Oh my goodness! What a fun, crazy, hard week it's been!

First, Mall of America was sweet! It's huge. A bunch of us missionaries went and shopped around and had lunch all together. I splurged on some Bath and Body Works hand sanitizers hahaha you can never have too many.

Hermana Winterton were getting pretty discouraged this week. We were having a really hard time finding Hispanics when we were out knocking doors. We couldn't find any, so we asked our district leader what we should do. He asked what our goal was for the week for new investigators (which was 3) and he told us to double it, and only count the people that speak Spanish people. We accepted the challenge, and went to work! We set a goal to knock 25 doors on Saturday. We knocked 26 and found 4 Spanish investigators! So we didn't meet our goal of 6, but we knocked 26 puertas and still found 4. We were pretty proud of ourselves. 

There is this sweet lady in the ward who actually reminds me a lot of Ro. She's got a bunch of cute girls, and her name is actually Berta haha. She loves having the missionaries over, and so she invited us and the elders to breakfast Friday morning. It was HUGE. Chiliquiles, (Ask Kim about them, they are SO good. I asked her to send me the recipe too), pancakes, sausage, potatoes, and fruit. The whole time she was telling us to "come más, come más!" Basically the more you eat the more you are liked in Hispanic households. Haha everyday I'm becoming more of a Hispanic missionary by the way I eat/joke around with them. It's so fun!!!

Jensen let me hold his guinea pig.

Our cute little Jamie is getting baptized next month! She is so excited, and we are so excited for her. I guess slime is like a really big thing going on right now with kids, so she always gives us slime (she makes the best kind). We went over the other night to teach her and her family, and they had laid out all the stuff you need to make slime and taught us how to make it! It was really cute and we had a good time all together.

 

We received a referral from a sweet lady in our ward the other day. Referrals are the best! So we went over to this guys apartment. His name is Miguel. He wasn't there, so we thought we would just continue knocking on his floor since we were already in the building. As we were about to leave, he was coming down the hall and noticed us. Long story short, he let us in and he's seriously so golden! He's met with missionaries before, but didn't feel like it was the right time to be baptized. He feels that now is the right time in his life. So I'm gonna ask him to be baptized at our next lesson on Friday :)

At the beginning of last week, it snowed a bunch! I think around 6 or so inches. The next day as we were out doing stop bys and finding, we decided to do some service and help people shovel their driveways and sidewalks. It was really fun and a good opportunity to talk to people about who we are.

So pretty much the Minnesota Minneapolis Mission is THE best mission ever! As you all know, we get to go to the Twins game today. I'm not sure how many missionaries are going, but pretty much anyone within about an hour of the city gets to go. We are SO excited! It's gonna be real cold, but real fun. Tomorrow we have zone conference and I'm accompanying one of the Hmong sisters! I'll try to get a video of it so everyone can see.

This is Elder Shauers. I was great friends with his sister at BYUI and her and I were in the same English class!
It's a pretty small world haha.

I absolutely LOVE Hermana Winterion. She is soooo witty
and I love her more and more everyday.
 I want to be her companion my whole mission. 

Minor/Major accomplishment: one of my personal goals last week was to not bite my nails. I did it for an entire week, and now I've gone a week and a half without biting them! I'm too far now to stop haha.

My personal studies have been really cool this past week. I've tried doing different things within that hour, and it's been really cool!

Don't have a lot of time to email today because we have had a crazy morning trying to get everything done and then we are gonna be at the game the rest of the day, but I'll have my next P-Day on Monday! 

Love you guys! Thanks so much for the emails! I absolutely love the dress mom. I'm wearing it today :) 

Hermana Nissinen

La Conferencia General y La Pasuca!

    I memorized D&C section 4

Hola! 

Sounds like y'all had a good time camping and everything! Looked really fun. This weekend was the BEST! With General Conference, Easter, and April Fool's Day, we had a lot of fun. The transfer board came out, and Hermana Winterton and I are staying in Northe Minne! Woohoo! I am so excited to keep serving here with her.

