time :) well things are going pretty well besides we don't have any investigators... no lie it's hard and cold and dark but it will all work out :). We had a wonderful North specialized training about the Savior and it really helped. I was able to see the Vaasa Elders and they told me about all the success and how great it all was So I am happy for them and for the success there and it was good to hear about old investigators and how they are progressing. Well today it's a cold one -19C which is just under 0F... it was a few days ago -22 and so it has been anywhere from -12 to -22. Not fun when you are tracting outside. Well I love it though, it is just hard to keep a positive attitude sometimes. It's been hard because we haven't had any bikes to use for the past week or so, so it has been hard. We are currently borrowing some bikes, trying to fix broken bikes, and so on but right now we don't really have any form of transportation, except for our feet and a ride or two from a member... thank goodness Kajaani is small, but it's hard when some potential and former investigators live so far away we just can't get out to them. That is just hard but no big deal it's OK, we will get em' :).

Well I haven't bought boots yet, I bought some insoles that are supposed to help for like 4 euro. That's cheaper than boots so we will see how they work but if they don't hold up I am going to have to buy some boots. But they have worked pretty well so far... but I did buy a new scarf like thing that is really warm so hopefully that will help. Well I have some info about our Christmas call I have the number for you and wanted to know if it would work to do kind of the same thing that we did last year when we called, you called on Christmas day later in the day and I will take the call at like 6:45 am my time on the 26th. So just minus 9 hours off of that and that is 21:45... would that work? If not just let me know and we can work something else out but that would work well for my compi and I. well anyway here is the number the mission gave us... and if you want to try a different number that would work too. the number the mission gave us is: ________________. The number here in Kajaani is the last little bit the_____________ . Good luck hopefully that works out and everything will go well. I am a lot more excited for Christmas this time around and am in a much better spirit! I really do love celebrating the Savior's birth but even more than that His life and His atonement. I know that my Redeemer lives!!!

As for presents I don't really want anything big, the things I want most are pictures and letters (but remember to keep our thoughts on my mission at hand :)) I really don't need anything... it's hard to think of things I would want, maybe just some Cd's (oh speaking of music I accidentally erased all of my music and everything off of my Ipod so I will send that back and be sure to put a bunch of the same music and more and more talks too on there and send it back ASAP :) Kiitos. Well I hope to get your Christmas package off today but we will see. Also I don't think it's possible this late but the Christmas concerts like the one with Sissel and last year with Brian Stokes Mitchell... they have those DVDs and if at all possible to get those here before Christmas so we can go to the church and watch those on Christmas day that would be great, but if it's not possible don't worry about it (DON'T SPEND A LOT OF MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!) I can watch them next year :), were you able to watch or hear the First Presidency Christmas message? I got snubbed again :) that's the bummer part of serving in small branches. But really you don't have to buy me a lot of stuff I am great right now... (MOM YOU SENT ME 4 PACKAGES?!?!?!?! HA HA REMEMBER HOW I SAID DON'T SPEND A LOT OF MONEY ON ME! WOW)

So I am well and I love you!!!! I am loving remembering Christ and reading about Him in the Scriptures! IT'S great :) Also the branch here is small but great!!! I love you and have a great week!!!

Raakkaudella Vanhin Thatcher

The pictures are My compi and I and baking and Elder Wiklof and I with the Klaw family and then Pasi and I ENJOY :)

Elder Campbell, 12/13/10

2010-12-14T10:25:00.001-08:00

Hola from Toluca (which is COLD!)

We got the changes on Saturday night and it looks like me and Elder Leavitt are going to finish here in Toluca. This is his last transfer and then he`ll go home to Las Vegas and I`ll most likely stay here with a different elder for my last transfer. We`re getting another 2 missionaries here in our area with us, Elder Perez and Elder Sanders so we`ll be 4 here for another change.

We finally had an awesome week in the zone. For some reason the last week of the change is when everyone gives it their all and things turn out well. We just have to figure out how to get that same mentality going every week. In our area we found some awesome investigadors and one even went to church! That`s been the biggest struggle here in Toluca I`ve found out is getting people to church so that was exciting. Yesterday we spoke in sacrament meeting but they told us about 5 minutes before they called us up so that was interesting.

Today is Elder Leavitt`s birthday and we both agreed that it doesn`t feel like we`re turning 21. Yesterday he asked me if I felt wierd that I was going to turn 21 and I thought he was talking about months in the mission and I said, "what are you talking about? I already completed 21 like 2 weeks ago." It`s starting to feel like Christmas, the wards are having Christmas dinners and people have their houses decorated although the snow is definitely lacking.

Today we`re going to the DF for changes and I think the President has some kind of Christmas activity planned so I`ll let you know how that goes. Hope all is going well at home.

Elder Campbell

Elder Lisonbee 12/13/10

2010-12-14T10:23:00.000-08:00

Hey,

Well things are going really well with me this week. There was a little surprise with changes. I was REassigned as zone leader, while training, while white washing a struggling area. So, I´d say if there was ever an epoch for personal growth, this would be it. I feel a little overwhelmed sometimes with all that I have to do, but its all good. I know I will be able to do it. I am pretty stoked though becuse it will keep me working really hard untilthe very end.

My kids name is Elder Hobby. He is from Florida. He is a cool kid and already speaks and understands spanish pretty dang well. So things are going good with that. We have some pretty good plans about how to get this area going. We are going to explode the youth progam, sort of how we did it there in Pedro Juan. We hve already started an English Class and a Ward Night so we will see. The youth program here is alredy surprisngly big so we will use that to our advantage and explode it.

The Dickson Family party sounded pretty fun as usual. That is weird you guys did it in your little rental house? But pretty cool. Always adds to the Christmas fun. I cant believe its already December again. I remember vividly tlaking to Elder Calderon last Christms about how fast Christmas always rolls around. Its incredible.

The house is looking great like always. It looks pretty big and nice. So is there like a final finishing date yet? That would be cool. You should tell me it.

Anyways, I dont really have anything else to say. Ask me any questions and I will do my best to answer them next week. Everything is going great though and I am stoked to talk to you all on Christmas. The last one! crazy.

Alright well I love and miss you all. Good luck with everything.

