Finally, a summer break

Hola Hermana Nielsen,

Well this past week went really fast.  Amber left yesterday to go to Utah to be a EFY counselor.  She is really excited about that, but we miss her a lot.  It is fun having your kids back in the home with you.  She will be great at that.  I took the day off on Friday and spent Friday and Sat. fixing up the camry for Amber to take.  I changed the oil and they I replaced the door handle on the drivers side that had broken off.  She washed and vacuumed it and it looks great.  She was gone from Thursday to Sat. camping and a temple trip with the YSA branch up in twin.

We still can't find my sleeping bag that mom and summer lost at girls camp, so she did not have a very good sleeping bag to take.  Cody left for Washington, for the Gonzaga camp and the other bball on Wed.  And he will get back this wed.  So mom and I and the 3 younger girls are at home and it is very quiet.  We disconnected our tv cable so it is very quiet around here.

Nancy Wills died and bishop was out of town, so I had to conduct the funeral services for that.  I am not sure I will every feel comfortable conducting a funeral.  It was short and sweet.

We had a ward activity at johnny appleseed park on Friday and I played baseball with all the little kids and that was fun.  Well I can't think of much more to say.  We love you and are happy you are on a mission.  Keep working hard and be obedient and the Lord will bless you.  Alex Jordan had his farewell yesterday and that was nice.  Vivian neff had her wisdom teeth pulled and they still did a song for it.  She was not quite as swollen as you were.

Have a super week.

Love 

DAD.

Girls Camp

Hola mi querida hija.  Como esta todo?  Espero que todo ande bien en su area y con la obra misional.  This week went by super fast.  Mom and Summer were at girls camp at the Lion's club up Lamoille canyon from Tuesday through Sat.  Cody had his basketball camp here in Elko and then he left for Boise for a bball tournament up there.  So he was gone most of the week.  That left Amber and me with Adelaide and Carly at home.  Amber was working most of the time, and I took them to work with me the 1st couple of days, but they did not like being in my office the entire day and having to be quiet.  So on Thursday and Friday, Carly and Adelaide stayed home by themselves.  Everything turned out ok.  Carly folded all the finders and did a great job.  I had to do the 2 paper routes by myself on Friday and Sat, so I was getting up at 4:30 am to try and get back home by 5:30 am for the morning trading.
 
Things went just fine.  We got a new dishwasher on Thrusday as the other one stopped working, and it took me about 6-8 hours to uninstall the old one and install the new one.  I had the water turned off and the electricity off most of the day on Thursday.  I told the girls to just use one bathroom, and I guess Addy was holding it in all day, so that was not good.  Friday evening to celebrate them being good and staying home by themselves, I took them to the park for snow cones and to let them play in the park.  They enjoyed that.
 
Mom and Summer got home about noon on Sat. and somehow, they did not get home with my good sleeping bag, so we will need to locate that.  The only thing of value that they took, they lost.
 
Yesterday was a busy day.  I had meetings all morning, then church, then I did the tithing and we had 6 missionaries over along  with Lois Gurr who was baptized a couple weeks ago in our ward over for dinner.  So we had a full house.  After we cleaned up dinner, we had Sister Hirst come over and help us with our family history work, since we all want that protection from the evil as Elder Bednar talked about.  We did not make too much progress in 1.5 hours, but I think it helped us to look in certain areas for new names.
 
Well we love you and are happy you are serving a mission.  Keep working hard, being obediant, and studying the language and the Lord will bless you will miracles.  Have a super week.
 
Love DAD

Back on the mainland

Hola Hermana Nielsen,
 
Well we hope you are having a great time in your new area.  We are glad you are there to protect your companion as well.  How is the spanish coming along?  Any better?  Cody said it even says in preach my gospel that you are suppose to study your language for 1/2 hour every day.  Even though your companeras don't need to study, you need to tell them that you need that time.
 
Well we got back safely from Hawaii.  It was a good, fun trip.  I forgot to tell you last week that when we went to see Iolani's palace, it was going to cost $15 each to get in. When I questioned the price, the lady said unless you are military and then you can get in for free.  So I said, "Do I look military to you?" jokingly and then when I went to give her my credit card, there were some people behind me, and she just motioned us away with our tickets for free.  I tried to tell her Mahalo, thank you in Hawaiian and I said something like Malano.  I killed it, but it was really nice of that lady to let us in for free.
 
Monday after we wrote our letters, we got all our stuff ready and packed and left the Jensen's condo.  We also saved $50 as they wanted us to pay $50 for parking at the condo and I parked a couple hundred yards away down the street and did not pay.  Hopefully we were not breaking any condo rules, but we did not park there.
 
