Beautiful Fall here in Elko

Hola Elder Nielsen,

The flu bug hit here this week.  Adelaide woke up on Wednesday morning at about 5 am and said here tummy did not feel good and a few hours later she was throwing up.  She slept for a few hours but ended up going to school. So it was just for a few hours.

I pulled or tore my calf muscle so I did not go to basketball all week.  I had injured it about 3 to 4 weeks ago and kept playing on it, but last week is got really bad.  So I took the week off and it is feeling a lot better now.  On Friday, I went out and did the papers as it was feeling a little better and I wanted to see how it felt.  I went to work that morning and about 10:30 am I started feeling sick to my stomach and I had a family meeting with me and I felt like I would have to put my head in the garbage can and vomit while they were there, but I didn't.  I came home at lunch and stayed home.  I had it coming out both ends. (diarea as Erin would call it)  But I was nauseous they entire time.  I threw up a ton and I was so dehydrated I tried to drink some sprite and that would come up.  But I was miserable the entire day and could not keep any think down.  I did not dare eat any thing.   Hernold had called me earlier that morning and said he got a nice mature buck on Bald Mountain. It was a real heavy horned 3x3 with a huge body and neck.  He said he was coming to town and wanted to go out with us with Summer's tag.  So I was worried I would not be able to go out with him.  He got here after dark, He ran into a place where the rain had washed out the 2 tracks to badly that he slid in the holes and got high centered as his tires were not hitting the ground.  It reminded my of that area where you and I went on your elk hunt last year where the road had 3-4 foot grooves where the tire tracks were washed out.  It took him 3 hours to try and dig his truck out of those grooves.  But I was so sick. He had not skinned the deer, so about 10 pm I put on 3 layers of clothing as I was freezing and we went out there and skinned his deer and quartered it up.  I was so sick, I would get weak and tell him I had to go sit down for a while and I would sit on the porch and throw up in the flower bed.  We got it done about 11:30 pm and he wanted to leave around 4 am. 

 I went to bed and mom woke me up at 4, but I said I need to sleep longer.  So about 5 am I got up and we left to go deer hunting with summer.  It was light before we got to wells, NV.  Originally he had planned on showing me an area in mom's elk hunt where he had seen some big bulls when he lived here and some nice bucks.  But since it was light we decided to go to that area where Summer got her doe last year as it was closer. So we went over there and before we got to the turn off on that road where we called in that bull for you, we stopped and glassed the black mountain hillside. He spotted about 6- 10 deer and was getting out his spotting scope to see if there were any nice bucks as it was about 3 miles away.  Summer taps me on the arm and says, hey look dad. There was a 2-point buck about 200 yards to the right of the truck.  I asked her if she wanted to shoot it and she said yes.  She does not want to shoot a doe this year.  So I get the gun all loaded and get her out and set up over the hood of the truck and she can't find the buck in her scope.  And it just slowly walked out of sight.  We walked over the hill trying to see it again, but we saw him, but summer never could get him in her sights.  We need to practice on that part a little better.  I thought of well, it was only a 2 point we will get a bigger one. Well we ended up working our way up the road all the way up to the wine cup ranch and then we went up to Burnt creek where Hernold had spotted some big bulls in the past.  But we did not see any elk, nor sign of elk.  We did see about 30-35 deer all 3 miles plus away from us, but we could not put horns on any of them.  So that little 2 point was the only buck we saw.  We did see 2 large herds of antelope with about 30 in each group.  One herd had 4-5 really nice big bucks.  In the evening hunt we were going over a road he had been on about 12 years ago, but it was really steep and nasty and rocky and It made me nervous.  I don't like beating up the truck that badly on roads I am not familiar with. It was super steep up and down about 3 mountain ranges. But there were no elk.  We ran in to 3 other groups of elk hunters and they had been there all week and had not seen an elk.  So that was very discouraging for me. We made it home around 8 and Hernold stayed the night with us, and left this morning.  I was tired.  We did not hike a lot but my stomach was all turned up with the bouncing around in the truck.  But I did not throw up any more yesterday and I ate food and kept it down so that was good.