Elber

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Dec 12/08/10

2010-12-08T08:32:00.001-08:00

FAMILY!!!!!!!!
In all honesty I can't remember where I left off last time. It feels like it has been a long time since I have written. A lot has happened over the last week and a half. First and foremost I got your Christmas packages! I also got Grandma and Grandpa’s. I feel incredibly spoiled. I have received 4 Christmas boxes! It is out of control.
Sister Hardy in the office has been keeping track of who has been getting packages and who hasn't so that if anyone doesn't get a Christmas package they can get something out to the missionary. My name has 4 marks by it! That is more than anyone else. I am very grateful for how much you have done for me. Thank you so much. You all are amazing.
I opened up the boxes and now by our study table we have a big pile of presents that are waiting to be opened. I have to be honest though I did open one already :) I saw that one of them was obviously a cd, so I opened it because I wanted to listen to more Christmas music. Thanks for the cd. It is awesome.
I have a ridiculous amount of Christmas music that I have been collecting from apartments over the last year. Last year I didn't have much, so every apartment I have been in I have been taking any good Christmas cd's that were left behind by previous missionaries. I love it.
I love Christmas time. I love all of the lights that are around the city and I love all of the feelings that are associated with Christmas. Christmas is what you make it. I plan on spending my time of Christmas eve visiting less actives and active members, taking them cookies, singing in parks with my district, baptizing Artur, Augita, and Dzintars, Opening up all my presents, Listening to Christmas music and finding any other way to spread Christmas cheer. As long as it helps me fulfill my purpose of course. Don't feel bad for me not being home this Christmas season. The party is in Latvia.
This week we had a wonderful two day special training and Christmas zone conference in Latvia. It started on Monday and went until Tuesday at 4. We broke the group up into 3 groups and had them rotate the first day to three different work shops, each lasting an hour. I taught one on contacting. Elder Worsley taught one on goal setting and President Dance taught one on teaching people, not lessons. It was a lot of fun to be up presenting and discuss with the missionaries for a few hours. The next day we came back and had more work shops, except this time I taught about working with members. Elder Worsley taught about how to help people progress towards baptism. President Dance was pulled away to other things so we just taught those two.
After all the important stuff we then ate a big Christmas dinner. All the senior couples in Latvia (there are 3 couples) made a nice dinner and set up the church and made it all festive. After that we had a nativity. We put two of the sisters in charge of putting it on. It was awesome. We told them it could be fun, but not sac religious. They did a great job. It was fun to see all the missionaries dressed up like angels or wise men or something.
After the nativity we had a white elephant. We all just brought random things from our apartments and played one of those pass to the right or pass to the left games. Elder Thomas sat next to me. Did I every tell you Elder Thomas is in my district now? He is the man. We are becoming good friends.
Something really funny happened to him. For his white elephant he got a big book titled "Letters to home for a Sister Missionary." Inside was a bunch of paper that had stuff already written on it. It was sort of like a mad lib, except in the blank spots you had a couple boxes you could check of what you wanted to say. For example it would say something like " I am so grateful I could be here in the...... A. Snow B. Heat C. Middle of no where. Then you could write a letter like that. Does that make sense? So anyways Elder Thomas gets this and is reading it out loud in front of everyone, mission president, senior couples, elders, sisters, members, EVERYONE. He gets to the last line and it reads “I am tired of being camped out by the mail box." However Elder Thomas read it like this “I am tired of being CRAMPED up." Haha he stopped half way through the sentence because he realized what he had said. The whole room busted up laughing. Everyone was crying. Luckily Elder Thomas has a great personality and everything was okay. It was way funny. Finally after the white elephant we had a Christmas slide show and then called in quits. It was a lot of fun.
We will be going to Estonia next Sunday to do the Christmas zone conference up there. Then we will be driving down on Tuesday and then leaving on Wednesday to go to Lithuania. It should be a lot of fun. I am excited. It will be fun to be with all the other missionaries and learn and grow together.
I am happy you got my Christmas package. I am also happy you like it. Yes every country has their own form of currency. In Latvia we use Lats, in Estonia we use krons, and in Lithuania we use leets. 1 lat is worth about 2 dollars. 1 krona is worth about 10 cents. 1 leet is worth around 50 centsish. Did that make sense? It is interesting going from country to country because all the prices change. Sometimes I forget where I am and get all worked up because my groceries cost 1,000 kron. Then I realize we are in Estonia and remember that it is only 100 dollars.
As for teaching we had a pretty good week as well. We brought the zone leaders down from Estonia and worked with them the day before Zone leader council. We then had a zone leader council together with all the zone leaders and then sent them back to Estonia. We spent the rest of our week teaching all of our investigators with a baptismal date. Dzintars is still doing well. He came to a big young single adult activity over the weekend. All the young single adults from across the Baltic’s came to Riga this past week and spent the night at the church. It was good to get him there and let him make some new friends.
Artur and Augita are also doing well. We have been teaching them for a while and we have had some trouble deciding what to teach them. We had a pretty incredible idea come to us. We decided to have them start teaching us. We are going over there tomorrow and they are both preparing to teach us about prayer. They are allowed to use the scriptures, personal experiences, and any of the pamphlets we left them. I am pretty excited. It should be fun. One of the aspects of teaching that I love so much is that I learn a lot while I teach. I hope they can learn just as much.
Big changes are happening in our mission right now. For some reason baptisms and people attending church has been dropping every single year since 2002. We aren't making very much progress on the path we are on. Whatever we are doing, we need to do something different. The other day I was at a less active mans house named Oleg. He was showing me picture on his computer of a branch activity 5 years before that. Out of the 15 people I saw, I only recognized about 11 of them. The problem we are running into is we are baptizing solid people, and then they are falling away. This is sort of depressing to say, but out of the 3 priesthood holders I have helped teach and that have gotten baptized, 2 have now fallen away. I am not a rare case either. There seems to be this pattern of every 10 years or so a bunch of people fall away.
Last week we had a missionary come to Riga center branch that had served in our mission 10 years before that. He told me that when he was here there was double the amount of members that came to church every week. He left feeling pretty depressed.
Everyone has this dream that they will return to their mission one day and there will be a stake or at least a ton new members. I think it was pretty hard for him to see that. The truth and reality of it is that this is the Lords work. We are on the winning side. He is in control of everything. It may not all happen in the time we want it, but he is in control. But, we still need to do everything we can and work as effectively as we can to bring people to Christ.
I have been changing the way I look at missionary work. So many missionaries look at their missionary work as contacting, knocking and "pounding the pavement" all day. I have seen missionaries who have gone home from their missions who have honestly contacted over 2,000 people in their mission and had nothing to show for it. It is not about how many people you can contact. The secret of missionary work is not in contacting. Yes it can be an effective way to find people and we all need to do it, but I have wasted WAY too much time on my mission doing it.
We have had long talks with President Dance about this. The thing that is going to be big in this mission is if we can unite ourselves with the members and start helping them to fulfill their responsibilities as members to do missionary work. We waste way too much time doing other things.
One of these things is English class. Effective immediately we are canceling English class on Tuesdays and Thursdays and moving it to 1 day a week on Saturday at 1 in the afternoon. We are also no longer recording the amount of new lessons missionaries teach and we are now recording lessons to active members. We are going to start going home teaching with members and visiting every member of the branch once a month. The secret to missionary work is in the members. If we can find through the members, missionary work will be more effective.
President Schwitzer said “If missionaries will spend as much time with members as they do working on English Class the work will take off." So that is the path we are taking. Before now I would probably spend about 5% of my time with members and 95% contacting and harvesting. This was very silly of me to do for so long. I now have a new goal to spend more like 75% of my time with active and less active members working with them, their non active family members and friends. And 25% of my time contacting and harvesting. We have enough people in our branch for every missionary to visit them once a month with their home teachers every day and not run out of things to do. I feel that this is what is going to take our missionary work to the next level. I hope and pray that good results come out of it. It is a big change for all of us, but it is the best way.
Thanks for listening to me go on and on about that for a while. That is basically what our zone conference is about, and my presentation. How we can effectively work with members and not become a burden on them. It is going to be big. I can't wait. It will definitely be a slower process than I am used to and require patience but I feel if I don't switch and change everything I am doing I am going to look back on my mission and realize that I worked hard, but not as effectively as I could.
Have a good week! Love you

стареишина нильсон

Elder Thatcher 12/6/10

2010-12-07T16:03:00.000-08:00

No Moro! Well I should probably first apologize for this being sent on Tuesday... but there was nothing I could do about it... yesterday was itsenäisyyspäivä here in other words Finland's independence day... so everything was closed. Well here I am in Kajaani... we don't have anything... we don't have a single investigator and tracting houses when it's -15 C is hard... but I love it! I am excited to be a part of this wonderful work and this wonder here in Kajaani... I do miss Vaasa but I know this is where I am supposed to be... so some interesting things about Kajaani... it's the 2nd smallest branch in Finland with about 35 members total. It is supposed to be the coldest city in Finland... (TEARS!!!!!) (yes even colder than Rovaniemi) well on top of it being the coldest city in Finland Finns have said it's supposed to be the coldest winter in some 500 years according to the Finns (MORE TEARS!!!!) yep all this cold really makes me want to go back to UH hahaha no I think I will be staying in Utah but still it's pretty hard. So it's been pretty hard and cold and dark lately but it's warmer today a whole -9C... yep... yep hopefully all goes well. So things are good though here in Finland and yes tomorrow I get to go up to Rovaniemi to do splits and so I will get to teach Pasi and the Burmese Family again... I am pretty stoked! Well that will be tomorrow we leave here at like 11:40 and get in to Roi at 16:29... I don't know what I am going to do that whole time just chilling on a train. Well anyway it will be fun. So my compi here is Elder Shumway from Florida!!! He is the greenie that Elder Empey trained in Rovaniemi... eli he is the one that kicked me out of Roi haha so I joke with him that he kicked me out of Vaasa too :) but he is a stud! It's his 7th change in Finland and so it's really nice and easy to teach because he knows Finnish so well... and we speak only Finnish all the time here and too most of the people here don't speak English... so it's pretty different from Vaasa, it's fun though.

Well Hafer is engaged! Ya crazy huh! and Nash Allen just got home from Italy! CRAZY HUH?? It feels so weird that all that is happening and wow it's just all so weird. I also got news today that Elder Bate got an honorable release and won't be returning to Finland or the mission field so it's been kind of a shocking day of email... and on top of all that Uncle John falling... I will keep him in my prayers and I hope that everything goes well. Also I will pray for Madison, crazy crazy. Well I hope that all is going well... I am going to probably buy some boots today from Prisma so that should help my feet stay warm and then I am going to buy probably a scarf like thing that a lot of Finns use and seem to like... but I am OK things are going well and I am loving Kajaani, as far as I know the cold limit here is -40 and then we can't go out... we do have a limit but we don't usually reach it... it could even be -50C but who knows katsotaan. hahaha cool when you are going to go on a vacation to a sweet warm place before I come home hahaha that cuts me deep :) I'm just kidding but I might be a little selfish when I get home and demand a trip somewhere warm especially if I make it through this winter alive :).

Well the Church is true! I know that it is and I hope and pray that you all have a wonderful week! Here is my address in Kajaani: Rajamiehentie 7 C 52
87400 Kajaani
Suomi/Finland

Well I love you and hope that you have a really wonderful time and that you stay safe and enjoy the holidays... especially the Marriott everyone knows how much I love that! :) I still haven't gotten Grandma's package unless they got it in Vaasa and if they did then I will get it probably on Friday when we have a specialized training. Well the church is true and I love you :) have a good one

Rakkaudella Vanhin Thatcher

Elder Campbell 12/6/10

2010-12-07T16:02:00.000-08:00

So today we spent all day in a meeting with President Villarreal, it was pretty intense. That`s why I`m writing this so late and it`s not going to be very long, the members who own the internet cafe were nice enough to let us send emails quick before they close. Then getting home we received bad news that people had broken into the church and stolen the computer and basically they wreaked havoc inside. Oh well, material things aren`t what`s important, we know that they can never destroy or impede this work.

