Feb 24th

Hey everybody! Well, okay. I really don't know what to tell you. I love you all and The End. he he. just kidding. But this week went by super fast! I don't know what to do with myself sometimes. Sometimes it feels like the next day is forever away and everything is happening so slow, but then each time we hit a mark it seems like the time in between was hardly there.

Okay, well yesterday I gave a talk in the spanish ward. I gave my talk and Sister Bettinson gave hers, and that was the whole program. kinda weird. I'm not sure how much of my talk people understood especially because I was trying to tell stories and my past tense isn't very good at all. But we had a family at church!!!!!! and that helped take the stress off of talking in church by a lot. But it was a very stressful sunday. First time I've ever had a family, so it was different trying to find all the diferent classes and worring about all the different places, if things are going well and if they're enjoying it etc. But it was super great!!

The family we actually found from knocking. We went to contact a lady that lived in an apt complex and then we decided to knock a few of the doors. And Sister Bettinson said that she wanted a knocking miracle so we were gonna knock one more door and we found the Lopez family! The dad is gone a lot working, and he comes back for a week about every two months. So there's the mom, and then the oldest child is the 13 yr old daughter, then 11 boy, 8 boy, 6 girl and 2 little boy. Everyone but the dad came to church yesterday, cause the dad was gone. The oldest girl is actually the most interested. When we first met them she actually took us aside to confide in us. She expressed some of the worries and struggles that she's dealing with right now and how she wants to turn to God more to help her out and she wants to change and be good. It was really cool! The fun thing about this mission, particularly this area, is that quite a bit of the families are very much bilingual. Usually the parents don't know any or very little english, but the kids, particularly the teenagers prefer english, so always talk to us in english, and the younger kids, particularly under six, speak spanish. Some of them may know or understand english but they prefer spanish. So it's pretty interesting. The problem is that it's super hard to not just fall into english. When someone talks to me in english my instinct is to respond in english, but we do our best to keep it in the language that everybody understands. So lessons are always super interesting. There is never only one language that goes on down here. You just use both.

But yup. That is really all I can think of. Well, we have more investigators now than I've ever had before, (which of course isn't hard to beat) but because of that I think I can sympathize with mom's excuse, that when there's so many people you're in charge of you forget things. So that's my excuse. There is so much that happens that's so fast that I can't remember any one thing ever.

So I'll just tell you whatever pops into my head.

We meet lots of interesting people here. And I have learned the smell of beer, it's disgusting. There are a bunch of crazy guys in our area that like to talk to us. There's one guy that showed us his "condo" that consisted of a couch underneath a tarp tied to a boat sitting in front of an apartment complex. And we see him quite a bit sitting in a chair somewhere along the main road, and he asks us why we don't come to see him.

We also get Mexico stories. And I have resolved that I don't want to cross the border on land, at any point in my life unless there is dramatic improvements in Mexico. I'll still definately go back to Mexico City, but not anywhere near the border. We also hear border crossing stories, it's pretty cool. And it's super expensive to cross the border.

Well, I can't think of any other random things.

I love you !

Hermana NJ Nielson