Carly had a pal bball game on Tuesday and their team won big. Suzie Beatty is coaching again and her team is rigged.  I don't like it when they do it.  Balance out the talent of the teams is what I think.

We had the Missionaries and Lois Gurr over for dinner today.  I had a young men's presidency meeting this afternoon. And I need to do my home teaching this evening.

I was going to tell you so Addie quotes.  Last sunday Hernold and Eve were eating with us and Eve was talking alot like normal and Addie had finished her meal and was standing next to her and she said, "Less talking, More eating".

Also the other morning we were eating cereal for breakfast and I finished one box of cereal and added a 2nd kind to my bowl and she was watching me and she asked, "Are you going to eat both cereals at the same time?" I said yes, and she said, the milk will not fit and you will be fat.  After I finished my bowl, she said, let me see you dish and I showed her that it was empty and she said.  "You are fat!"

BYU won big, they played Wagner yesterday and won 70-6.  Utah was ranked 4th in the country and went to USC and got beat 42-28.  I guess the Utah QB threw 4 picks.  Elko beat Dayton 49-0.  Dayton has not scored a touch down all year.

Well that is all the news from this end.  I did hear some chuckers out there up burnt creek.  I will have to throw the shot gun in next time.

Have a super week.  We love you and are happy you are serving a mission.  There is nothing better for you to be doing at this time in your life than serving the Lord.  Be his special witness.  Act, think, and say what he would say and serve like he would serve.  I know he lives and that this is his gospel.  If the people of the Philippines could understand the blessing that come into their lives from accepting and living the gospel, they would all be flocking to it.  

Love

Dad

An additional member added to the family

Hola Elder Nielsen,

This past week was a blur.  I had my accounting class on Monday and did not get home until 10 pm. I also had to finish up all the rest of the tax returns and I did that on Wednesday night and early Thursday morning the 15 of October.  So now I can take a huge breath of relaxation.  I am glad that is all over.

On Wednesday, I got up at 3:00 am to go to Las Vegas for training.  My leg was really hurting me.  I pulled a muscle in my calf.  It feels like some one hit me with a baseball bat in the back of the thigh.  But it hurts all the time.  And I could hardly walk.  I got back late Friday night.  I was going to go to the Elko game, but it was already half time and they were up big.  BYU was playing that night and I watched it on BYUTV. They beat Cincinnati 38-24.  Utah played Sat. and beat Arizona State and they are ranked 3rd in the Nation.

Mom went to the temple on Sat. and I was going to go hunting with the 3 younger girls, but with my leg, I could hardly walk, so I stayed home and rested my leg. Chelsea called and had her baby, David Brian Decker.  I guess mom and son are doing great. 

On Sunday, Hernold and Eve and Aurora came to church with us and then came over to eat dinner with us.  They spent 6 hours here, visiting.  Aurora is really cute.  They are doing great.  Hernold is a high councilor now in Ely.

Well, mom said we received your letter, so I will hurry and get this off.  The missionaries came over to visit so I was talking to them about spanish branch members and did not finish this letter.  But hopefully you will still get it.  We love you and pray for you daily.

Have a super week.

Love DAD 

Another couple of Birthdays this week

Hola Elder Nielsen,

Another week is in the books.  What did you think of conference?  It was great wasn't it?  This week blew by again.  I am getting hammered at work.  I have had all kinds of dead lines and the Dept. of Education is cracking down on us as we are not compliant in a couple of areas (Gainful Employment information), but the person who gives us that information works at Western Nevada College and she was off for a few days and then in training past week, so I am hoping to get all the info. and pass it on to the depart. of Ed.  They have sent 2 nasty emails to GBC's president about this, so it must be kind of important. But it is all on my head, so hopefully I can get it all done this week. Also, October 15th is the last day to finish all the extended tax returns, and I had about 13 left to get down.  I finished 2 last week and got about 3 or 4 more done this past weekend. But I still have about 8 more to finish.  Most of them I am still waiting on information to from the clients to finish.  But I worked all day long on them from about 8:30 am to 8:30 pm.  We did not got to Cassidy's and Tim's weddings this past week as it was too crazy and I need to get all this work done.  I would have been a worried basket case if I had gone worrying about all that needs to be done here.