We went to the mission office to sleep over last night so that we could be there at 8:00 this morning for the meeting with the President and I got to see a little bit of the Christmas devotional, it made it feel more like December and the Christmas season. The weather here makes it seem more like September.

This week I`ve been with Elder Price and Elder Leavitt has been with Elder Thompson. They`re fresh from the MTC and full of energy and excitement. We`ve been teaching them how to contact and knock doors and do all that fun stuff. On Saturday we spent about 2 hours outside the church contacting everyone that passed by and inviting them to come to church. We probably invited around 40 people and not one of them came. It looks like we aren`t going to baptize this change unless by a miracle we find someone that has already been to church 2 times because as of right now we don`t have anyone that has gone to church. It`s possible though hopefully next week I`ll be able to tell you a cool story.

My testimony is getting stronger every day and I`m so grateful to be a member of God`s church that has been restored in these latter days. I love you all!!

Love,
Elder Campbell

Elder Lisonbee 11/29/10

2010-11-29T20:04:00.000-08:00

Hey family,
Well, big changes this week. A lot a lot has happened. Well, lets start from Wednesday night. So we were at an activity in the chapel like always, when we get a call from the asistants telling us that we have to be in our house at 9:30 no matter what because we are going to have a big conference call with all the zone leaders, the assistants and with president Madariaga. So, we obey. At 9:30 we get the call. It started off relatively normal. President was just talking about conference from the week before and things like that. Then, he started talking about how he and Elder Foster has talked about new missionaries and how they need the best missionaries in the mission training them and not just any disobedient missionary that is going to set a really low standard for the rest of that poor missionaries mission. He also told us about many changes that were going to take place in the mission the 9th of December with zones and areas and everything. He is making more, smaller zones that fit perfectly with the stakes and districts of Paraguay. He is also making it that only zone leaders are going to be trainers from now on. Some are going to drop down to district leader or just senior companion, others are going to stay zone leaders but train at the same time. Depending on varios circumstances. Then, he says there will be special changes this Friday, the 26th of November, preparatory for the real changes that are going to take place the 9th. He then went zone by zone saying all the changes. Well, to sum it up real quick, I am now back in San Lorenzo, the only place I have nown on my mission. I am in a threesome with two missionaries that are showing me the area this week so that on the 9th I can get my first “kid” like we say here on the mission. I am going to be a trainer!! I am so excited, it is the first time that I have done it in my mission. But, on Friday we had a really cool meeting at changes where P. Mad pretty much told us everything about what is going on with everything. He said some pretty awesomely nice things too though about how we were the strongest most powerful missionaries that he has and that he needs us being perfect examples for the kids that we are going to train so that they can grow into leaders like us and everything. It was really cool. So anyways, I have got this week to get to know this area, called Del Maestro, so that I can be left alone with my greenie comp. I cant wait. Its going to be such an adventure. So yeah, that is what has happened with me recently.
I am really bummed though about leaving Pedro Juan early. Leaving that city was truly like getting my heart ripped from my chest and thrown onto the pavement. I dont know why I get so emotionally attached to all the people time after time. Its almost not worth because it hurts so bad when you finally have to go. 6 months is a long time. I have some incredible friends there that I will never forget... nor will I probably ever see again. Sucks... It also sucks because we had some awesome investigators preparing to be baptized. We had that mom and daughter I was telling you about that is already talking about her baptism. She is so excited. When I told her I was leaving she got a sad look on her face and asked me “So, you aren´t going to be here to see my baptism?” Dagger in the heart. Its hard explaining the changes to people a lot of the times because they dont really understand why we HAVE to go no matter what. But thats the mission I guess. Maybe I will try and not get emotionally attached to anyone in this area... but then again I dunno, I think that is where my success comes from... as well as my love for everything I am doing. In my patriarchal blessing it talks about how I am going to develop many great attributes and traits and all that jazz on my mission, but I couldnt see or think of anything that I had developed. Now I dunno if that is a good trait or what it is talking about, but I feel like I can connect with and love the people in an incredible way, and they almost always reciprocate those feelings. So maybe that is something that I have developed out here in the mission field. The ability to love, truly love someone, and care so much about them and their wellfare. I dunno, point is, it sucked leaving Pedro Juan after all.
Well, the new area looks pretty tough. It looks like there isnt too much to be working with. I am literally starting from nothing because I dont know anybody or anything either, and I will be getting a brand new comp that wont even be able to properly introduce himself in Spanish. Its gonna truly be an epic time. The members seem really cool though. They were all very loving and warm when I got here so that is good. I dunno how much the missionaries here now are working with them, so I am going to see what I can do. They SEEM willing so we will see. I will keep you all very updated on this new epic adventure. Ha, I truly am pretty stoked.
Alright, well I think I gotta wrap it up this week. I am going to write a quick tid bit in Spanish because some people from Pedro Juan said they wre gonna stay up to date on the blog haha. So make sure you put the spanish part on the blog. Mmmk
Hooola a Camila y Rodrigo, y si alguin mas esta leyendo. Como estan? Hey no tengo mucho tiempo pero quise escribirles un poco para saludarles y avisarles que estoy bien por aqui en Asuncion, pero les extraño demasiado! Yo quiro que me escriban porque asi podemos comunicarnos cada de vez en cuando. Pero para que sepan mi correo es Trenton.Lisonbee(arroba)myldsmail.net Pero voy a tratar de escribirles una carta de verdad y mandarsela. Pero les amo mucho y espero que todo este muy bien por ahi y tambien con el nuevo Elder.. Elder Jimenez. Suerte con todo! Chaucito
AISHITERU CAMILA! Haha.
Elder Lisonbee

Elder Campbell 11/29/10

2010-11-29T20:03:00.002-08:00

Things are going better than great here in Toluca. Yesterday was the conference with Elder DeHoyos from the Area Presidency and Elder Leavitt and I became companions of 2 new americans that arrived from the MTC last Friday. Elder Price is from Hurricane! and Elder Thompson is from St. George. They`ll be here for the last 2 weeks of the change and then get assigned other companions.

For Thanksgiving, we ate with the bishop`s family and they made us chicken with mole. Joey or Jason you should find somewhere at home that we can eat mole because I`m definitely going to miss it when I get home.

We`re finally starting to see success in our area. Yesterday we ate with our ward mission leader and his family and talked about the needs in the ward and came up with some good ideas. After that we turned to go down a sort of dark lonely street and a lady was standing at the corner. She asked us if she could walk with us because she was afraid to go down it alone. She was headed towards the Catholic church and we talked with her and invited her to let us pass by her house and share a message with her family and she was like, "Of course!" She gave us her address and said she`ll be expecting us on Tuesday afternoon. We got really excited because that hasn`t happened ALL change! Things are starting to turn around.

The conference with Elder De Hoyos was probably the coolest thing ever, I don`t have the time or the space to tell you all the awesome things we learned. He talked a lot about the Atonement and I realized that a lot of the problems there are in the mission is because the majority of the missionaries don`t have a profound understanding of it, myself included. President Villarreal said that he stayed a whole extra hour with us and taught us different things than he did to the
rest of the zones. He said it`s probably because we challenged the zone to prepare spiritually and to go to the conference fasting. So cool! The church is true.

I love you guys, hope you`re enjoying the snow for me!

Elder Campbell

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Nov 11/29/10

2010-11-29T20:03:00.001-08:00

Welcome to the family Lyla!

FAMILY!!!!

We have another member of our family! That is crazy. There are now two new little girls in our family that I have never met. Lyla is a cool name. Where does it come from? I like it. Happy thanksgiving last week! It sounds like it was a little bit of an unusual thanksgiving for all of us. I spent my day with new missionaries, but I will explain all about that a little bit later.

Dzintars was not baptized on Saturday. The night before his interview he was searching some stuff about the church on the Internet and found out that Joseph Smith was a Free Mason. Because of this he started doubting if he was a prophet and if the church was true or not. He came to the interview the next day and told us all about it. It isn't that he doesn't think the church is true, he just doesn't know if is true. He said he wanted to be 100% sure if Joseph Smith was a prophet before he made a decision that would change his life. He talked about how he is going to put all of his time and attention over the next few weeks to find out if Joseph Smith was a prophet and if the Book of Mormon is true. We rescheduled his baptismal date for December 18th.