I started to feel a lot better on Tuesday which was a blessing! This past week we had some interesting stop-bys and doorstep encounters haha. I won't go into detail, but we ran into this guy who was super duper drunk and it was just so weird and hilarious. I was trying SO hard not to laugh at the things he was saying and everything that was going on but I literally couldn't contain myself haha. We also had the COOLEST doorstep encounter Hermana Winterton and I have ever had (and she's had a lot more than me). Like I said before, we really only try to knock on the doors where we hear Spanish. I listened in on this door, and I definitely didn't hear English so I just kinda assumed it would be Spanish. Well a guy from Liberia answered, and he said we were the first Mormons he has ever met. He asked really cool questions, and we taught him for a solid 15 minutes right there about the Restoration. It was just super super cool! 

Hermana Winterton and I started teaching an English class at the church on Thursday! A bunch of people came, and we are going to make flyers and try to get it to be bigger. 

So back to this weekend, WOW! I guess I never had a really good appreciation for General Conference than when I have been on my mission. We just watched it at the church both days with our district and the zone leaders. It was seriously so great, and I only fell asleep in 1 talk which has never happened before at home!! I loved a lot of the talks, but one of my favorites was on Sunday morning from Massimo de Feo. It was really good, President Nelson has made some pretty sweet changes, I am excited to see how it all goes!

Breakfast at Hermana Fuente's house. Her and Hermana Patty are so sweet, they always feed the missionaries breakfast. There was a ton of food this morning for us. Soooo good

We had some fun pranking the elders this past weekend for April Fool's day. Between White Castle burgers (which are way gross, please don't eat them), putting red food dye and elmers glue in face masks and giving it to them, (don't worry, it didn't stain their faces too bad, it washed off hahaha) and changing up the transfer board to say that they are both getting transferred, let's just say that we had a lot of fun :) 

We went with about half of the zone last Monday downtown Minneapolis and walked around and went to the Nicollet Mall and Viking's stadium. Super fun!

I have been working really hard on my Spanish, and everyday Hermana Winterton gives me a new concept to learn and practice. Everyday I add something into one of my prayers or lessons that I have been working on. Almost every single appointment/dinner this week, the person has complimented my Spanish, knowing that I have only been here for a bit. It has made me SO happy you don't even know! I'm practicing hard :) 

Easter was really great. This past week, we have been teaching a lot of members and kids about why we have Easter. I have loved being able to go through pictures of Christ and teach about all He did for us and that because of His resurrection, we can all live again with our families. 

Thank you so much mom for the cute bracelets for Hermana Winterton and I! We love them! 

Today I get to go to Mall of America for the first time :) I can't wait!

Feliz cumpleaños Jacob! I made you a video, thanks for being the best oldest brother! Have a fun day❤

I love you guys! Have a great week, enjoy work and school. Thank you for everything❤ I'm halfway through training baby! Yay! 

Con amor,

Hermana Nissinen

¿ La Primavera, dónde está?

Howdy! 

Thank you all for emailing me this week. I love reading your emails and letters! 

Every day here is something crazy, but I love it. We never really know what is going to happen or who we are going to meet when we wake up in the morning! A lot happened this week, so I will probably just do a little re-cap of each day. 

☆ Monday - A bunch of missionaries (maybe like 20-25?) went over to the Hicken's house to watch Coco! They have a huge house, and we got to go in their theater room and watch it. Afterwards, we played basketball in their indoor gym and lots of ping pong! It was a really fun day.

☆ Tuesday - Every Tuesday we go to this place called CEAP to volunteer for a few hours. We go in a classroom and help a bunch of adults learn English. They are from all over the world, and it's a pretty cool opportunity to go help them. There is this lady there from Ghana, and when I asked her if she likes Fufu and Banku, I immediately became her new best friend. Haha she was so excited that I knew that. Tuesday night's we also teach a music class for the ward! This week we taught them how to lead music :) It's a pretty hilarious class honestly. We enjoy it.

