Happy Memorial Day!

Como anda todo en la mision?  Espero que todo ande bien.  Andamos bien aca en la casa.  We had a pretty good week. We still have many activities as the school year is rapping up.  Summer had her piano recital on Tuesday night.  Sister Bryce is her piano teacher and that only lasted 1/2 hour so that was good.  Summer had a baseball game on Monday night and they won again.  Whitney is home from college now and she came and watched the game.  Summer was really excited and nervous for Whitney to watch her.  She got the game ball, so I guess she did ok.  She is not swinging the bat too much these days, it appears she is looking for a walk every time.  Summer also go selected to the over the summit team, which is where they choose the 3 best players from each team and they will play the 3 best players of all the spring creek teams.  So she is excited about that.  Carly had a talent show at school, so we went and watch her last week as well.  She and Payton made up this dance routine and did very well.  They were selected to dance in the finals the next day.

On Wed. Summer had her spring singing concert at Flagview.  Thursday, we had YMYW.  So we had something everyday this week. On Sat. we were trying to decide whether we should go to Holbrook ID to get a tour of the places where my great grandparents (the Petersens and the Nielsens) homesteaded.  But I guess they decided they would not have enough time for both so they decided to only do the Petersens and then sit around and talk.  They will plan a bigger day and have a barbeque etc, we will try to attend that.  We had 2 baptisms in the 3rd ward on Sat. Derek Beck a husband of a less active member and Lois Gurr, a single lady in her 60s.  Bishop Bryce was out of town and Mason Simons went out of town to fish for the day, so we decided I better stay in town and represent the bishopric at the baptisms. Baptisms are always nice and they both had active members in the church in their families.  Sunday Cassidy Nielsen had her farewell.  She goes into the MTC this wed.  She is going to Mexico.  I guess they did not tell too many people as she has a boy friend and was wondering if she was going to go through with it or not.

Yesterday, we had good meetings at church.  Whitney went to the singles branch and came over afterwards to dinner. Last night Cody and I went and visited 4 families for our home teaching visits.  Amber is trying to plan a trip back to Hawaii and if we leave this Thursday, it is only $523 per person for the round trip flights.  Since Amber is going to be visiting all her mission people, we were thinking that mom and I, Amber and Chelsea would go.  But Chelsea has girls camp next week and we would have to find someone to take the kids to school and watch Adelaide, so I am not sure if that would work or not.  The price is great, but we would have a lot to plan to get done. So we will see what happens.  We were trying to figure out a time when Cody could watch the kids, but he has basketball all of June.  Mom has girls camp in June.  Amber is going to be a EFY counselor all of July, 2 weeks in Orem, 1 week in Pennsylvania, and 1 week in Palmyra New York.  And I am really busy at work in August.  So we will see what happens.

I was talking to Sharon last week and she told me some interesting stories.  She said her Stake President is over all the vehicles for the church.  And they had their stake conference 2 weeks ago.  Well a week before their stake conference, her stake president got a call from Elder Bednar and Elder Bednar told him his car had a rattle in it and he wanted it fixed.  So Bednar said I will come pick you up right now so you can hear the rattle and fix it.  So they got in the car and drove around and sure enough no rattle noise.  They got on the highway, no noise.  Bednar said, I am going to go by my house as it always rattles then.  Well they drove by his house and still no noise or rattle.  So in the midst of all their driving around, the stake president told Bednar that they were having stake conference the next week and he told Bednar that he was going to challenge all the youth in his stake to do family history and to find at least 1 name to submit for temple work.  And when Bednar heard that, he said, I need to pull over.  So he pulled over the car and looked him straight in the eyes and said that family history is the only way we are going to overcome the addiction to pornography.  He said pornography is rampant in the world and inside the church as well and that family history is the only way we are going to overcome that addiction.  He said that 3 times.  He also said that family history can help us over come any addiction, or any problem we are having in this life.  Bednar said, think about it, we are helping these angles do things that they can not do and in return these angles will help protect us from any sin or problems we are having.  He said that satan is trying to use the greatest tool we have to hasten the work the computer, to divert us to other bad things like pornography.  

I told that to President Lewis and told him he was inspired when he told the entire stake to do all the names when they go to the temple.

Any way, I thought that was a good story.  Also, Brandon and Ally Dunn got to go out to dinner with Elder  Holland and his wife last week at Yale.  That is where Elder Holland got his doctorate degree.  They went to dinner with all the LDS married couples at Yale.  There were either 7 or 14 couples, I can't remember.  But Brandon said, he loved the part where sister Holland said it is a miracle to see how the Lord can take an ordinary man and chip off the rough edges and turn him in to an apostle of the Lord.  She said they were so poor at Yale that there were times when she had to ask their neighbor to borrow 50 cents to go buy milk for her kids.  Elder HOlland said that there were many times when he just wanted to quit school and he could not take it any more.  One time he told his wife, I am done, I can not do this any more.  I can go find a good job with the education I already have, we do not need to go through these problems any more.  And he said, sister HOlland took his face in her hands like she has done many many times since then and looked him right in the eyes and said, "Jeffrey, you are not going to quit.  We can do this.  We can make it through these problems and we will get through them all".