We actually had a pretty cool experience. We teach Dzintars in Latvian, Russian, and English. When he came to the lesson he immediately sat down and started telling us about his concern in Latvian, so obviously I didn't really know what was going on. He was talking to Elder Worsley for about 10 minutes about this concern. After a little bit he turned to me and said in Russian "What do you think about my situation Elder Nielson?" I had no idea what to say because I had no idea what his concern or "situation" was. All of a sudden I had the thought come to me that I should testify about Joseph Smith and then recommit him to find out if it was true or not. After I talked for a couple minutes I asked him if he sincerely wanted to know if it was true. He said “I have never been more sincere about anything." After the lesson I asked Elder Worsley if what I had said tied into what they were talking about. Elder Worsley said that it tied in perfectly. He said he was about to start talking and teaching about Joseph Smith and then Dzintars asked me what I thought. It was a pretty cool experience that shows the importance of teaching by the spirit.

If there is one lesson I have learned on my mission it is how to deal with disappointment and frustration. I can't begin to tell you how much disappointment and frustration I have experienced over the last almost 1 ½ years. Disappointment and frustration with investigators, members, missionaries, the weather, everything. Yet I wouldn't trade any of these moments for the world. These experiences that I have had have made me into the person I am today. I have grown and matured more that I can describe to you in an email. I like to think of myself as a very positive person, especially when I write home to all of you. One of the reasons I don't talk about many of the hard experiences and situations that I am going through is because a lot of them are very sacred to me. I have had more spiritually uplifting experiences on my mission when everything around me is going wrong than I have at any other time. Because of these all the hard times that I am facing or have faced become very close and dear to me. I never realized how much I would be asked to go through as a missionary and especially now that I am dealing with stuff in my assignment, and yet looking back on the hardest moments of my mission are the most spiritual. They are also the moments I am most grateful for because I learned the most out of them. I am grateful for the Lord giving us trials. Without them I would be nothing. I am grateful that God doesn't always answer my prayers right away. He allows me to grow and figure things out on my own before he picks me up. If you never let your kid jump into the deep end he would never learn how to swim. The deep end has become my favorite place to be.

That’s all I’ve got to say about that.....

This week we had 11 new missionaries come into the field. The night they came in was very very cold. We had to round up coats and what not for them to use because we took them out contacting right after they came in. I love new missionary days. It is one of my favorite things to do. The city just feels different when they all come in. They bring so much energy and life into the mission. It gets all the missionaries pumped up to do missionary work again. Missionaries coming out of the M.T.C are way funny. They come bringing so much fire and so many thoughts, ideas, stories, and fairy tales that their M.T.C. teachers have told them. We had a lot of fun training with them. We were able to spend about two days with them. They are all incredible missionaries. I am excited to work with all of them.

I sent you a Christmas envelope this last week. Hopefully you will get it by Christmas time. If you don't I apologize. I tried really really hard to send it earlier, but it is kind of hard when you are only allowed to send stuff on Monday and you are so busy. Can you believe that it is almost Christmas? I am way excited. I am trying to get Elder Worsley excited about it, but there are not many things that get him very excited. I have been listening to Christmas music the last couple of weeks. I realize I broke the rule of no Christmas music until after Thanksgiving, but I figured since I wasn't really celebrating Thanksgiving this year I could just go ahead and do it anyways. Because it is Christmas our Christmas phone call will be coming up as well. We can talk a little bit more in detail about that later, but it will be between 20:00 and 22:00 my time on Christmas day. I have my own cell phone so it doesn't really matter what time we talk. What ever time works best for you. That would be about 12:00 or 13:00 your time on Christmas. Just let me know.

Sorry this email is a bit shorter this week. I will try to write a longer one next week! I love all of you. Thanks for everything you do for me! Have a great week!
Love
Matt

-- P.s. my preparation day will be next Wednesday because of some training we will do!

Love you
стареишина нильсон

Elder Thatcher 11/29/10

2010-11-29T20:01:00.001-08:00

Well I have to say first my emotions are running a little high (I'm ok Mom) :) but I finally did get my change call to leave Vaasa. Oh how it hurts... but that is to be expected. Yesterday at church was so hard for me... I kept it all together just fine and I know this is what the Lord wants but it was just a roller coaster of feelings, sometimes when the spirit was with me I was fine and new that this is what the Lord wants for me and I had a great feeling of gratitude for every second I have been able to spend here in Vaasa. Other times when obviously the natural man was taking over I felt hurt jealous even a little discouraged... but I know that this will be hard but I also now that this is what the Lord wants for me. It was especially hard saying goodbye to Jo and John and Claire and Peilin. Oh man that was really hard, but I was able to share with them those people who we were able to find teach and baptize... I was able to bear to them my testimony for the last time... it's hard and I think just this packing time is hard because I have a lot of time to think and to dwell on all the great memories... haha not to mention last night we got another baptismal date with a guy yesterday... but Veli Toni Kronqvist the branch president came up and thanked me and said that I will always be welcome in Vaasa and that really pulled on my heart strings. I told him of how hard it is to leave and how much I have grown and changed here in Vaasa. Then he said well as a missionary you are to leave the area that you are in better than you found it... he said that I had done that.... Man I really was fighting back the tears... I love every single person in this branch SO MUCH!!!!!! It will be hard to leave... but I won't let my attitude be the same as when I left Rovaniemi and came to Vaasa. I am grateful to the Lord for all that I have been given and for this time in Vaasa. It's really hard though too leaving right before Christmas... like I said it's a Roller Coaster... I feel like I have a split personality right now between the natural man and the disciple of Jesus Christ... sometimes I am almost mad and bitter... but deep down inside I know that it is the Lord's will and I trust in that.

Well enough with that haha I am on my way up North again.... North East actually. I am going to a small place called Kajaani with Elder Shumway who is one of my favorite people on earth haha so I am pretty excited about that :) but I am going to go through another COLD WINTER in the North... yep on a bike... Finns have also been saying that this winter is expected to be one of the coldest in like 1000 years or something... it's -15 already and there is snow everywhere... so I was thinking about buying some boots so I can keep my feet a little warmer this time round :) so email me next week and tell me what you think... but guess what?!?! Guess what city is part of this District... ROVANIEMI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'M GOING BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! haha atleast once a change for splits :) I am pretty darn excited about that!!!!!!! haha and we are already planning to be up there again on the 23rd at the same party that was last year when Santa leaves for his journey around the world! I'm excited to be there and to experience that again... but the thought of the dark and the cold throws me into a depressed stupor... but I will be fine... it's all about attitude. Well I don't have the address for the Kajaani apartment right now but I will send it to you next week. Well it will be fun and I am looking to work hard, but it's hard because I am going from where I have had so much success now to Kajaani where things are pretty slow right now... but then again if I go in with that negative attitude then maybe I won't make it through this winter. I might have to buy a bike... I don't really know yet and I don't have any information on phone calls or anything so I will let you know when I know... Yes Mom that was the same girl who in the MTC said we were handling it like Finns and she served her mission in Croatia, so that is kind of cool and the Klaw's (the Burmese family) aren't all baptized, all the girls have been but the men are being stubborn... we'll see what happens but hopefully they can make the right decision and get baptized. Well I really don't know what else to say... I am really just thinking a lot lately and sometimes that's good and sometimes not... :) I know that this move will be hard and it's very bitter sweet, I have loved Vaasa and I have loved being with my greenie Elder Ballam. I have so many memories! But change brings us closer to Jesus Christ and I can say through him I have received help. I don't know what it is I guess I just don't want to go back to biking in the freezing cold in a small city, but the Lord has to teach me something and I guess that is why I am going to Kajaani. I hate it though that it has to be so hard!!!!! IT SUCKS!!!!! But it wasn't easy for Him and He did a heck of a lot more than move from a city to another city... so why should it be easy for me to do some billions times easier than what He did... it reminds me of my weakness... about how weak and ungodly I truly am... but I will push through even though I am weak and an unprofitable servant I will do my best and I will forget myself as much as I can and do the best I can. The times when I am jealous etc. or angry that I am leaving are the times when I think of myself and my own pains instead of thinking of others... I have been able to be apart of so much great success and I have been able to witness miracles and mighty changes of heart. I am grateful for that. I hope that I can continue in my weakness and ungodly state to be an instrument in His hands so that the miracles can continue to flow that I won't interfere with His way and His will! I know that these things are true! I love Vaasa, but that's not what changed me and that's not what I love the most. I LOVE HIM!!!! and I love the work that he has sent he here to do regardless of where that might be. May God continue to bless this work in this wonderful nation is my prayer in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen!

I love you have a wonderful week because I will choose to have a wonderful week too! Don't worry about me I am in His hands :)

Rakkaudella Vanhin Thatcher

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Nov 11/22/10

2010-11-23T16:54:00.001-08:00

HEEEYYYY!!!!

Okay I will answer Dads two questions first and then I will continue with my email. Yes we will be going back to visit all the different countries in a few weeks for the Christmas zone conferences. We will take everyone their packages and do some other activities like a white elephant! It should be fun.