I have to go to Las Vegas for training on Wednesday, so I have to get every thing done before then.  I have my class tomorrow night and I am not ready for class tomorrow night.  So tomorrow and Tuesday will be super busy and important for me.

We went to the Elko football game on Friday.  It was home coming and Elko played Lowry.  Lowry is terrible this year.  The only game they have won is against Dayton, and Dayton is yet to score a touchdown this year.  We did not get to the game until 7:30 and it was the end of the 1st quarter and Elko was up 21-0.  We ended up winning 42-6.  Benton Wickersham won home coming king and Brook Elquist won the queen.  Benton came in for 1 punt to end his high school career.  He punted the ball 50 yards. But he is scheduled for surgery this Tuesday.  I am not sure, but if it is an ACL, he will probably miss his entire senior year in sports.  We will have to see.  I am not sure how bad it is.

BYU had their home coming game and beat East Carolina with a touch down in the last 36 seconds.  They won 45-38.  East Carolina was 4-1 and the only game they lost was against Florida and they lost by only 1 touchdown.  BYU plays Cincinnati this week who is also not a bad team.

Summer's deer hunt started this past Monday, but we probably will not go out until after I get back from Vegas. It is still getting up to the 80's and is way too hot.  Mom is going on a temple trip this Sat., so it will be me and the 3 younger girls hunting.  I am not sure how well that will go.

I can't remember any thing else that happened this week.  I have been working until about 7pm every night.  So the days are long and the nights are short.

We love you and pray for you daily.  Keep working hard and do your very best to become the missionary the Lord would want you to be.  In my Sunday school lesson today, we learned how to invite others to come into Christ.  We need to make direct invitations like "Will you" and then followed up with the promised blessings and bear witness of the truthfulness of what we have challenge them to do.  Perhaps with those 3 things, you can get all your investigators to go to church and keep their commitments.

I did receive a couple new callings.  A couple weeks ago, the Bishop called me to serve as the Wellfare specialist in the ward.  So I will go meet with all the individuals asking for help from the church and set up budgets, and go over financial matters and plans with them.  And then this week, they called me to serve as 1st councilor in the Young Men's presidency. I was released from my Sunday School teacher position.  I enjoyed that job.  I love to teach and I love the lessons for the Youth. I learn way more than the students do.

Have a super week. I ran into Bruce Jonas at the game on Friday and he asked how you were doing and I said great.  And he said be sure and tell him that they are thinking about you and that you are in their prayers.  I thought that was great.  He is a super nice guy and needs to be active in the church.  He would make a great bishop.  Brother Lynn Warnick from our ward asked about you today as well. And I said you were doing great, and he said you would be great in what every you did as he had watched you grow up and was very impressed of the great young man you became.  He had lots a compliments about you.

Chelsea's birthday is tomorrow and Adelaide's is in 5 days.  I don't know who is more excited, the 26 year old or the 6 year old, but they both are very excited about their birthdays.  Addie has been jumping around like crazy these past few days.

Love,

DAD

Conference Weekend

Hello Elder Nielsen,

Another week in the books.  When I look back on this past week, nothing compares to general conference.  I love general conference weekend.  I love hearing from our prophets and apostles and other leaders of the church.  It always inspires me to be better than I am and improve myself each and every day.  I can't remember much that happened this past week.

Monday I had my accounting class and that always makes for a long day when I am gone 8 am to 10 pm.  I worked late each night trying to get taxes done and other things at work.  It cooled off again and this weekend it has been raining off and on. Summer's deer hunt starts tomorrow, but I do not know when we will get out and hunt.  We got Cassidy Nielsen's and Timothy Campbell's wedding invitations. Cassidy will get married Thursday in SLC temple and Tim will get married on Sat. in the Payson, UT temple.  I am not sure what we will do on either of those, if we will make it or not.  We would like to, but it is always hard with the kids in school, dog and paper route.