Any way I thought that was kind of neat. 

Well we love you and pray for you daily.  We are going to spend Memorial day weekend here at the house working on home projects. l Have a great week.  We were glad to hear you had such a great week last week.  Keep working hard and being obedient and the Lord will bless you in everything.

Love

DAD

Another Chance of a State title down the Drain

Hola Hermana Nielsen,
 
How was your week.  I hope your weeks are getting better and better and that you are becoming a pro of the spanish language.
 
Last week went by quit quickly.  Summer had a softball game on Monday or Tuesday and her team won.  They are still undefeated.  And she is learning and doing better each game.
 
The big news of the week is Cody's team went to South Tahoe on Thrusday to play in the regional Tourney.  They did not start playing until Friday.  So we go up on Friday at 3:00 am to do the papers and get ready to go by 4:30 am.  We did not actually get away until 5:30 am so we were running a little late.  The game started at 10 am.  We got there after the 1st inning and it was 3-2.  South Tahoe was winning.  Elko ended up taking the number 1 seed and were playing the number 4 seed.  I guess Elko had an error in the 1st inning to let them score the 3 runs.  But we ended up losing 8-6.  So those 3 runs were big.  So now Elko was in the losing bracket and we played the loser of the 2nd game between Spring Creek and Fallon.  Fallon won that game.  So we played Spring creek at 3:30 pm with the losing team done for the season.  We did not play too well.  Everyone seemed to be misjudging balls in the outfield and not doing too well in the infield.  We lost 8-2 or something like that.  Cody misjudged a ball in the outfield and let it go over his head and they scored a few runs.  Then in the 6th inning, he got up with 2 outs and the bases were loaded and popped up to the 1st baseman.  So he had some opportunities to change the results and did not step up.  Spring Creek ended up losing on Sat. and so they are done as well.  Fallon and So. Tahoe will go to state representing the north. 
 
But perhaps it was a blessing in disguise.  That allowed us to take Cody with us to go to Grandma and Grandpa Crofts for the weekend to visit.  Amber had not seen them in over 3 years.  The pool was cold but the 4 younger kids still went swimming.
 
Mom, Amber and I went to the Sacramento Temple on Sat. morning.  Then we went out to lunch with Kimico and JP with grandma and pa to a sushi restaurant for all you can eat.  Me grandpa, and summer and carly would had preferred a hamburger place.  But it cost grandpa $194.  Cody and Amber really liked it.  Adelaide tried all of it and did not complain a bit.
 
We could not find someone to watch Chica, so we just left her in the back yard.  I think she sat on the front porch waiting for us the entire weekend.  We got back around 9 pm on Sunday and she was sitting on the front porch.
 
We went to a sacrament meeting in Granite Bay to an earlier ward so we could get back sooner.  Amber had to work at the gym at 3:00 am today.  But that ward all came up to us and wanted to know if we were ward shopping or moving into the ward.  They wanted us pretty badly in their ward, but we told them we were just visiting.
 
Well, we love you and are happy you are serving a mission.  Serve him with all you heart, might, mind and strength and he will bless you eternally.
 
Have a super week.
 
Love
DAD

Super Mothers Day!

Dearest Hermana Nielsen,

Well, that was fun!  What a day.  It was jam packed, but a lot fun.  It started off with church which was really good.  Sister Sargeant, mother of 11 spoke, and also a new family in our ward that came from 1st ward, and are renting the McEntire's house.  They are the Johnsons and they have 2 cute little kids.  They gave us frozen individual sliced pies for our Mothers' Day treat, just like what they did last year.  I taught a primary class, because they are short on teachers.

After church is where it got a little crazy.  The ZL Elders wanted to use our house for their Family-Skype purposes.  So, they were here, and we invited Bro. Affuola, the big Samoan guy in our ward since his family is away in HI visiting family.  He was pretty quiet during dinner and afterward, but he hung around and was seemed to enjoy the festivities and laughter.  Amber invited the YSA Elders over for dinner too, since they didn't have a dinner appt.  It is transfers this week so the ZLs hung around until the transfer email came, and then after all was quiet I was finally able to call my mumsie and wish her a Happy Mothers' Day around 8:30 pm.  We are actually going to go Cali. to see them this weekend when we go to Cody's Regional Baseball game in So. Tahoe on thurs.  We are hoping Amber can go since its been so long since she has visited, but she is scheduled to work.  She may try to get it off. 
Heres a glimpse into last week.....