Dzintars-Russian. Dzintars- Russian, English, Latvia. Artur-Russian, Latvia, a little bit of English. Artur and Aggata-Latvia, a little bit of Russian. Martinch-Russian, Latvia, English. Anatolie-Russian. As you can see we have a pretty good balance of people who speak both or all three. It is pretty rare that you meet someone that only speaks Latvian. Usually the younger people speak Latvian and the older people speak Russian as well as Latvian. So there you have it.

This was a very very good and busy week for us. We left Monday afternoon and drove down to Lithuania with Elder Schwitzer and the Dances. It was a lot of fun being with him in the car and talking with him. He definitely likes to talk A LOT! I felt like we got in the car and then pushed the play button on him and he just kept talking and talking all the way to Lithuania. Luckily everything he talked about was really interesting and cool. He had a lot of good insights on the Gospel. The ride up turned into a big companionship study. I learned a lot. We talked about everything from the gospel to politics and church callings to how to properly hang wall paper. It was a blast.

We got into Lithuania later that night around 8. Elder Worsley and I then walked into center and met up with some of the other Elders in Lithuania. We then walked with everyone over to our hotel. It was way nice and yet cheap. After we got our stuff dropped off Elder Wolsey and I took Elder Thomas (Twin Falls) to the store and we bought some food to eat that night. We then spent the night talking and eating everything we bought. It was fun being with Elder Thomas and talking with him.

We then woke up nice and early and rode on the bus to the church. Zone conference started at 8. We took a group picture with Elder Schwitzer and then started. President Dance taught us for about 30 minutes, then Sister Dance for about 20 and then Elder Worlsey and I did a presentation on contacting for about 30 minutes. Everything went really well. After we spoke Elder Schwitzer spoke for about an hour. We then had lunch in the church and then Elder Schwitzer took the rest of the afternoon. We finished up around 5. (We repeated this same process at every zone conference)

We then got back into the car and drove to Riga. The next day we had the Latvian zone conference and then headed up to Estonia. We spent the night with the Estonian zone leaders and then headed to zone conference the next morning. When we woke up that morning it was a blizzard outside. We got about 6 inches or so just like you guys did. We had a wonderful zone conference with the Estonians. It was a little bit more focused on obedience because the Estonian missionaries have been struggling with that for a while. My favorite line from the conference was when President Dance was speaking in Estonia. After he had been talking about repentance he looked out at everyone and said. "Every one of you needs to make a list, and repent." It was such a slap in the face for everyone. He then sort of smoothed it over and said “We all need to repent, I need to repent." It was awesome. He most definitely did it with love though. I have learned on my mission that you can't call anyone to repentance until you love them.

After that we took Elder Schwitzer to the airport and he flew out of Tallinn. President and Sister Dance drove home and Elder Worsley and I spent the day in Tallinn with the zone leaders. I was able to teach English in Tallinn that night. It was fun seeing some of my old member buddies and some of the people that come to English. I love and miss all of them a lot. It is crazy how much you learn to love all of the people around you. The members, Investigators, missionaries, everyone. I never really understood when missionaries would say that, but now I do. I love them all.

The next day we got up did some special training on weekly planning and then drove back to Riga. I was a little worried about the weather for the drive home, but it turned out alright. In Tallinn it was -1°, but by time we drove south to Riga it was 8°! I love being in Riga. Just a little bit warmer. The bad part about all of this is we really didn't have much time in our area this week, so we didn't have the best week teaching wise, but we were still able to teach the people that needed to be taught.

Dzintars came to church again and is ready to be baptized this Saturday. His interview will be tomorrow and then his baptism will be on Saturday at 2. We already went over the questions for baptism and he feels good about all of them. The only concern he has had this whole time is with wine. He drank wine a little while ago. He came to the lesson feeling really bad and confessed to us what he did. He didn't get drunk or anything like that, just drank a little on a date with a girl. He felt really bad though and talked about how he has been repenting because of it. He said "I want to get baptized and I want to do it right. I want to be worthy of it." He is the man. I am still working on getting him and Sveta hooked up. It will happen soon. After his baptism. My plan is in a year from now getting an email from them telling me about how they went to the temple together and got married.

We have another great and busy week ahead of us. Tomorrow we have 12 new missionaries coming in. We will spend the next couple of days training with them and then send them off with their trainers to their areas. I am excited. New missionary day is one of the funnest parts of being an Assistant. After this new group I will have been assistant for 40 new missionaries coming into our mission over the last 4 1/2 months! That is half the mission.

Because this week is Thanksgiving we had a big turkey bowl this morning with all the missionaries in Riga. We played Russians vs Latvians. It was a pretty good game. We didn't keep score, but I am pretty sure we won. Last year Thanksgiving was changed to preparation day, but this week we are just keeping it the same because this Thursday (Thanksgiving) will be transfer day. So we are doing all of our celebrating this week. As a district we are going to TGI Fridays to eat! Yes they have a TGI Fridays. It is a little expensive, but we feel it is worth it. Too bad I won’t be able to eat a bunch of ice cream and pie this year because of my diet, but that is okay.

Okay that is probably about all I have for this week. Sorry if I gave too many details. I know mom and dad like it, but I am not sure if everyone else does! Have a great week! Love you!

Love
Matt

Elder Campbell 11/22/10

2010-11-23T16:53:00.000-08:00

This week has been alright, we`re still having a tough time finding people to teach. We`ve been knocking doors and contacting people on the street, going with members to ask for references and looking for less active members and incomplete families but we`ve only found one person in the whole week. Hopefully this next week will be better. Elder De Hoyos from the Area Presidency is coming to do a tour of the mission and we`re having a zone conference with him on Saturday. I`m excited, he was supposed to come like 6 months ago but it kept getting
put off until now.

Elder Leavitt and I did exchanges this week with a couple of elders in the zone. He went with Elder Martinez in Totoltepec and Elder Mendez came here to our area and we worked together for a few days. Elder Mendez is a really funny elder, he`s from Tabasco. I swear he laughs at everything and his testimony is as big as he is! I`m going to take a picture with him tomorrow and I`ll send it to you next week if I can find a computer that will let me send pictures!

We went to Walmart today and bought an ironing board finally because the one that was here broke a few transfers ago and the elders before us never bought a new one. It`s got strawberries on it, it`s pretty sweet. I also got my hair cut. Not in Walmart though. Yesterday was the primary program in our ward and I was thinking about what you told me, Mom, about President Monson and sitting there in the middle of all the kids.

There`s still no sign of snow here in Toluca. Yesterday it got cloudy and sprinkled a little bit of rain but that`s it. Everyone tells me that it doesn`t snow here even for how high it is so I guess I`ll just have to wait until I get home. It`s still not even cold, supposedly it`s going to start in the next month or so, so it`ll be nice to get those gloves and hat. I forgot about Thanksgiving, I`m already in the Christmas mood here. Elder Leavitt and I discovered that we are both big fans of Christmas music so we got it started early. Oh my gosh I can almost taste the turkey..... do you think the left-overs would last in the fridge until March?

Alright that`s it for this week, I hope you all have a lovely Thanksgiving!

Elder Campbell

WE GOT A WONDERFUL LETTER FROM NICK'S MISSION PRESIDENT:

"This is to let you know that your son, Elder Campbell, was recently assigned to be a zone leader. After prayerful consideration I feel that the Lord has chosen him for this important responsibility.

Our mission is divided into 7 zones, with each zone having between 16-20 missionaries. The zones are further divided into districts with 4-6 missionaries in each district. As a zone leader he is responsible for the physical as well as the spiritual welfare of his missionaries in addition to his regular missionary duties of finding and teaching investigators. He will be teaching and serving the missionaries and district leaders in his zone as well as meeting and working with the stake president in relation to missionary work in the stake.

We love your son and have confidence in his ability to serve in this important assignment. I am honored to work alongside your son in this great missionary work."

Elder Thatcher 11/22/10

2010-11-23T16:51:00.000-08:00

Well hello family!

So things are great here in Vaasa.... it is getting cold though and it is getting really dark... the dark actually doesn't bother me too much except it just makes you feel tired all of the time... yep days seem really long when the sun sets at like 3 or 4 pm but things are still good we are doing really well and we got another baptismal date with another young girl from China named Jo. She is a friend of Claire's and is doing really well she is getting baptized on the 18th of December... it's all coming pretty quick. We had a really great week though we weren't in Vaasa very much we had to do splits in Pietarsaari on Wednesday and on Thursday we were in Seinäjoki, so it was hard to get things going again but things are going fairly well. We have a few really promising new investigators and we picked up a few former investigators, we are going to teach a friend of a member who is an 18 year old Swedish speaking Finn and she has read all the way through Mosiah 8 already in the BOM, we are pretty excited about that and today we have a teach with an 80 year old former investigator who almost committed to be baptized when she investigated way back when, and we also have a teach with Jo today! So it's not too much of a P-day but hey I don't have any objections to teaching and baptizing!!!!!!! We are pretty excited about the things happening here!!! Well it's not going to be too much of a P-day because we are going to Kokkola tomorrow for District Meeting and then we are doing splits on Wednesday with Kokkola then we drive home for meetings on Wednesday night then we leave in the late afternoon on Thursday for Oulu and Zone Conference. So Thanksgiving will be held on a train.... well that will still be fun! on top of all that we then stay until Saturday morning in Oulu and leave back to Vaasa where we have a bunch of teaches lined up and then......... DUN DUN DUN....... Change calls. AHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I would be lying if I said I wasn't scared, I have been in Vaasa for about 9 months in other words 6 changes and I think it might be my time to leave this little coastal paradise... but not my will but the Lord's be done. I hope I can stay but we will see, I will be sad to leave if that's what happens but I KNOW that the Lord knows what's best for me and he will do that. So in other words don't send the package just yet... maybe wait until next week when I will tell you if I stay or if I go. the scary life of being a missionary. Well I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!! THE CHURCH IS TRUE AND I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY!!!!! THIS WORK IS THE BEST!!!!!!!!