☆ Wednesday - I hit my 1 month in the field! Bien loco! We had a cool experience while finding this day. We got into a locked building (they tend to keep the back doors unlocked so we sneak behind there to get it😉) and listened in on the doors to see if we hear someone speaking Spanish, a Spanish TV, or Spanish music. Haha we walk so quietly down the hallway and always whisper so they don't hear us right outside their door listening in. Well, we really didn't hear anything, but we wanted to knock at least 1 door on the floor we were on. We saw this door that had an English Easter sign on it, so we decided to knock it. Lo and behold, he was Hispanic! (We were so excited). He seemed interested, and we gave him a pamphlet and our number. Hermana Winterton and I left and started walking to a different building, when we both stopped and felt like we should go back and give him a Book of Mormon. We knew it would be kinda weird to go back right after we left, so we pushed the prompting off for a few minutes. But I KNEW I would regret it if we didn't give him one! So we did the "inspired coin flip" technique. Heads we go back, tails we don't. Haha and of course it was heads! So, we went back, gave him one, and testified of it. I am really glad we went back. He is a cool guy.

☆ Thursday - District meeting which is always fun. Our district leader loves to cook, so we all went to the clubhouse of their apartment after and grilled up some burgers and played pool. It was our district leader's birthday on Sunday, and I guess it's a hispanic tradition to smash their face into a cake for their birthday? So we made a cake and did that :) 

☆ Friday - TAMALE DAY! We made 1,500 tamales. 1500 TAMALES. It was so fun. My clothes and my hair all smelled like tamales the rest of the day hahaha. The ward gave us a bag full of them, and man they are so so good. Nothing better than fresh tamales with a little Valentina ;) I also ate watermelon with Tajín chili powder on it... SO good! Makes the watermelon taste way better!

Stirin some tasty stuff to put into the tamales. It smelled soooo good. They went to Mexico and bought

this huge pot and then flew it back haha!

☆ Saturday - We did a ton of finding this day! We met this super sweet lady named Kelly. She started talking to us in English, (and when people do that, we have to talk to them back in English), but then she started to close the door and said that she doesn't know very much English. We asked what language she speaks, and then immediately started talking to her in Spanish. She was so impressed! She said she had been telling God that she wanted to go to a church, and she knew God answered her prayer when we showed up. She even came to church yesterday! Whoop whoop!

My district and the zone leaders. We all sang yesterday in an english ward for their choir, and we all
decided to match with blue florals!

I love Hermana Winterton :)

☆ Sunday - soooooo not entirely sure what I ate, but I felt sick as a dog. Hermana Winterton got food poisoning a few days ago, and it hit me hard yesterday too. We really don't know what it was, but it wasn't fun at all. I asked the Elders for a blessing at church, and then had to go home because my stomach was hurting so bad! I am feeling better now though thank goodness. Haha that's the thing about eating at different homes every night- you really don't know what you are eating, you just eat it. 

Spring is slowly on its way, yay! We shouldn't be getting anymore snow. I am excited to not wear big coats and boots anymore.

One of my goals this week is to just give everything to the Lord; to just lay it all on the altar. I know that this time I have here to be a missionary is short, and I just want to use it to its fullest and give all my time and effort and energy to the work. We have every minute of everyday planned from 6:30 AM to 9:30 PM filled with studies, visits, finding, and backups. You all know how much I like to know what the plans are for the day (right mom and dad?) haha but I love having it all planned out everyday all day here. I want to work really hard this week.

One of my favorite conference talks that I read is "Obedience Through Our Faithfulness" by Elder L. Tom Perry in April 2014. The story reminded me of Papa and the boys.

Anyways, sorry for the long letter but I just have so much to tell! 

Have a super fun time camping this weekend. I am so excited to watch General Conference this Easter weekend. I hope that you all have a special day remembering our Savior❤ Good luck with school and work and everything else! 

Love always,

Hermana Nissinen

Altibajos

Hi guys! 

Glad to hear you all had a good week. 

This past week had a few ups and downs, but overall it was pretty good. The weather is starting to warm up and it feels SO nice! I think Hermana Winterton and I are gonna do a bike day sometime this week which I'm weirdly really excited about.

I love Hermana Hudman. We are great friends.