On Friday, BYU played University of Connecticut in Provo and BYU won 30-13.  It was kind of ugly.  BYU dominated but could not put it in the end zone.  They had 3 turn overs.  At one point in the game, BYU had 80+ plays to UConn's 30+ plays and the score was tied 13 to 13.  We finally pulled it out in the end.  The game was on ESPN2, but I stayed up and watched it rebroadcast on BYU TV from 11 pm to 2 am.  I was pretty tired on Sat. morning to get up and do the papers.  Elko lost to Fallon on Friday night 23-3 or something like that.  It sounded like Fallon dominated that game as well.  

Saturday morning, we went out to Spring Creek to watch Summer's final track meet. She took 3rd in the mile, she is still favoring a pulled thigh muscle or something, so she is not up to her peak performance.  She long jumped 10'1/4".  I think that is better than her score before.

Then we came home and listened to conference and I worked on taxes all day Saturday and watched college football in between sessions.  At least 4 teams in the top 10 got beat.  Ole Miss #3 in the country got beat by Florida. Notre Dame #6 or got beat by Clemson. UCLA #7 got beat by Arizona State. Georgia, #8 got beat by Alabama.  So lots of upsets.  Utah is ranked #7 in the country now this week.  They had a buy last week.

General Conference was awesome.  I loved all the talks.  President Monson only talked in Priesthood and at the end of Sunday mornings session.  During his talk this morning, he seemed like he was barely able to finish his talk.  He started leaning on the podium for support and at the end of his talk, the microphone was above his face.  When he started he was towering over the mic.  We got 3 new apostles.  I figured one would be Elder Rasband, as I really like him and it was.  The others were Elder Stevensen who was the presiding Bishop and the other is Elder Renlund from the 70.  Renlund was a heart and transplant surgeon.  I really enjoyed those testimonies of the 3 newly called apostles.  After their witness, I told mom, we would not skip a beat, they are men of God and very inspired.  I always like Holland and he talked on mothers. Elder Nelson's was really good and I really like Elder Bednar's talk which ended the conference.  I always have so much to improve on and conference always inspires me to be better.  I also like Devin Durrants talk.  He played basketball for BYU in the 1980's.  But he said to save money every week and see what happens and also to memorize/ponderize a scripture every week. So I thought that we could all do that as a family.  So what I am thinking is that we could all take turns picking a scripture for a week. And we all ponderize it and comment on it in the next letter.  What do you all think.  Then we can share each others thoughts.  I really like that idea to be thinking of a scripture each week to let virtue garnish our thoughts unceasingly.

I will start this week, and we can go from oldest to youngest.  So mom can choose a scripture next week etc.  That way if there is a scripture you would like to study for a week, we can do it as a family.  What do you all think?? Good idea or not? He said he would like us to do it for 6 weeks and then for 10 years.  I think our family and spiritual growth  would be tremendous.  

So my scripture for this week for all of us to ponderize this: 

D&C 121:45

"Let thy bowels also be full of charity towards all men, and to the household of faith, and let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly; then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God; and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distil upon thy soul as the dews from heaven."

We had the missionaries over for dinner after the last session.  We invited the mission president and his wife, the Halls, Lois Gurr as well to join us for dinner as we had pork loin for dinner, but they all had eaten or had other plans.  The missionaries had been talking to President Shumway in the past few weeks and he said they need to get over to the Nielsen's house as they will help you with the missionary work.  Both mom and I felt bad last week as the missionaries got up to bare their testimonies and we both thought to ourselves that we do not really know these new missionaries as we had not had them in our home.  So mom signed them up for today.  We need to take care of the missionaries.

We hope you have a great week Elder Nielsen.  It sounds like you are doing well. Keep working hard.  Every thing you do is all worth it. Invite every one you see to come unto Christ.  Be exactly obedient. Remember that you have been called to the Philippines for a divine purpose.  I like what was said in conference today.  It is not about you, it is about the Lords work and what he wants done with the people of that country.  Be his very best servant and you will be blessed forever. We love you and pray for you always.  We are excited to see what type of missionary you can be molded into by the hands of the Savior himself.  The Lord lives!  This is his church! We must do every thing in our power to help bring his message to all people.

Have a super week!!  The weeks will continue to get better and better as you continue to lose yourself in his work.  He loves you and is pleased with you being his representative.  What a special time in your life.  Take advantage of every minute.

Love,

Dad