Well Thanksgiving sounds great and I really am so proud of you and Dad for feeding the missionaries so much... don't forget that when I come home. Tell them to keep up the good work for me! They are studs!!!!!!! Well another miracle from last week was a man from Nepal named YubaRag, YubaRag was found when the missionaries from Kokkola were here in Vaasa for a District Meeting and they gave him a BOM and told him to read. He did just that and has read quite a bit already :) he then called the Elders in Kokkola because he said he wanted to know more, so they called us and told us about him and we called him and went over that night and taught him... what a great guy and so sincere. No christian background and so we taught about prayer and it went really well and he just loved it so we didn't waste any time we just testified and committed him to baptism and he said he would but first he wants to know more, we don't have a date yet but we are hoping we will soon... we were able to teach him after church yesterday... yes he came to church!!! He doesn't understand Christianity but he knows it's the right thing!!! SWEET! So we are pushing and the Lord is just blessing us so so so much!!! It's amazing! Well another weird thing was yesterday at church there were a lot of visitors there because they had a YSA party the day before and in walks Anu Fitzsimmons. You probably don't know who I am talking about but she was in the MTC with me... she is from ROI and just got home from her mission and it was so weird to see her again!!! WOW it's weird haha! Well too yesterday was just kind of a crazy day we had a few teaches set up and all fell threw. one was with Norbert a guy from Africa and another with Jahosaphat also from Africa... so Norbert wasn't there for his teach and the next scheduled teach was with Jahosaphat so we went over there and they let us in and all of our potential investigators were there just getting plastered together it is only funny because they just tried to hide all the beer cans (probably like 40 cans) haha and they thought they were so sneaky. Well they justified it by saying "well we know it says not to drink in the Bible but don't worry... we don't get drunk" ya we can tell haha with the 40 empty cans of beer, well we told them maybe another time would be better.

But the week has been good we have been truly blessed and miracles are happening here! I am just so grateful that I can be along for the ride :) I love you all so much and hope you enjoy a wonderful thanksgiving! eat enough turkey for me too! OHHH how I will miss the turkey and stuffing and the potatoes and gravy... but there is nowhere else I would rather be at this time! I love you so much and hope that you will be blessed with health and safety, until we meet again :)

Rakkaudella Vanhin Thatcher

Elder Campbell 11/15/10

2010-11-16T07:21:00.000-08:00

Hi!

This week has been fun, my bike broke on Wednesday but I got it fixed and I freaking love it! It`s ALMOST like riding my motorcycle................ I`m sending you a picture of Elder Leavitt and I, hope you like it! Also the water went out during the week and we are having to bathe out of a bucket again. It wouldn`t be so bad if we had a resistance to heat the water up but we don`t. We don`t even have an iron to heat it up the ghetto way. We wake up and heat pans of water on the little camper stove we have. I hope you guys appreciate just being able to get in the shower and turn the hot water handle! It`s all good though, Elder Leavitt and I are getting along great. The work is moving slowly, we`re finding investigators but they aren`t progressing very much. The Davila family who went to church last week and liked it a lot are moving to Guadalajara tomorrow so I guess we`ll just send their address to the elders there.

We did find a very animated investigator on Tuesday though, her name is Gloria. We were walking towards the house and she yelled to us across the street, "Jovenes! Cuando van a mi casa?" For those of you who don`t espeek espaneesh she asked when we were going to go to her house. Neither of us knew who she was but that`s my favorite kind of contacting, when the people contact us and not the other way around. We crossed the street to go talk to her and she told us that she had gone to our church and had talked with missionaries about a year ago but the day she was going to get baptized she woke up in the hospital! We set an appointment with her for the next day and then visited her almost every day. She`s almost 80 years old and is kind of difficult to teach haha. It`ll be interesting to see what happens this week, I`ll keep you updated.

Yesterday was stake conference and it was soooooo good! It was a broadcast from Salt Lake and Elder Bednar and Pres. Eyring spoke along with Elder Cristensen of the 70 and one of the counselors in the Primary general presidency. The stake center was completely packed! We kept putting more chairs and more chairs until there wasn`t any more room and all the missionaries had given up their seats, so they hooked up an extra TV and we watched it in a separate room. Pres. Eyring talked a lot about the youth and the special responsibility that parents have to persuade and teach their young children and there was a family that was watching with us in the room that had 2 little boys and I felt the Spirit testify that what Pres. Eyring was saying was true.

I`ve lost all notion of time, I feel like I`ve been in the mission forever and I don`t even know how long I have left, I`m just happy to be here. I`ll be happy to get home too but I wouldn`t trade these experiences for anything in the world. Although I`m not the best missionary I know that I did the right thing by coming out here and even in my weakness, the Lord uses me to get the message of His restored gospel out to more of His children. I know this church is true and that I`m involved in a divine work. I found a scripture that describes my feelings perfectly in Jacob 4:7, "Nevertheless, the Lord God showeth us our weakness that we may know that it is by his grace, and his great condescensions unto the children of men, that we have power to do these things." I love my family, I`m so grateful for the eternal plan of happiness that was prepared from before the foundation of this earth that makes being together forever as a family possible. Don`t let the momentary pleasures of the world rob you of the promise of living together in the presence of God in the eternities. Remember what`s important, I`m just now starting to understand and appreciate what I was taught the first 19 years of my life.

Love,
Elder Campbell

Elder Lisonbee 11/15/10

2010-11-15T14:17:00.002-08:00

Hey family,
Well, everything is going pretty well with me this week. I feel like FINALLY we have received some blessings in this area. We have a few awesome investigators that already want to get baptized. Our 14 year old girl, I dont know if I explained this last week, is getting baptized tomorrow night because this last week she was being a girl and experiencing that thing that happens once a month or whatever. Ew. But now we are going to do it tomorrow and its gonna be sweet. We have been working really hard with the Young Men and Young Womens organizations because I feel they are the easiest to teach, funnest to be aroun and easiest to get to church and activites. We have gotten to the point where there is an activity in the church every night of the week now. When I got here there were zero. Right now there are about 8-10 active youth, when I got here, 3. So I think we are making some good headway there and they are all really excited. Its a lot of fun. But, our activities are:
Every Tuesday = Piano and Guitar 9 (We dont teach this class.)
Every Wednesday= English (We teach)
Every Thursday = Woman Workshop (Taller de Mujer) (We organize but dont teach, its a YW activity.)
Every Friday = Movie Night (We organize then leave to do visits so we arent watching wordly movies. I am buying ridiculous amounts of movies though to watch when I get home. So far I have boughten about 30. For roughly 8 dollars. Bahah.
Every Saturday = Piano and Guitar (Dont teach this)
So it is pretty cool. We are also going to make a T-shirt for them all and plan a pizza/ping-pong party. Its cool. So yeah, that is where our success is coming from.
It is true though that the missionaries practically run the branches down here. A lot of times the members dont see it and treat us like crap. Has never really happened to me, but once it got so bad that P.Wade took the missionaries out and the branch pretty much fell apart. Then they came crawling back to P.Wade begging for the missionaries.
The cool investigators we have right now were references from members. They actually live above the members, renting a room of their house. Its a mom named Estela and her daughter Thalia. They are awesome and participating in everything and are so excited and already want to get baptized. Its pretty awesome when about 3 or 4 days after finding someone they say that they already have received an answer from God and they want to get baptized becuse they know it is the true church. Real humble and true seekers of truth. Rad. But they are awesome and make us happy. Then, we have this girl who moved into a house RIGHT in front of the chapel so she is extremely active in all the activities and everything. Super awesome. She is only 12, which sounds like it doesnt even count, but if you were to meet this girl you would think she is 20. Not necessarily for how she looks, but for her intense knowledge of spiritual things and life. She has practically raised herself so she is extremely mature and intelligent. She is about 5 foot 10 I think so she looks really old. The girls here mature at a MUUUCH younger age. Its weird. Anyways, we have some cool people now that our keeping our spirits up. Sometimes it can be hard being in one area for so long with one companion, but it is definitely a lot easier having cool investigators. So thats good.
Well, I have to travel to Asuncion tomorrow night for a zone conference with Elder Foster of the Seventy and area presidency. That will be awesome. I am a LITTLE nervous though because I am a zone leader and I am afraid that he is going to pull me up in front of everyone and own me. Call me out on things. Ha we will see how it goes. It should be a pretty awesome experience though. The last Seventy that came, Elder Aidukaitis, came 2 weeks before I got to Paraguay so I barely missed him. But now I get to see one so it will be sweet.
Thats a bummer that the whole house isnt going to get finished. I am sure its a lot more costly than you anticipated. It is looking really awesome though as of right now and I am excited to see it. Keep the pictures of that coming.
Alright well I have to end now but everything is going well with me. I love you all and miss you all. Have a great week. Keep the pics coming and try to get a vid of Dannys bball game. That would be awesome. Thanks for everything.
Bybybeyebye

Elber

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Nov 11/15/10

2010-11-15T14:17:00.001-08:00

FAMILY!!!!