So I have been practicing my Spanish a lot during language time and I try to speak as much as I can in lessons and dinners. I feel like I have been working really hard at it. Well, last Monday night, we were doing some stop-by's and we went to this one family's house and the mom is not a member. We talked with them and got to know their story and everything, and then shared a lesson. While I was speaking, she stopped me and told me that I really need to practice my Spanish a lot more (in a not very nice way at all). Hermana Winterton was like "No, her Spanish is really good, this is only her 3rd week here!" I was honestly so upset and frustrated. The husband looked at his wife and was like "you have been here for a year and don't know any English so she is doing really well" and then she was silent the rest of the time. I didn't really say much else the rest of the lesson because I was worried that I would say something wrong. At the end, I offered to say the prayer, and I gave probably the best, most heartfelt prayer that I have ever given before and I said it very smoothly. I know Heavenly Father helped me out with that one! When we left, I just started to cry because I was pretty frustrated.That night gave me more drive to practice harder on my Spanish though. I don't want to have anyone else tell me that again!

On St. Patrick's Day, we had breakfast, district meeting, and interviews with President! We made green crepes for breakfast and it was really fun. President Barney is such an inspired man and I really loved the counsel and help he gave me. 

Our District and president Barney. I love these missionaries!

We had exchanges this week, and I got to go to Bloomington with Sister Larsen for the day! It was very interesting to work with Americans.  We had a really fun day and it was a good experience! 

Exchanges with Sister Larsen! She is really sweet. We went out to DQ for some blizzards for a fun treat after an afternoon full of rejections!

Update on Flor: She came to church yesterday!!! AHHH! She got permission to leave the treatment center for a few hours if we found a ride for her, so we were so happy to see her there! We sense a date set comin up soon 😄 We met our goal on sacrament attendance this week so we were pretty darn happy about that.

I had a few firsts this week: 

♡A few days ago I experienced my first bible bash. I hated it! The Spirit immediately left. I probably said more than I should have (as always ha ha) but I know better for next time. We were at the clubhouse doing language study and she came up to us and ranted at us for 45 minutes... ugh! No fun at all.

Another blurry pic, but Israel is a guy that Hermana Winterton taught in St. Paul and he got baptized yesterday so we got to go see it!

♡I also had my first double dinner Friday night woohoo! We had an hour in between to let our stomachs rest before we had to eat again, so that was good at least. We literally get fed so much here, like it's impossible to not have a lesson or a visit without food involved. (I'm doing my best though mom to eat small portions!) 

We learned how to make tortillas at the

Matus' house Saturday night

♡I made tamales for the first time! The scouts in the ward are making/selling tamales for their fundraiser, and the whole ward gets involved with it. Last night we helped make some, and this Friday the missionaries get to make them alllllll day. It's gonna be sweet. 

Tierra is a sweet girl. She is the one that
just got baptized a few weeks ago.

♡I ate tinga for the first time yesterday. It's really good! Pretty much just this really yummy chicken on a tostada with all this stuff on top. I really like all the food we eat, except for this thing called elote that I had last week. It was corn, a bunch of mayonnaise, and the super super hot Valentina hot sauce (the black label kind) all mixed up in a plastic cup. Man was it gross hahaha. 

I helped Neil make a "Pot of Gold" for our St. Patrick's Day craft. The Veterans are soooo funny. Whenever we play bingo, whoever wins that round gets a dollar. They always try to give us their money, and they are HUGE flirts with all of us girls! It is seriously the funniest thing ever.  He is one of the Veteran's that I love. He is soooo funny. Always singing!

I read a bunch of conference talks this week, and one of my favorites was "Raising the Bar" by Elder L. Tom Perry in the October 2007 conference. It applies to everyone, but I especially want Joe to read it!

Big ice skating rink in the middle of the park by our house. We had to go out and take some pics on it :)

Blurry pic, but the city is gorgeous.
I love seeing it every day

Our investigators are doing well, and I finally feel like I am starting to connect with the people here. It's the best.

Have a great week! I love you!

Love Hermana Nissinen

(Or as I got called this week by an old white lady, Hormona Nissinen... jajaja).

"Cerveza, por favor?"

Holaaaaaa!

I love you all!

We didn't have a super successful week, but está bien! Poor Hermana Winterton wasn't feeling too good, so we laid low for a bit and took it easy after our crazy last week. She is feeling much better now and we are both ready to get back to it this week! We are visiting a bunch of less actives and progressing investigators and we are hoping to get a few more date sets which will be great. 

