Buenos días :)

Thanks for all the emails this week! 

It's been goin pretty darn well up here in North Minneapolis. For awhile I felt like our area was just kind of going steady, but lately we have really seen it progressing. 

First, Sophie got baptized yesterday! Super cute. We taught her almost everyday last week, and her whole family was there every time too, which was awesome! I feel so so bad for their family. It's really cool that they are coming close to the church now during this time while their mom is gone. She was soooo excited to get baptized and confirmed. She didn't have a single dress, so we went out and bought her a dress to wear after she got baptized. Very sweet girl. 

The transfer board came out this morning and........ I am staying in North Minne, finishing Hermana Nelson's training! I have met her a few times before. She is from La Grande, OR, and went to school at BYU-I! She is really sweet. I am so excited :)
(And slightly nervous!!)

English Sisters are my favorite!! We made cheesecake and just goofed around. Sister Anderson goes home this week. I will miss her a lot, I love her so much!!

Every night we have gone over to pray with the Valerio family. He and the sons are less-active members, but the girlfriend is not. She is so awesome!! We have loved going over and praying together with them as a family. It's been sweet. 

Hermana Silvan took us to Lake Plaza where she owns a little jewelry shop. There's a bunch of restaurants there and
she took us out to dinner! It feels like you are in Mexico when you are in there haha.

We won't have P-Day next Monday. It is getting changed to Wednesday because of the 4th of July!! We have some proselyting time in the afternoon instead of the evening because there's no way we would be able to at night. Speaking of, are you guys having a big 4th of July party???

I'm so sorry this letter is short this week. Not a ton of time to write today. It it going to be a CRAZY week!!!!!! Wish me luck!!!!!

The big chair in Minneapolis!

Love you guys so much. Thanks for all you do. 

Love Hermana Nissinen 

Elder Beach's parents took us
out to breakfast at Curran's!

Sister Beach gave me a Mother's hug

Missionaries have a salary now!!!

Hola familia! 

Primera, felíz día de los padres! I hope you had a great Father's Day, Dad. I love you!

I found Oregon!

My week has been super great! We have been able to see some cool miracles, and we are seeing quite a few people progressing. I love working with Hermana Meredith, she is very much a go-getter and we have a lot of fun just getting things done and making things happen. I think we are really starting to build the ward's trust a lot. When members see you work hard, visit every single person Bishop has asked you to see that week and report back, real missionary work happens. We have seen that this week. 

On Wednesday night, we had dinner with this new couple in our ward, the Cook's. She is from Chile, and he is from Utah but met on their missions. They are so cute and super funny! They whole time we talked about their missions (they served in Kentucky). Hermano kept talking about what a good missionary is and what a bad missionary is. He challenged us to ask 10 PEOPLE to baptism by Sunday... We were like "Holy cow! We have never asked that many people in just 3 days!" But he told us to ask everyone we meet. We left that dinner super pumped to do the work, and right after we went to a lesson with a less-active/part member family. It's a really sad situation, but they are a young family and the mom was just taken away this past week. We didn't know that when we went over, but we taught them. Sophie, one of the girls (who looks just like Dora lol), wants to get baptized (another 9 year old, haha woohoo!). It was just cool to see how right after our dinner, we had the opportunity to teach about baptism and ask her to be baptized. She is getting baptized this Sunday!

We got asked to help teach Activity Day girls on Thursday night. It was on journal writing and the importance of it and the blessings that come from doing it. We were asked to share a few journal entries with the girls. Reading through my journal, I realized how sucky I had been at writing in mine. All I had written was things that I had done that day. I never really wrote things I learned or cool experiences I was having. I decided then that I wanted to be MUCH better at writing in my journal. It's so important!!

We have a new investigator, Ricardo, who the elders have been teaching a bit but he just moved into our area. He's older, and he has cancer and altzeimers, but he still comes to church every week! It's really sad because he wants to be baptized, but he literally can't remember anything we teach him. We decided to buy him a notebook and have him write down everything important in it so he can read it later. He is super funny and a really nice guy.

A few weeks ago we met a guy named Kevin. He seemed pretty interested and wanted to read from the Book of Mormon. We set up an appointment with him but he wasn't there. Throughout this past week, in a few different places I saw Kevin 3 times and talked to him a bit each time. We set up an appointment for Saturday, and we decided to bring the English Elders with us. When we showed up and got out of the car, he saw us and went right inside his building. We were like "what the heeeeeck." So we run in and knock on his door and no one answers. We keep knocking and yelling his name and his mom says through the door that he is somewhere around the building. So all 4 of us missionaries are runnin' around trying to find this guy haha. (He's probably like 30 something years old). I look through the window in the building, and I see him walking down the street on the other side. Haha we ran back out there and sat down and had a lesson with him. It was awesome!! The Elders even told us that he came to church yesterday. It was a real funny night.

Oh my, it's getting SO HOT here! Okay I know that Ghana was probably hotter and more humid, but its definitely really humid here. A lot of people's apartments don't have AC so we just sweat buckets haha. Minnesota also has really cool thunderstorms.

So Pablo dropped us this week. Long story short, he thought us misioneras are on a salary or something??? Lol we told him that this is what we do everyday, but he thought it was like our job and that we get paid more money every time we teach him, so he doesn't want to be taught anymore. We kept trying to explain it to him that we don't get paid but he didn't understand. He doesn't live super far from us, so we always bike to his house. He said he felt bad that we just had bikes and not cars so he only wanted to visit with us because he wanted us to get more money to buy a car. Lol very strange. 