I have no idea where to start or what to tell you about. This week went by faster and was definitely the busiest week of my mission. It was also one of the most rewarding. I will start and real quick and tell you about our investigators.
We now have 8 baptismal dates!!!!! I wish I could tell you our big secret of why we are having so much success, but I have no idea. We are being blessed so much right now. It is also a bit frustrating because we really don't have very much time to concentrate on missionary work. The few hours that we do have to do missionary work we are packed with lessons ever 30 minutes. We literally have every second of every day packed with as much things as possible. It is awesome! I am sorry for those of you who pray for our investigators by name. My prayers take a little bit longer at night now because I thank God for everyone we are working with, but it's okay!
Okay so last Tuesday after district meeting I went on an exchange with Elder Seitz. Elder Seitz is at the end of his first transfer. He is a way funny, little guy from Vernal, Idaho. I had a great time working in his area and helping him teach some of these investigators. We had a lesson with a man who was ridiculously smart! From his own study in the Bible he had figured out about the Apostasy and the need to be baptized with authority. He wasn't ready to accept a baptismal date then, but hopefully later. Elder Seitz and his companion will keep working with him and good things will come out of it.
My exchange went until Wednesday and then as soon as I got back together with Elder Worsley we loaded up the van and drove 4 hours down to Vilnius. We stayed in Vilnius that night and then Elder Worsley drove onto Kaunas. While I was in Vilnius I worked with the zone leader down there Elder Lindell. He is a very shy missionary, but a way good one. Thursday morning I did some special training with all the missionaries in Vilnius on weekly planning and then spent the day with Elder Lindell. It was a lot of fun being back in Vilnius. Very Nostalgic. There is a lot of work that needs to be done in Lithuania. Everyone is very inexperienced and they don't have much direction right now in the work. The training was very helpful to see what direction we need to take with everyone down there. My hope is that after I am done being Assistant I can do down to Vilnius and try to pick things up a little bit. We will see what President Dance thinks about that.
On Friday we woke up and drove back to Riga. We had a meeting with President Dance as soon as we got in and then had a pretty big situation to deal with. Some missionaries did some pretty disobedient things a few nights ago and so President Dance had them pack their bags and come to Riga. We went and picked up these two very very frightened missionaries at the bus station and drove them to the mission home. We then had to wait at the mission home for a good 5 hours while President Dance interviewed them.
President hasn't decided what he wants to do with these missionaries and he wants President Schwitzer to interview them so he has not told them what is going to happen to them. So while they are waiting to talk with President Schwitzer they have been with us the last few days. It has been pretty fun. These missionaries are doing a lot better than they were. They are most definitely on the right path towards repentance. I have never seen so much Godly sorrow in my life.
President Schwitzer flew in Saturday morning and we spent a little bit of time with him and President Dance. We then had District Conference on Sunday and brought everyone in from across Latvia. President Schwitzer gave an amazing talk about the apostasy and Restoration. It was sweet. We then had a pretty normal night of mission work. I had a drunk guy try to fight me, a drunk woman try to kiss me and give me a hug and last but not least when we showed up to an investigators house he was drunk laying down the couch holding a hammer about to hit me with it! OHHH the joys of being a missionary. As you can see Saturday nights are not always the most productive night to work because everyone is drunk.
This morning I had an interview with President Schwitzer. He is JUST the man. Very insightful. We had a wonderful interview. He even spoke to me in Russian a little bit. He talked to me a lot of keeping a leadership journal which I have never done and about receiving answers to my prayers. It was sweet. We then got the car washed and dropped the two Elders who have been staying with us off with some other missionaries. I am writing you right now and in five minutes I am leaving this computer, running to the mission home and we are driving with President Schwitzer and the Dances back to Lithuania for zone conference.
Tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday we will be in all three of the Baltic States for zone conferences. I am way excited. I am especially excited to be able to talk a lot with President Schwitzer. Total we will have about 15 or 16 hours in the car with him and President Dance! I am very lucky. I also get to stay in a hotel tonight!
I am sorry I don't have very much time to write today! I don't have time to do anything anymore. I haven't even been able to write a letter in two weeks! Soon I will not be so busy.
Have an awesome week! I will write next week and tell you all about my adventures! Love you

Elder Lisonbee 11/8/10

2010-11-09T11:17:00.000-08:00

Hey family,
How are you all doing this week? We have a had another very normal week. Today however we had a pretty fun Play. We went and hiked a big hill called Cerro Cora and it was really cool. I got a lot of opportunity to film a lot of the very very beautiful scenery. It was pretty intesnse and extremely hot but it was a lot of fun. We thought we were lost for a lot of it because we were literally wandering through a straight up jungle. It was pretty intense because we didnt know if we were heading to the highway or the hill or the middle of nowhere in the jungle. But, somehow we ended up at the place we wanted to and it was very beautiful. Something a normal digital camera would have never even sortof been able to capture. So I was very happy to have it today.
As far as the work it has been a very normal, boring week. We are struggling to find new investigators. We only have that one 15 year old girl that is definitely getting baptized next week. She is awesome and more active than most members. It is a lot easier and better baptizing youth out here in this area because the youth program is a little bit more organized and there are more people. It is frustrating and difficult taking men to church because once you finally get them there, it is usually just a disaster because there are only about 2 active melchez priesthood holders. But women, and especially youth are the best to take and baptize. Right now we have Piano and Guitar classes every Tuesday and Saturday, we have English Class ever Wednesday and we are going to start doing movie night now every Friday. The youth program is ligit and working well. It is just a lot easier for me to connect to them and have fun with them. So that is cool. Anyways, we are still trying to find some ligit investigators that dont just end up sucking a couple of days later. Which almost always happens. Satan works too diligently and too quickly here.. and has too strong of a grasp on the people. But I am still optomistic.
The house is moving along very quickly though. I am very excited! Looks like it will definitely be done before I get home right? Today I complete 19 months out. I am down to just one hand of months until I get home. Pretty crazy. But it is going to be awesome to come home to a new fancy awesome house. So my bedroom is going to be downstairs right? Cool. Anybody elses bedroom going to be downstairs or just mine? Well, I really love seeing the pictures. While I am thinking about it, it would be awesome to find a way to send videos. Either of the house or Danny playing basketball when the season starts or of just you guys talking. Anything would be awesome. Maybe you could put them on Andreas blog or something and send the link. Could be fun. Ya know, just something to consider. The videos my camera takes are awesome by the way.
In the eating department things go fine. We eat just great out here in Pedro Juan Caballero. I have a lunch appointment every day, so no worreis there mum. I actually am trying to lose a little gut I currently have. I want to come home skinny. We will see.
I never got to move into a new house. The owner didnt want to sign a contract so we werent willing to work with him.
Sorry I gotta run now. We are going to go eat a fat pizza. But I love you all and miss you all and cant wait to see you all. Or talk to you in about less than two months.
COOL
LOVE YOU BYE
Elber

Elder Campbell 11/8/10

2010-11-09T11:16:00.002-08:00

Hey!

Sorry I`m sending this so late, we didn`t have time during the day to send emails because we played soccer in the morning with the zone and then we had some problems washing clothes and it took a lot longer than we expected. We had some appointments in the afternoon so we`re just getting here, but the good thing is that the members that we rent
our house from own an internet cafe so they let us come use it for free.

So I`m finally out here in Toluca. I`ve been hoping to come out here pretty much my whole mission because everyone always told me that it`s a lot more tranquilo out here than the city. It definitely is a lot colder here, last Thursday we got on a bus at 6:30 to go to the offices for a meeting and I thought I was going to die it was so cold. I forgot what it`s
like to have your hands and ears go completely numb. It`s good though it`ll help me ease back into the cold for when I get home to the SNOW!