Mon. was Cinco De Mayo, so we had Cafe Rio food and invited the Sisters and Elders over.

Dad was the "Watch Dog" at Northside on fri. and he impressed all the kids with his bball skills and his Spanish and just knowing so  many people.  One little girl wanted to hold his hand at recess.  He said Mr. Melver is leaving Northside to be the principle at BM jr high.  He has been the principle at NS for the last 6 yrs, and said he just needs to be closer to his family, because he has missed out on  a lot of stuff with his kids.  I really liked him, I don't know who is replacement will be, but he will be missed.  They sent out a teacher request paper and Carly's choices for 4th grade teachers are:  Mr Parish, Ms. Powers, and Mrs. Crawford-Hank.  Any opinion on those?

Well, it was WONDERFUL to see you and talk to you yesterday.  I hope you didn't feel bad that we were kind of harping on you.  I felt bad afterwards...write longer letters, study Espanol everyday, correct spelling, bla bla bla.  Can you forgive us?  You just keep being the most amazing missionary you can be.  I wish Addie would have not been in one of her moods, where you can't tell her to do anything.  Last week she got up at 4:30am when I got up and she stayed awake, but later that morning she was playing outside and I went to check on her out front and she was laying face down in the grass.  I thought she was playing, but after trying to get her to respond I picked her up and it was obvious that she  had been sound asleep.  I think the grass was warm and the sun was shining and she just got sleepy, so she just impersonated a dead child on the front lawn.

I hope you have a wonderful week,  I love you, Mom

P.S.  I'm glad you got to visit with Amber and see her face, she misses you a lot.

Cant Wait til Mother's Day!

Hola Hermana Nielsen,
 
I hope you had a great week and are getting more and more fluent with the language.  We had a pretty busy week.  On Monday, Cody played his makeup game against Fernley in Winnemucca.  So we (Mom, I and the 3 younger girls) drove over there.  It was a very good competitive game and Elko won 4-3.  Fernley had some of the best pitchers in the league that I have seen thus far.  Cody got hit by the pitch twice, once in the middle of the back.  Cody thought the pitcher was trying to hit him as he crushed one down the 3rd base line foul on the pitch earlier.  And then he had a sacrifice bunt to advance the runner and grounded out on the other play.  On Tuesday, we played Spring Creek in Spring Creek and they beat us 6-1.  The same pitcher who beat us 1-0 pitched and Elko only had 4 hits the entire game.  Cody got one of the 4 hits and he has been doing alot better on his hitting as he has been the only one on the team not striking out these past few weeks.  But now we have one more week left before Regionals.  Elko plays Dayton at Dayton this weekend.  Elko is tied for 1st with Fallon and Spring Creek and South Tahoe are tied for 3rd and 4th only one loss behind Elko and Fallon.  The top 4 teams go to regionals and they are all very close.  It will be a tough series no matter who we play.
 
Summer had a softball game on Tuesday night so I went to that game after Cody's.  Summer is doing very well and is one of their better players.  She plays short stop and hits the ball well.
 
I had a dental appointment on Wed. for the Dentist to check my teeth and I go back today for a cleaning appointment.  Mom's birthday was Sat. but she was sick with the flu the entire day.  All she said she wanted was a clean house, so we tried to do some cleaning and I tried to fix the dish washer.  It has not been working lately and I wanted to see if I could fix it before we spent all that money on a new one.  I went on Youtube and looked up a few videos and did a lot of cleaning.  I think we might need a new lower sprayer as it has melted.  I did alot of cleaning and maintenance on it though.
 
Sunday we had good meetings.  Sierra Atoa was not there and I have been very worried about her.  I woke up Friday morning at 2 am worrying about her and could not get back to sleep.  I texted her to come by my office so I could talk to her and she said she would and then never showed up.  Her boy friend from Oregon came up this weekend and spent the weekend with her at her house, so I am not too happy about that.  She is going to Oregon this weekend for his prom.  The sister missionaries brought Sierra over to our house last night and we were able to visit with her.  She looked a little different, she was not as happy and shining to me.  She said that she is not even friends with those 2 other girls from the dance team who were taking the lessons with her.  We are going to have Sierra and the Elders and Sisters over for dinner tonight for cinco de mayo.  We will see if Sierra will show up or not.
 
Greg Barker got put in as bishop of the Elko 2nd ward yesterday.  And he choose Brent Barnum and Jessop as his counselors.  He will do a great job as Bishop.
 
Well I can't think of much else.  Please let us know what time we are going to skype on Sunday so we can be all prepared.  Have a super great week.  We love you and pray for you every day.
 
Love
 
Dad