We went to a macadamia nut factory and they had all kinds of different flavors to sample for free.  I liked the samples, but what they were selling was very expensive.  We met a family from Provo, UT there.  I told Connie, I bet that family is LDS, and I asked them and sure enough, they were.
 
Then we went to a beach on the big island which was part of this expensive hotel's.  We spent about 1.5 hours there and I was getting bored.  You can only swim in the ocean for a certain period of time, and I had reached the limit.  And I am not one for laying in the sun on the beach.  That gets boring as well.  Then we went to costco and ross to buy the little girls some dresses and we drove to find Captian Cook's place where he landed and was killed, but by time we got there, we had to turn around and get back to the airport.
 
We caught a plane back to Oahu, and then back to Las Vegas.  We left Monday evening around 9 pm and got in to Vegas around 9:00 am.  We caught a taxi back to the MGM where I parked the car and then drove back to Elko.  We got back around 5 pm Elko time.  It was a long, fun, exhausting trip.  I was glad to be back home and try to get our lives back on schedule.  I have a ton of work to do to get caught up.  Summer had her 'allstar' game against Spring creek on wed., but she showed up 1/2 hour late.  So she only got to play a couple innings and struck out at bat.  Elko lost in extra innings.
 
Cody had youth conference and they had President Hermanson from the Reno Nevada Mission and his wife speak on Thursday, and then John Bytheway on Friday and then Chad Hymes, the paralized guy from Utah on Sat.  They said it got better each day.  Cody missed Sat. as he was taking the ACT test.  Cody and Vivian did a swing dance for the talent show.  They had some pretty impressive lifts, etc.  It was Elko, East, West, winnemucca, and Ely stakes.  So about 600 people.
 
Sat. morning, we got a call at 4:30 am from Dustine Conk the paper guy and he wanted to know if we would sub a driving route out in Spring Creek for $75.  I thought it might take us a couple hours and that we could recoop some of the cost of our trip and it took us 5.5 hours to do both mom and I.  I was not planning on wasting our entire day.
 
Yesterday was good, I had a good fathers day.  We did not do much, but it was a relaxing day.  The spurs beat the Heat for the NBA finals, which I was happy about as the heat and Labron James are erogant.  The spurs are all really humble.
 
Well we hope you have a great week.  I am watching the world cup soccer and I love it.  It was on 4 years ago when we were shingleing our roof on the house.
 
We love you and pray for you daily.
 
Love
 
Dad
 

Aloha from the big Island

Querida Hermana Nielsen,

 

Well here we are on the Big Island of Hawaii.  Our last day here.  We fly out this afternoon back to Oahu and then back to Las Vegas.  So this is what we have been doing this past week:

 

Monday June 2nd:  We got up and wrote you our emails.  We never  did get a letter from you until later that day or the next day.  After we got showered and dressed we went into downtown Honolulu to the tabernacle as all the leaders of the mission were having MLC down there.  So she could see all her missionary buddies.  One Elder came up to her and said Sister Nielsen, Holy crap, you are wearing pants.  It was fun to see all their expressions on their faces seeing her back in Hawaii.  At the tabernacle (the stake center) they have these banyon trees which are really old and the trees send vines down from the top and when they hit the ground it starts growing into a tree trunk.  So it looks like one tree with 30-40 trunks.  But I imagined that these vines are what Tarzan would swing from in the trees in the movie Tarzan, so I had to give it a try swinging from the vines coming down.  I did not do it as well as Tarzan, that is for sure.  After that we went to visit a museum called Iolani's Palace.  It was really neat.  It is where the King and Queen of Hawaii lived in the late 1800's before the Americans took over the islands.  King Kamehameha III was very advanced.  This palace is one of the first to have electricity even before Buckingham's Palace in England.  We found out a lot about the Hawaiian culture there. They were even one of the first to have flushing toilets at this palace.

 

We went to Costco as that and bought lunch, pizza as it is cheaper there.  Then we went to a beach for 2-3 hours.  We were not sure what beach it was as Amber was trying to find a particular beach, but we found something else.  It was one where it was mostly locals there and they were body boarding and surfing.  We tried catching waves with just our bodies, but it did not work very well.  It was ok, but we are just not beach people. We went back to the Tanaka's, they place where we were staying and then went to a Family home evening group that they have had for 20 years.  It was really fun, about 30 people showed up.  We ate dinner there and then had a lesson on the Hastening of the work.  Brother Tanaka had me share the Elder Bednar story I told you a couple weeks ago about family history.  There were a few big black cucaraca's (cockroaches) flying around in the covered patio and Sister Tanaka hates them, so we left about 9:30 pm.  It was a very enjoyable evening.