Elder Leavitt is my new companion, he`s from Las Vegas and has one transfer more than I do in the mission, so he`ll be going home in the end of January. Mom I only said that we can`t speak English in public because we`re 2 Americans and Pres. Villarreal told us not to speak English in public or around other people because it attracts attention. I got my package!!!! Thanks!!! I loved the pictures and letters and food and tie and socks without holes.

I don`t really know what else to tell you about that`s all that`s new with me. Thanks for the emails and for letting me know how you`re all doing.

Love,
Elder Campbell

Sent By: Matt Nielson On: Nov 11/08/10

2010-11-09T11:16:00.001-08:00

HEELLLLOOOOO!!!!!!

Well Mom was right about one thing. We have been getting a little bit of snow, but that doesn't mean that we didn't play sports today! Rain or Snow we play sports. The wetter the better. Haha we had a good time playing football and soccer this morning in the snow.
Well this was a very very good week. We are being blessed more than I can write in this little email. Yesterday we were able to get 6 investigators to church! We also have 6 investigators with a baptismal date and about 9 investigators who are progressing. We were also able to teach 11 member present lessons. We were blessed A LOT! We have been so busy getting ready for the mission tour and what not and yet we are teaching and having more success than I have ever had on my mission! It is awesome. SOOO I will tell you about some of our investigators.
Dzintars or (Dz-in-tars It is pronounced just like it sounds) is doing great. He is JUSSt the man. He is living the word of wisdom and has now been to church 2 times and has stayed for all 3 hours. He is legitimately the most normal and solid person I have ever taught on my mission. There is literally nothing weird or bad about him. He is perfect. He would fit in perfectly to a normal ward back in Utah. He is 30 or so years old and not married. His is progressing well and it would take something very very abnormal to stop him from being baptized. I am already trying to set him up with one of the girls in the Russian Branch. Her name is Sveta. She is a return missionary. She is about 26 or so. She is way cool. When Dzintars walked into church this week I said "Look Sveta I brought you a husband." They are actually a perfect match. She is going to help us teach him this week! Dzintars is even asking questions and then answering his own questions through his reading. It is beautiful.
Artur and Augita are doing well. They came to church again yesterday and stayed for sacrament meeting and Sunday school. They are doing pretty well. They want to get baptized on December 25th for some reason. We have tried working the date a little bit sooner, but for now they are pretty set on that date. The tricky part now will just be keeping them solid and living by all the commandments. We are trying hard to get them really involved in the branch and with all the youth programs.
We also were passed another man named Dzintars from the other missionaries because he lives in our area. Dzintars is about 40 years old, has a wife and two kids and knows the bible really well. He has been meeting with missionaries for a while and has been to church over 10 times. He is way solid. The problem is his wife is really against him getting baptized and we can't baptize him with out her permission. So for now we are waiting and praying for his wife to come around so he can get baptized. We are working with the branch president to get him a calling to help keep him active.
We also found and taught a young Russian kid named Feoder this week. He is juuust golden. We gave him the baptismal invitation on the first lesson and he said yes. He is 21 years old and lives by himself. He came to church last week and stayed for all 3 hours of church. When he introduced himself in Sunday school he said "My name is Feoder and I am here because I am trying to find the true church of Christ!" I just about stood up and started applauding him. He loved church and is doing way well. He is set to be baptized on December 4th.
The other date we have is with a man named Martinch. We taught him once and gave him a date and he said yes. He is really not very solid and he didn't come to church so I really don't have very much hope for him. Last but not least we have Artur. Artur is still very set on being baptized on Jan 13th. He is doing well though. I called him last night and he had a bunch of questions from his reading. They were mainly just questions about what words meant, but that was still solid he was asking.
I believe that is about all of our dates right now. The young Russian girl we are teaching is Yulia. She is pretty good. The problem is she is only 15 and last lesson we found out that her parents are really against her meeting with us. Because she is so young we can't meet with her unless her parents give permission. We have tried getting her to let us come over and talk with them and a member, but she doesn't want us to. So for now we can't teach her unless her parents say yes.
This Week we had zone leader council on Wednesday and then we went on exchange with some of the Estonian Zone leaders. All in all it was a very very fun week. This week we are heading to Vilnius on Wednesday night. We will be there until about Friday afternoon. I am staying in Vilnius and Elder Worsley will grab another Elder from Vilnius and head to Kaunas for a few days. We are doing some special training there and then we will go on exchanges with the zone leaders. It should be a party.
No we will not be translating the actual blessing for the people getting there patriarchal blessings. We will just translate while the patriarch is talking with them and then they will translate the blessing later. There I believe I have answered all of dad’s questions. Haha thanks for putting them in bold Red so I don't forget to answer them.
Elder Worsley hit a cement poll in the under ground parking garage today..... He scrapped up the back end pretty bad. So later tonight we will take the car in and see if they can touch it up a little bit with some paint. As soon as we are done emailing we are going to go to a sort of good Mexican restaurant called Tex Mex and eat as a district. It is the only Mexican restaurant in Latvia. It is really not that good, but oh well.
Wow am I really getting 3 boxes from you for Christmas? That will be nuts. I am sending you something as well. I am sending it either today or next week. You should open it up as soon as you get it! Merry Christmas.
No I can't talk to you on SKYPE. President Dance doesn't want us doing that so plan on talking to me on the phone. Phones are still good though. I didn't think SKYPE was that big in American. I guess it was invented in Estonia. That is Estonia's one claim to fame that they always say, but ya we can't talk on it.
Okay that is about everything for me this week! I hope you all have a wonderful week and remember that I love you! Tell everyone I say hi!
Love
ME

Elder Lisonbee 11/1/10

2010-11-01T15:12:00.000-07:00

Hey family,

How is everything going wiht you guys this week? We had to travel to Asuncion again this week for a zone leader training meeting thing so we are in Asuncion right now. The trip is long and hard. This is my 7th change in an area faaar from Asuncion, which is about 10 months, so, I guess I am used to it. But its still annoying that I Have to do it every beginning of the month. This might be my last one though, or maybe I have one more. We will see.

Anyways, we had a pretty good week this week. We sorta didn't have a great turnout yesterday in church. Our solid investigator that WAS going to get baptized this week bailed on us yesterday and now we have to postpone her baptism another week and make her feel bad for not going to church yesterday. She is still pretty solid though and I am pretty sure will get bapted anyways. But as far as other investigators go, we are sort of struggling. We find people who SEEM cool but then later just end up falling and sucking, which is frustrating. Hopefully we just find somebody ligit and awesome this week to prepare and baptize at the end of the change. Hace falta.

I have not gotten the conference talks yet but I did get the little package with all the CDs on them. I already have them all on my iPod and enjoy them very much. Thanks for sending those so quick. It will be fun to have them for Christmas.

Thanks for all your kind words of testimony and encouragement as well. It is always greatly accepted and cherished here on this end. Many times the work can get difficult and frustrating. When you work hard day after day and don’t see many results, which has, for the most part, been the case of this area I am in now. I am almost happy that I stayed one more change here so that I can try and get back at the area. I feel like it has sort of beat me up, which hasn’t really happened to such a degree in the past, so hopefully we can turn things around this change and see some success. We had a great zone leader meeting today, where we talked about many helpful and encouraging things. It is always great to hear from the mission president and his wife and learn from them. They are very inspired and amazing people. We talked about how sometimes after getting your butt kicked for so long in an area you sort of feel like just enduring until the end of the transfer so that you can just leave the area and the comp behind and start fresh in a new place with new investigators and new members and everything. But then he talked about how that is not how we should do these things. We need to make the most of each opportunity we get and really show our love for the work and the people by working really hard until the very end. I have been studying humility and pride a lot lately because it is something that is so destructive and spirit-hindering and can completely destroy companionships and areas. So I feel like if you cant work hard until the very end, even if things are hard in the area, you are prideful and a poor servant of the Lord. I feel it can apply to every aspect of our lives as well. Many people have many different definitions of pride, but I feel one of the most important is being humble before God and accepting His will. And if we give up in our lives, callings, families, responsibilities of any kind, we aren’t accepting Gods will and we aren’t progressing in our lives. Its incredible to me to read about the destructive power pride has. Like in 4 Nephi how the entire civilization was destroyed because of pride. Early in the chapter it mentions how there never were a happier people… then the chapter ends with their utter destruction… all thanks to pride. Pretty crazy.

Anyways, just something sort of interesting. But everything is going good here with us. We are continuing to work and hopefully will be able to find some awesome people this coming week. Our 14 year old investigator is going good right now, hopefully she will be baptized in 2 weeks.

It is awesome though that you all have the goal of reading the book of mormon together each night. I know it will bring a strong spirit into your lives and will help teach danny correct principles. Well, all of you.

Anyways, I gotta go now but I love you all and miss you and love getting pictures. Keep em coming. And when danny starts his basketball games, if its possible, I would like to watch videos. However it can be done. Do you think I will be back for the end of the season? That would be rad. Alright, well have a great week and I will tlak to you next week.

Looove you byyee

Elber