Yesterday at church I ran into a guy named Will who lives in Bloomington and served his mission in Guadalajara! I asked him if he knew "Elder Michael Long" lol (Choncho) and he totally knows him! They came home together! It was cool and I think he sent him a picture of us.

Sorry it's blurry

Transfers are next week... we'll see what happens! I hope to stay in Minneapolis! 

Love you guys bastante! Church is true. I love it with todo mi corazón ❤

Have a great week!

Love Hermana Nissinen 

I love my mission!

Hey guys!

Joe, congrats on graduating! Feels good to be done with it all, right? Nice work on all the cords there too!

Wow, it's been another crazy week here in Minneapolis. 

On Wednesday we were able to help out at Daniel's funeral. He was 24, and he had committed suicide. It was really sad, but it was cool to see his in-active family and a bunch of his friends come all together. Hermana Meredith and I played this gorgeous arrangement of "If You Could Hie to Kolob." The English elders have an investigator who owns a recording studio and he records Christian music and wants us to come over and record it, so we are going to do that which will be fun!

Thursday we had interviewsssss with Presidenteeeee! I love meeting with him and talking to him about the area, investigators, and how I am doing. He's the best! After interviews we all went to go get frozen yogurt :) Thursday night, the family who we had dinner with texted us and asked us to meet them at the river in Minneapolis! We were already in the city, so they brought us Chic Fil-A and we had a picnic with them on the river. Every Thursday night there is a show on the water from this group called the "River Rats" and they do like cool tricks on skis and acrobatic type of stuff. It was awesome. We definitely want to go again.

Saturday, the elders texted us saying that they are going to the temple and that we can go if we want to. All week we had tried so hard setting up appointments for that day, but not a single person texted us back or anything. We decided to book it to the temple and meet up with the other Hermanas. Unfortunately our Tiwi now works, but I prayed and prayed that I wouldn't get too many "Check your speeds" on the way there, and I got 0!! . The St. Paul temple is beautiful, and it was really nice to be there.

On Saturday I hit my 5 month mark. It's seriously gone by sooooo fast! I still feel like I'm brand new in the mission (which I kinda still am) but dang it's been the best. If I hadn't been on my mission these past 5 months, I really don't know what I would have been doing. Just these 5 months alone have stretched me and pushed me in ways that I had never been stretched or pushed before, but I have learned and grown a lot. I'm really grateful for my mission, and being able to see my friends and family going out on their's makes me so happy! I'm sorry mom, but I just want the time to slow down hahaha every transfer is getting faster and faster! 

Dinner at the Vega's last week

Happy early Father's Day, dad! I am sending you a card :) I think it's unfair how we can't call home on Father's day too!! 

I love you guys, thank you for everything! Have fun this week.

Love Hermana Nissinen 

Sugar? Pushups? Hmm...

Hey fam!

Gee whiz, Monday already. What a solid week it's been!

Like I mentioned last week, Elder Dyches from the 70 came and we had a mission conference! He was way awesome. He served as mission President in Portland OR in 2008 I think. I ran up after and told him I'm from Hillsboro and we got to talk about some people we each knew and what-not! Remember when missionaries use to leave those little white shirts in our bathrooms made out of notecards? Haha yeah that was his idea! He taught all of us how to make those and asked that we would start doing that. Pretty funny! But he gave awesome trainings on the importance of the Book of Mormon. I liked when he said, "If you read the Book of Mormon every single day, you won't fall away." We decided to take this advice and read with our progressing investigators/recent converts everyday. For example, with one of our investigators Pablo, we call him at night and read a few verses out of the Book of Mormon with him and talk about it. After a few days, we have now delegated that to a ward member to start doing with him! It's been real cool. He also taught about the importance of the sacrament and how as missionaries, we have to focus on getting people to church. Before church, I went through our phone and area book and texted/called probably 40-50 people to come to church... and not a single one came. Lol. Hey, whatever. 

We found out some sad news this week. One of our investigators Diego, his older brother Daniel who is 24 and is a less-active member and someone who we have been teaching unexpectedly died on Thursday. We went over on Friday night to give flowers and talk to their mom. They don't know how he died :( It's real hard for their family. Hermana Meredith and I will be playing a musical number at his funeral this week. I'm seriously so grateful to have a testimony that families are forever!! Please pray for this family!

We totally ran out of miles for the month, so we biked! Haha on Wednesday we biked 16.1 miles😁 

My favorite conference talk this week was from this last conference by Elder Lynn G. Robbins called "Until Seventy Times Seven." I love when he says, "Our success isn't going from failure to failure, but growing from failure to failure without any loss of enthusiasm." I know I can focus on this more in missionary work because we see a heck of a lot of failures! But I can learn to grow from them, rather than just dwelling on it.

Sister Knapp (one of the English sisters we live with) and I decided to have a competition. Neither one of us are going to eat sugar until the end of the transfer unless offered by members, and even then only just a little bit (not going back for more). If we do, then that night we have to do 50 pushups. We started on Saturday. That night we went to a birthday party, and I had told some of the members I'm not going to drink coke or eat the sugar for a competition, but then they all started offering it to me and made me eat it! I have a few videos. It's pretty funny. 

Today for P-day we are taking the big van and going bowling! It should be real fun. 

HAHA so... at the veteran's home we made a collage about ourselves and cut pictures from magazines and this guy named Neil just cut pictures of the women and glued them and it was so so funny

 

The ladies in the ward now all call me their "hija" (daughter) which is adore and love. I love Minneapolis and my ward so so much!!!!! 

Thanks for the emails, congrats on graduating Joe! I love you guys! Have a great week! 

Love Hermana Nissinen