 

Tuesday:

We got up and got ready.  Amber was doing her homework so we got a late start, but we were going to the visitors center to visit Stewart and Ardis Jensen who are serving there as missionaries.  We visited with them for about 2 hours.  A young teenage girl from China was there and wanted a blessing, so Elder Jensen and I went in a back room and gave her a blessing.  Then we went to the Polynesian Cultural center.  That was great and a lot of fun seeing all those BYU Hawaii students performing and dancing.  We did not get the Luau, but got the cheapest dinner we could get and then watched the show HA, the breathe of life.  It was all good.  Mom was tired and kept falling asleep in HA.  The samoan fire guy Kap was great and in his Samoan show, he was very funny.  A little old short guy who was built like a tank.  We got home late that evening.

 

Wed:

Was Amber's 23rd birthday.  What a way to celebrate your birthday.  We went back to the swap meet, amber wanted to get a sweat shirt there.  Then we went to this fabric store that had 1,000's of different hawaii patterns.  Amber said she just loves that store.  Then we met up with Sister Lauhingoa and Sister West and took them to lunch.  We went to costco again and bought fruit, mango, lychees, wrap sandwiches, shrimp and smoothies, it was great.  Amber loves seeing her 'baby'.  Then we went and hiked koko head.  A mountain that amber had always wanted to hike, but her comps. did not want to.  It was straight up and during the heat of the day.  I was sweating like a pig by time I got down.  We were meeting up with another family from Kahala ward that wanted to take amber out to eat on her b-day, so we went to some beach front that had showers and washed up a bit, the best we could.  That family took us to a Chinese restaurant and it was great.  We had Peking duck, I had never liked duck before, but it was really good.  Then we went home and got back a little late.

 

Thur:  Out flight from Oahu to the big island left at 5:00 am, so we got up at 2:30 and tried to get all packed and ready to go and had to return the rental car. By time we got to the airport, we still had 1/2 hour, but they said we were too late and they would have to put us on the next flight which left in 1 hour.  So that was good, that we could still do that.  We only brought 1 suit case and then my little carry-on suit case and mom's byu bag, and we could not get everything to fit.  we were carrying bags in our hands on the plane.  We had a great flight and made it to the big island, got our rental car and went to the Jensen's condo.  We found it okay and it is very nice, right on the golf course and has a swimming pool, etc.  But we will not be spending much time here.  We took a nap, went into Kona and went to Costco to buy food so we had it at the condo. And then we went to the Kona temple.  Amber said it was the 2nd smallest temple in the world.  But it was great.  We were talking to a couple afterwards that was in our session with us and he said they came over here 25 years ago to die.  The doctors had given him 3 month to live with his cancer and that was 25 years ago.  He and his wife joined the church about 7 years ago and now are temple workers.  It was a great story.  He said president Benson is somehow related to him.  Then we went to the stake center next to the church so amber could do her homework.  We don't have wifi in the condo and drove back home and got back late.

 

Fri: 

We drove across the big island to Hilo to visit Sister Ahnee who was from Hawaii and served in Elko, 17 years ago.  It was great to see her and her 3 kids and her mother.  He husband was working.  She fed us Laulau.  It is pork meat rapped in Taro leaves and then wrapped in Ti leaves to be cooked.  It was good.  Then we drop around the big island and the rain forest side to see sites and very that side of the island and came back through Kohala and visited a few people in the ward and then back to the condo.  One couple (the Veloria's) sang to us some hawaian songs and she gave amber a blanket of hawaian scraps that she had made and gave her a wonderful explanation of what it was for and what it meant.  They were a very nice couple.  He is a sealer in the temple.

 

Sat:

We got up and worked out a bit.  I went swimming in the pool.  We have 8 wild tom turkeys that walk around the golf course right behind us.  I enjoy watching them. We drove into Kohala and tried to visit a few people that were home.  We went to a park where they had Heiau (temples) from 200-500 years ago where they offered sacrifices etc and where King Kamehameha I was raised and where he conquered all the other chiefs to become the 1st chief to rule all the hawaiian islands.  It was very interesting.  We heard the words, High Priest, Priesthood, seers, prophets, etc.  I find that very interesting that they used those words.  I am sure the book of mormon people had some influence in settling these islands.  We hiked down to Pololu valley where they had huge lava walls and the waves would crash up against them.  It was fun and very beautiful.  That beach was a black sand beach and the sand was sooo fine, like sugar.  We tried to visit a few more people but nobody was home and then we went to the grocery store but food for the sunday and came back.