Some of the apartment complexes we go into aren't the saaaaafest ones around town... (North Minne Spanish is known to be the most ghetto area out of all the spanish areas), but really it's not too terrible. We just have to be careful where we go finding later at night. We have definitely ran into some interesting people here haha. Hermana Winterton and I are good about noticing when it could be a not-so-safe situation with someone or a certain complex though. We'll leave those places to the Elders!

One of our neighbors, 60 year old George, is a "bachelor who is a self-employed photographer" (that's what he calls himself) and who literally only wears a bathrobe every time we see him... sorta reminds me of Uncle Eddy from Christmas Vacation. He lives directly above us, and he loves his sleep. So, I guess when we shower at night, the fan in the bathroom wakes him up and is super loud. We weren't aware of this until we received a note from him Tuesday afternoon. It was not a very sweet note. After reading it, I went back to my studies, and had a thought that we should bake him a cake. So, we did. We threw a cake in the oven, wrote an apology note, and walked upstairs to give it to him. Boy was he surprised! At first he started complaining to us, but we just stood there and nodded and smiled, said sorry, gave him the cake, and walked away. Next day, he came down with the plate all clean and a note that said thanks, and then offered to help us out whenever we needed anything. He has been so nice since! It was a small little act of service, but to this man, I think it meant a lot.

My new goal for personal study every day is to read one General Conference talk and continue reading The Book of Mormon. I started to read it from the very beginning again this week and write down in my study journal my thoughts/impressions. I have really grown to love reading talks from General Conference. If you'd like, I can write in my letter home every week my favorite talk that I read and have you all read it for FHE or whatever! 

Some quotes I love!

One of my favorite days of the week is Friday's. Our district meets together at a restaurant called Currans for their $2.50 breakfast that actually isn't half bad (you get 2 pancakes, eggs, and hashbrowns). After that we have our district meeting, and then we go to the Veteran's Home for a few hours. Its SO fun. They are hilarious! Typically we sing a bunch of songs, play bingo, visit, and have treats. But last Friday, they had me put on a little recital for them! I didn't have any other music besides church music, but they loved it! I also played the patriotic songs out of the Hymn book and they all sang along and it was a blast.

This past weekend was the party weekend! We got invited to some birthday parties (Hispanics really know how to throw a fiesta) and then we crashed a huge bridal shower that literally looked like a wedding reception when we went to the clubhouse to get Wi-Fi hahah. There were limos, men dressed up in tuxedos, and super loud music. It was pretty great!

Sunday was a bien loco day. We got a referral to go teach a lady named Flor in an Addiction Recovery center. We met her, and she is really sweet. Very hard life. She has 4 kids who she isn't able to see, and she is pregnant. We taught her about the Restoration and she loved it. I then asked her to be baptized, and she said she wants to. The spirit was really strong in the lesson, and I was starting to get emotional from hearing about her experiences and how she was feeling! It was really cool. That night, the Relief Society President called us and asked us to go to the hospital and visit a lady in our ward who is lonely and sick. We ended up being there for a few hours, but it was sweet.

We had "New Missionary Training" this week. I absolutely adore and love President and Sister Barney. They are the sweetest people I have ever met. Every week, he replies back to all of the missionary's emails individually. I have a lot of respect for them and I am grateful and lucky to have them as my mission presidents! 

The mission office gave me a Finnish Book of Mormon!!
 No idea how to read it but I thought it was cool.

A few days ago at dinner at a member's house, I needed a napkin. The Spanish word for napkin is "servilleta." I asked the Hermana if she could pass me one... but instead of saying "servilleta", I said "cerveza"!!!!!!!! Which is BEER. They all just starting laughing and then I finally realized what I said... haha whoops. 

Anyways, nothin too too crazy this week. Did you know that Minnesota has the most amount of Target's per capita than any other state?? I truly am supposed to serve here😄 Also, Hermana Winterton and I realized this week that we both grew up watching old shows! She knows all the Brady Bunches, Gilligan's Island, and even The Andy Griffith show. I love her so much!

I made a little collage of some pictures and things that I like and have collected so far. This is above my desk

I got your letter, Kim! I wrote you one back and sent it a few days ago❤ 

Thank you for all of your support. The MMM is the best, and I am getting taken care of very well here. I love it here so so much I want you all to come here sometime it is the best place ever.

Have a great week! Love you guys!

Hermana Nissinen