Pioneer Day!

Hello Elder Nielsen,

How was your week. We again had a quick week. I can't think of much that happened. Landon was coming to Elko this weekend, so I made him and Erin 6 lbs of Antelope whole muscle meat. He will be here all this week shadowing some people in the medical field this week. So we will see how much is left when he picks it up.

On Wednesday, Mom, Summer, Adelaide and I caught a cold. The girls had it earlier on in the week. But mom and I had it hit us this Wed. But my nose was running constantly for almost 2 days. I would tilt my head down and my nose would start dripping. On Thursday, I went home from work and told them I was going to stay home. It was too embarrassing trying to work with students with my nose dripping. It has now settled in my chest and I have a cough. Mom and the girls seem to be getting better.

Kylie Olsen got married on Friday and had their reception on Sat. They had gone through a ton of decorations to set it up and I am thinking only about 60-80 people showed up. Mom and the girls were there helping out and when I showed up about 30 minutes after it started there were only about 6 cars in the parking lot. I thought, they must all be parking on the other side, but when I went in, hardly any one was there.  In my opinion, that was too much work for such a small turn out. 

They had a lot of extra food and we had a linger longer after church. They served fruit and cupcakes and cookies. Mom and I went home teaching this evening. We had a good Sabbath day. I had not been sleeping well with this cold and I took a very need 1.5 hour nap of rapid eye movement. It felt great.

We hope you have a great week.  I was studying a talk from Elder Holland in 1997 this morning given to missionaries about keeping covenants. He said this, "So I say to you as I say to myself-- if we really want to succeed in our callings, if we want to have access to every help and every advantage and every blessing from the Father, if we want to have the door of heaven thrown open to us that we might receive the powers of godliness, we must keep our covenants!" He also said this, "It is when an entire mission is united by the strength of every missionary's integrity, every missionary's personal covenant keeping, that we move mountains. When there is such unity and power, and endowment from heaven, coming to every individual in the mission, nothing can 'stop the work from progressing.' It is in this way that the 'truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent.'"

I thought that was neat. Last week, I guess the part about us going to the Angel Lake Fishing Derby got deleted, but I guess you figured that out.

Have a super week, keep working hard and be the missionary that Heavenly Father would like you to be. We love you and pray for you daily. Mom and I think we have the best kids in the world. Mom told me tonight that Sister Bauman was having a very hard time last night at Kylie's reception, as that is what she wanted for her daughter Shawna (a temple marriage), but instead she was going out drinking and partying last night and not making good decisions. It was so tough on her, she had to leave.

We pray that all our kids will keep the covenants and commandments, so the doors of heaven will be thrown open and we can receive all the blessing that H.F. has for us. It is a pretty simple concept. Be obedient and you will be blessed beyond measure and the Lord God is obligated to bless us D&C 82:10. Disobedience brings the consequences for our decisions.

Love.

Dad

Dearest Elder Nielsen,

 Well, today is Pioneer Day, although it will be officially celebrated tomorrow in Utah.  We had a little, and I mean little(not a lot of attendance) celebration with the 4th ward.  It started off with the 5K run/walk at 7 am yesterday, and we started ideout at Bishop Howard's house up on the hill and then we looped around and ended back in the same place.  I thought about running it, but I decided to hang back and walk with Dad and Addie.  She would run to stay ahead of us and then walk until we caught up and then she would run ahead again.  She did pretty well, but got kind of tired at the end and Dad gave her a piggyback ride.  Summer and Carly ran it most of the way--but really slow, Dad and I could keep up with them, between the stops they made at the water stations and the slow jog they were doing.  Afterwards we went to the church and had a breakfast of pancakes, scrambled eggs, fruit and sausage.  It was pretty good.  There were only a couple of families from our ward there. (us, the Hiles, Wheelers, and the Hatches)

I went to Nalani Esplin (Coltin's wife) baby shower after that,(they are having a boy and now live in Twin Falls) and then I had to go up to the church to help set up for Kylee Olsen's wedding reception.  I spent a couple of hours up there putting fruit on wood skewers.  They had a lot of help and the reception turned out really nice.  Landon and Erin attended the sealing, but then she had to go back to Rexburg for school, but he had just finished his finals so he caught a ride out here and is spending a week here "shadowing" different people in the medical field.  Then he will catch a ride back to Rexburg at the end of the week.  They had a lot of extra food from the reception, so I think we are having a "linger-longer" after church today, to eat it up.  Adelaide and Mathew Welch were really funny together at the reception.  They had fun running around and playing-- they were kind of like a little version of Erin and Landon.  We saw Momma Conklin there and she said to tell you "HI" and Shaylee Wilson was there and asked how you were doing, so I filled her in.  Ben Bleazard got married last week and Sister Wright, Amber's companion is getting married next week, also, Whitney and Sabrina Welch will be getting married next month...all these weddings!

We are trying to figure out when to go to CA and visit Gram and Gramp Croft.  The end of the Summer is closing in and we want to make it out there, but our little Summer Rae has soccer tryouts coming up, so we are trying to deal with that as well.  It's been really hot here this past week.  Have the rains finally come for you?  We hope you are having a great week and that you and Elder F. (?) are working well.  We told Brian and Sharon about your new assignment with this Elder and Brian told us that he  had a similar experience.  He was assigned to be comps. with this elder that was a big Swedish fellow and he liked to sleep until noon and he couldn't get him out of bed, so he just ripped the covers off of him and he said it was like waking up an angry bear and he jumped out of bed and broke a chair and then ran out of the house.  Things got better and they ended up being quite successful together.   

Love you, mom