 

Sun.

We went to church at the Kohala ward.  We got there about 5 minutes late as it is a 40 minute drive from the condo.  It was a very nice small ward and the Kona temple president and his wife spoke to us.  Afterwards they had all the visitors go up and they sang Aloha Oe and gave us all leis.  We got like 3 leis and they had a beautiful smell.  Amber got about 7 leis.  They were all very happy to see her and everyone said that she was a great missionary and thanked us for allowing her to serve.  Afterwards we went by an old 83 year old tongan man's shop where he makes all these souvenirs and amber and mom got to pick out what ever they want.  He is a sealer in the temple and his wife died about a year ago.  A very sweet old tongan man.  We visited with another family and they fed us dinner, she is from tonga and he is hawaian, he is less active.  But they are a very nice family.  Then we visited with Sione (a tongan man who amber found and was baptized in March) and his wife Kimi.  She is not a member, but we had a great visit. Sione had tremendous faith and I can see him being a great leader some day in the church.  We visited with a few more families that amber was teaching who still are not baptized and then came back to the condo.  It was a very nice day.

 

We are learning to love these Polynesian people. They are very loving and very giving.  I hope we can return the favor one day to all of them.  We have had a great trip, but we miss the kids.  Cody and the girls are doing well at home.

 

We love you and are so happy you are serving a mission.  I am sure you are making the same impact on the people in Peru.  As a missionary you will never be able to understand how you bless the lives of those people with whom you mingle and teach.  You affect will be eternal.  Keep working hard and we pray for you daily.  Have a super week.  We hope you are enjoying your new area.

 

Love, Dad

 

 

Aloha, from Hawaii!!

Aloha from the Hawaiian islands.  Well we did it.  We made all the arrangements and here we are in Hawaii.  I mentioned in our last letter that we were thinking about it, but here we are.  We talked about the possibility on Sat. and Amber kept bugging me on Monday.  I did not sleep a wink on Monday night worrying about the younger kids, etc.  I felt like I would be better off staying at home with them and letter mom and Amber go.  But she really wanted us both to go.  So we all made our arrangements to get off work and booked our flights on Tuesday night.  Less than 36 hours before we had to leave. We were all scrambling around to try and make things work.  Wed. night Summer had a softball game out in Spring Creek, and I had to be at Spring Creek high school to present the GBC scholarships to the SC seniors, so I went to her game after my assignment.  Her team won again, and she actually pitched the last inning and did very well for her first time pitching.  She walked a couple of batters, but did very well.  She said she was very nervous.  Then we came home and Sierra AToa and the sister missionaries were waiting for us at home for her new member discussion.  We did not get home from the game until 8 pm and they had to leave at 8:15.  And mom went to shopping after summers game, so it was just me, sierra and the sisters miss.  I was banking on Amber teaching the discussions, so I was trying to wing the 1st discussion and do it in a hurry.  I did not do the lesson justice, but I testified alot which hopefully brought the spirit to the lesson.

