Minnesota = MILLIONS OF MOSQUITOS

What's up fam!! 

How's it goin? 

Well, the sun has been out, the mosquitos have been out (a lot), and many Book of Mormons have been passed out.

As a zone this week, we had a goal to pass out 100 copies of the Book of Mormon, which would be 10 per companionship. Each copy was marked with a verse about the Atonement. We went to work last Monday after P-Day, and offered one to every person that we met. Even if they were not very interested, we sill offered them one (planting seeds!)! Hermana Nelson and I ended up passing out 15, and then we completely ran out lol. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing when missionaries run out of Book of Mormons haha. 

Saturday, one of our ward missionaries and his family all got sealed in the temple! We weren't able to go, but we did go to the reception afterward. Almost all of the other Hermanas were there and it was really fun to see them (including Hna Winterton!!) The boda was great. Hispanic weddings are just so funny. Always a good time.

Felicidades to the Martinez family for getting sealed!

We found this GOLDMINE of a trailer park the other day! It's a bit away, but there's so many Hispanics there and it's awesome. Trailer park tracting😊

As we were leaving an apartment complex on Saturday, I was about to get in the car when a guy came up to us and said hola. We talked to him for a couple minutes, gave him a Book of Mormon, and invited him to church! Sunday morning I texted him and asked if he is coming, and he said yes! He came and stayed the whole 3 hours and really enjoyed it. It was just cool that we met him so quickly and then he came to church. Go David! We hope he's actually interested in the gospel! 

Sweet little Landon bought me this stuffed animal at the store. He went up to his mom and asked her to buy this for his favorite hermana!! Hermana Cinnamon!❤

Good ol Al at the veterans home.
He grabbed my hand and kissed it! Ahhh!

Last night me, Hermana Meredith and Hermana Powell did a musical number at President's Fireside! We played How Great Thou Art; me on the piano and both of them on the violin! It was so fun! I'll try to get a video of it. 

For the first time on my mission I finally asked to take some food home because I literally could not eat all of it! We went to this family's house for lunch and she gave us a GINORMOUS plate of food! My plate alone could easily feed 3 hungry men. Like no joke, it was so much. So I just had to ask to take it home, and I don't think she was offended! Woohoo! 

I'm going to be honest, this week has been kinda hard. We worked hard and met some cool people, but idk, I feel like I've kinda been in a rut this week! Because I've been in this area for quite a few months, I feel like I should know everyone and everything by now which I definitely don't. I am excited for this new week though and to get a lot of stuff done. It's gonna be a good one, I know it 😊 

So there's a story to this one. A few night ago I went to make a bowl of cereal, and tons of ants started crawling all out of the box. All of our boxes of cereal were infested with ants. We threw everything away. So gross!!!!!

Thank you all for your support and everything! Glad you all had a good week. Hope you feel better Joe! 

Love you,

Love Hermana Nissinen

6 meses.... say whaaaaaat????

Buenos días familia y amigos, 

How's your past couple of days been? Haha mine has been pretty good! 

First, I'm super duper grateful I got to see the Nelson's!! We went out to Culver's. It was so fun to meet up with them and chat. I really appreciate them coming and taking us out to lunch! 

This past week during personal study I have been studying different motivational missionary talks. I'm sure some of you have read them before, but my favorite one was the Ricciardi Letter. Joe, GO FIND THIS LETTER ONLINE. It's super good, and it has made me do some things differently in my missionary work, especially with training. I highly encourage you to read this. I've been focusing this week (and will continue to focus) on making the most of every hour that I have. While planning, I ask myself, "what is the BEST thing I could do in this hour? how will this help my investigators or help me fulfill my purpose?" Thinking this way has made me be a lot more productive. While it may to hard to go and knock doors until 9 to 9:30 at night, I know that Heavenly Father will bless me for my efforts, and I will be a much happier missionary! 

Ughhhh we have met so many interesting people this past week. There have been times on my mission where I just want to be able to share exactly what I believe when people say many unkind things about the church or Mormons, but I know that we aren't really supposed to because it just causes contention. It can be very frustrating!! This kind of thing happened Saturday night. I was just sitting there, listening to these men tell us very unkind things about the Mormon faith. I knew that if I brought anything up and tried to defend, it wouldn't have gone anywhere. So I sat, smiled, thanked them for sharing, and then went to the car and just screamed! Haha but I know Heavenly Father gives us little opportunities like that to test our faith. I could have left feeling mad, angry and hurt, but instead I left and just knocked some more doors. Definitely a testimony building experience. 

I made red white and blue layered rice crispy treats for the 4th of July BBQ! They turned out great!

Yogurt Lab is sooo good :)

This week we had zone conference! It's fun to see and meet other missionaries. Our mission has set a goal for each companionship to teach 15 lessons a week, and to work on teaching members the lessons. We have set up a ton of appointments this week, so I really hope they all go through. That's the toughest part. We set up appointments, confirm, and they aren't there. I guess it's just the way missionary work goes haha.

 

We have been praying and working with many less-actives. You're right B, they are seriously gold mines. Yesterday at church, 2 families that haven't come in FOREVER came!!! MILAGRO😊
 

Victor y Christina Sari. Favorite people! I love them! And their baby Jacob is ADORABLE. I just want to hold him so so bad. I will take a picture of him this week. We go over to their house every Sunday night for Noche De Hogar.

So it freaks me out to say it, buuuuuut 6 months ago today I left home. I didn't want to know exactly what day I go home, but an Elder told me the other day... July 10th, 2019. Seriously CANNOT believe it. I wanna make this the best year ever, and I wanna work harder than I ever have before😊

I'm so grateful for these past 6 months. There were times (especially in the CCM), where I really didn't know if I would ever make it this far, but I know with Heavenly Father's help I have been able to. Haha it's so weird - sometimes in the car I just look around and I'm like "holy cow, I'm really in Minnesota!" Or I look down and see my nametag and realize that I am a missionary. Idk, it's just weird haha but I love it.

I love you guys so much! Have a fabulous week.

Xoxo Hermana Nissinen

Hola! 

Happy 4th of July! I'm sad we can't blow up any cool fireworks today, but we have fun day planned! This morning we had a couple hours of proselyting time, and then from 1-9 we have the rest of P-Day! A bunch of us missionaries are going to a park and we are gonna play softball, volleyball, soccer, tennis, spikeball, and basketball. President and Sister Barney are bringing hot dogs and so we'll have a BBQ and a campfire and s'mores! I'm stoked! 

Wow! Been a crazy week! Hermana Nelson and I became companions last Thursday. She is seriously the sweetest! She lived in Hillsboro for a couple of years, near the Streets of Tanasbourne, and she was in the Rock Creek Ward! Her and her family moved to La Grande while she was going to high school. Super cool! It's pretty weird how 2/4 of my companions have been from home. She is super down to earth and very easy to get along with. I've learned a lot this past week, and I want to give her lots of opportunities to speak cause that's what will help the most! I'm so excited for this transfer!

My new companion Hermana Nelson!

Ricardo was in the hospital last week, so we went with the Elders to go visit him and they gave him a blessing. We had a lesson with him on Saturday afternoon, and we asked him to be baptized! He said yes! We have to teach him a lot, and we have to go really slow so he understands, but he is doing really well. He loves coming to church and he said he feels something different there. He is back in the hospital now. Please keep him in your prayers! He's the best.

Vincenta is just really sweet. She LOVES to
 crochet so we go over and she teaches us how.
She is just a sweet old grandma.

Penafiel's... they are SO CUTE. We talked about families and drew pictures of our families. They are less-active, and haven't been to church since I've been here but they finally came on Sunday!! And they have been having us over a couple times this week. They are so sweet.

Guess what I tried this week! The Matus' fed us pig feet on Saturday. Mmmm. Haha honestly, the taste wasn't that bad. I kinda liked it. It was just the texture of it that wasn't my favorite. Super slimy and fatty. 

I'm sorry I don't have a ton to report on this week. Thanks for your emails!! Have a great week and enjoy your 4th!!

Love you all,

Love Hermana Nissinen

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