So when we were done with that, I had not had any thing to eat the entire day and we had to get packed.  So mom made me a grilled cheese sand-witch and we started packing.  We went to bed at 12:45 and had our alarm set to get up at 1:30 as we had to be on the road by 2 to drive to las vegas to catch our plane.  The round trip tickets from vegas were only 523.00, which was really cheap compared to what we were anticipating.  So after 45 minutes, I did not sleep a wink again as I was worried about everything.  We put new tires on the camry so we could take it as we had to leave it parked the vegas for 12 days, and I did not want to leave the suburban for that long. We got up, showered and got on the road by 3 am.  I drove to Ely, and I was dead tired.  Entering Ely, I could not stay awake or keep the car on the road, mom had to keep grabbing the steering wheel.  I just could not keep my eyes open any more.  Amber slept all the way to ely and then she drove from ely to vegas.  I slept a little bit but was worried about her falling asleep, so I did not get much rest that day.  We made it to vegas and I dropped mom and amber off at the airport and then I drove the car and parked it in MGM casinos parking lot as I did not have to pay parking.  The airport wanted $16 per day for 12 days, and I did not want to pay that much so I parked the car and caught a cab back to the airport for $11.  So we saved some money there.  We flew to L.A. and had an hour layover and then flew to Hawaii.  We got in about 5:30pm Hawaii time or 8:30 pm Elko time.  We were all really tired.  I did not make a rental car reservation as I wanted to make sure we got there ok first.  We got there and they said they did not have any more rentals, we we checked a couple other companies and found one at Hertz.  It cost $36 for one day and we rented that and then when we got to the members house that evening, I made another rental agreement online for the week with Enterprise.  The couple we are staying with, He is 70 and she is 68 and they have 2 married boys in SLC.  He is a CPA and is a partner here with a cpa firm.  Their names are Fred and Eileen Tanaka.  He is a sweet old japanese man and she is OCD.  She is a profectionist and everything has to be just the right way.  It is a really nice home up on a hill.  Friday we got up and went to the temple and did a session.  We went to the visitor's center to see the Ardis and Stu Jensen and they were at a zone conference so they were not there.  We did a little tour of the center and then went to lunch.  We did not eat hardly anything on Thurs. went we were traveling and the couple gave us some salad and chicken from costco.  Friday we did not eat breakfast and we were starving after the temple so we went to Papa Ole's one of amber's favorite places that they would eat after they went to the temple.  We had garlic chicken, but all it was was fried chicken nuggets.  Then we drove around the island.  We were meeting Kenny and Erica, one of Ambers converts at sandy beach for a bon fire.  We had to exchange rental cars and one of my hub caps were missing.  I hope they don't charge me for that.  It was raining really hard when we went to the temple and It must of come off in the rain or somebody stole it.  But we were an hour late getting to the beach.  It was right at sunset.  IT was not really a bon fire, but a little fire and they had bought some garlic chicken and salad.  So we sat around the fire and talked and ate dinner and had smores afterwards.  It was fun.  They are a really nice, sweet young couple.  Mom kept falling asleep during the conversations.  It was windy and the waves were big, but we are yet to touch the ocean.

We got home about 10:30 pm.  Dead tired again.  Sat. we got up and amber worked on her home work and then we went to the swap meet to buy some souvenirs.  It was very hot and we got some island slippers or sandals that amber wore on her mission.  She loved them.  We went around visiting people on sat. but no one was home.  We did find a convert lady home Catherine and visited with her.  A military lady. We were 1 for 7 for visits, nobody was home.  I told amber this was like missionary work. We also stopped in and visited with her mission president and his family.  They are a really nice couple. We came back to the place where we were staying and helped her organize some music for the stake choir.  Our host family fed us Shabu Shabu, for dinner that night.  A japanese dish where they have boiling water on the table and you boil your meat and cabbage and noodles and onions  and mushrooms as you like it and then eat it with a sauce.  It was different but good.

Sunday we drove back and forth all over the island again.  We went to 4 different sacrament meetings from one side of the island to the other, 3 times.  It was fun for amber seeing many missionary friends and members.  She visited sister Laugingoa at one church and sister L. started crying.  She was very happy to see her "mom" amber.

Then we visited with other members that amber wanted to see.  Her one ward mission leader, Brother Cloward, had a house right on the beach.  We could walk right out his back yard through a gate and the ocean was 20 feet away.  It was a beautiful place.  He grew up there and inherited it from his dad.  He has cancer and is not doing very well right now.  He just got out of the hospital 2 days earlier.  The view and sight was unbelievable. I could not imagine living in a place that beautiful and have that view of the ocean your entire life.

We went over to a member family's house for dinner in Ewa beach, the Putenat's.  Their son just got home off his mission 6 months ago from mexico city.  But they were a very nice enjoyable family.  We had a fun visit with them.  Then we visited old Carl, another of amber's converts, and tried a few other homes, but nobody was home.  It was a fun full day.  We were fasting the entire day until we ate with that family.  We left out place at 8 and got back after 9 pm.  

So our Hawaiian vacation is not the typical.  We are yet to really see the beach or swim in the ocean, but we are having a post mission vacation and visiting with many, many people, which is alot of fun.  The 1st ward we attended, a gentleman gave us leis which smelt great and were very pretty.  Also on Saturday, I was able to try my 1st coconut at the swap meet.  They cut off the top and we drank the milk with a straw which was delicious and then he carved off the meat of the coconut and we ate that.  I had never tried fresh coconut milk before.  It was great.

Well we hope you have a super week.  Cody is at home taking care of his 3 little sisters, cooking them dinner, and lunches etc.  We will get back to elko next Tuesday, so the kids will have to be all alone this last week of school.

Keep working hard as the time blows by too fast.  We love you and are glad you are serving a mission.

Love 

DAD