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

Goals really do come true!

Wow! Hey guys! 

This week I have realized that hard work really pays off. We have had a very rewarding week. I think it's safe to say that it's been the most rewarding week I've had so far. It's been so great!

Our zone had a focus this week to find 50 new investigators. We have 10 teams in our zone, which means each of us needed to find 5. We haven't set a goal for 5 investigators in 1 week for awhile, they are usually around 3 or sometimes 4. So Hermana Meredith and I prayed and prayed that we would be able to meet our goal. Well, we went to work, and GUESS WHAT! We found 9 new investigators this week! That's right, NUEVE NUEVO INVESTIGADORES. And 8 of them speak spanish! We have really been blessed. The focus ends tonight, so we are hoping to find one more so we can double our goal. I have really seen how having faith, and then going to work can bring forth blessings. 

Yesterday our sweet Yeimy got baptized! She was so cute. She was so worried that she would get dropped in the water and drown, but we assured her that that wouldn't happen :) Even though she is 9 years old and still technically counts as a convert baptism, it has been really cool to be able to teach her because her dad is not a member and has become more and more interested. We know that him seeing her get baptized was special and may have sparked a little something. 

We had exchanges from Friday-Saturday and I stayed in North Minneapolis with Sister Larsen! I had to do all the talking in Spanish and I was very proud of myself for how I did. I saw this guy who looked Hispanic working on his bike in his garage. We went up to him and I had a regular, normal conversation with him and talked to him about who we are and read out of the Book of Mormon with him! We were there for about 20 minutes and it was just him and I talking completely in spanish. It was AWESOME! 

This week I had to give the doctrinal training in District Meeting. I thought allll week what I wanted to train on, and after many many different ideas, I taught about sanctification. This past month, President Barney told the mission that he wants us all to be more consecrated and to fast and pray about how we can be. So I found some awesome talks and scriptures about sancification and how I can be more sanctified as a missionary. It went really well and I learned a lot!   
                                     
                                                  (This was a practice preformace we did before Sunday)

Yesterday was another crazy Sunday! We had coordination, Hermana Meredith and I did a musical number in sacrament, we taught Young Women's, Yeimy got baptized, and then we had to teach a Noche De Hogar! President and Sister Barney came to the baptism and asked us if we had a dinner that night. We told them we didn't, so they invited us over to their house for dinner! Sister Barney made super yummy spaghetti. It was nice to have a good homemade American meal. So, it was a busy busy day, but all super great things. I love being a missionary :)

Also, it's gettin real hot here already. Saturday was 97 degrees and it's pretty humid too. A few months ago it was below 0, last month it was below freezing, and now it's 97 degrees. Crazy Minnesota! 

I've had a great week. We have worked real hard. We met/exceeded all of our goals. 1/1 baptisms, 1/1 date sets, 3/2 investigators to church, and 9/5 new investigators. Super cool!

This Thursday we have Mission Conference, and Elder Dyches from the 70 is coming. I got asked to play a musical number! So I'm gonna play Called to Serve. Wish me luuuuuuuck!!!😁

Thanks for the emails. Have a great week and have fun hiking today!

Love you,

Love Hermana Nissinen

Bienvenida Hermana Meredith!

This week has honestly gone by so fast. Everyday has been packed with so many things! It's been real fun.

Well as you know, Hermana Winterton got transferred to Rochester. Transfers are on Thursdays, so we had a few days to go around and say goodbye to people. I was pretty sad that she was getting transferred, but I met Hermana Meredith on Thursday and she is really sweet! She is from Bountiful Utah, and she goes home in August! She is an amazingggg violinist, and she is going to major in music so it's been pretty fun to talk music with her! We are going to do some songs together sometime. Change is hard, but I am excited to work with her and be her compañera😊

Last night we had President's Fireside. Hermana Winterton came up from Rochester and we got to do our musical number with Hermana Roman! We played "Paz en Cristo" (Peace in Christ). I don't have a video from the actual performance, but I do have one from us practicing that I will send. It was really fun and I'm super grateful we were still able to do it. Recent converts/converts in general are asked in advance to give a talk about their conversion stories. It was so cool. Missionaries are allowed to come if they are participating in the fireside or if they have an investigator to bring. The last half of this week has been crazy, as usual! I got my Tiwi card, so I have finally been able to drive! It's kinda nice haha. Except our Tiwi doesn't even work in our car, so that's even nicer. It's a tradition in the mission that if you have to go to transfers because you or your companion are getting transferred, after you switch and everything, you go with a bunch of missionaries to Chic Fil A. It's so fun cause there's so many missionaries there and you get to hang out with your new companion. Thursday night we taught English class, and we practiced buying things in the store. I had brought some clothes and shoes and stuff and pretended to work in the store and they had to buy them from me and what-not. It was super fun and cute! 

Friday morning we went to Currans for their $2.50 breakfast. You know you are out of MSF money when they decline your card because there's no more money on it😁😁😁😁 (*hint hint*). Lol but then we had district meeting and then went to the Veteran's Home for a BBQ and to play games with them! One of the elders put a bunch of fun sheet music on a Google drive folder and shared it with me, and they had asked me to play for them, so I had a lot of fun playing Disney Songs, Maple Leaf Rag, Kiss the Rain, and I even played My Heart Will Go On hahaha. The guys there are all pretty old, and when I was playing a guy in the front row started unbuttoning his shirt (he had an undershirt on) and undoing his pants (he had boxers thank goodness). It was hilariousssss. The ladies were helping him out and I just continued playing haha. I felt bad for him though because he just didn't know what he was doing! One of the funniest moments on my mission haha.

Saturday morning we had a zone service activity in Bloomington. We split up into teams and we had to go to a few houses and do yard cleanup for some old ladies. We raked, pulled weeds, and cleaned up their gardens. After that we hurried back up to Minneapolis for a baptism that I had to play at! Afterwards we went over to a member's house for a lunch/dinner BBQ and they had cornhole. I was very much grateful for all the time I had spent playing cornhole cause I kinda whooped the elders butt in it hahahaha. It was fun to play it again. I miss playing it with you guys! 

Yeimy had her baptismal interview yesterday! Whoop whoop! She's so ready. This Sunday she is getting baptized, and then the Richfield Hermanas have an investigator getting baptized at the same time. 2 convert baptisms in our ward! We are very excited.

Last night we had President's Fireside. Hermana Winterton came up from Rochester and we got to do our musical number with Hermana Roman! We played "Paz en Cristo" (Peace in Christ). I don't have a video from the actual performance, but I do have one from us practicing that I will send. It was really fun and I'm super grateful we were still able to do it. Recent converts/converts in general are asked in advance to give a talk about their conversion stories. It was so cool. Missionaries are allowed to come if they are participating in the fireside or if they have an investigator to bring.

I love this Gospel and being a missionary soooo much! This week was kind of hard with changes, but I know that I will learn and grow a lot. Thank you for your support and love and everything! It means so much to me.

I love you guys,

Love Hermana Nissinen

(Another name I have been called by from a few kids is "Hermana Cinnamon." Lol I can't find a Spanish word that sounds like my name so I just go with whatever they want to call me.)

Transfers :(

Hiiiiiii!

It was SO fun talking to you guys yesterday! I'm grateful everything worked out and we were able to have good connection and all! It's always hard to say goodbye, but until Christmas, right?😉💕

Since we just talked yesterday and we dont have much time today, my email will be a bit shorter. I also have some sad news... Hermana Winterton is getting transferred :( I'm sad, but I'm excited for her! I will be companions with Hermana Meredith. I'll be staying in North Minneapolis and taking over the area! It will be good for me.

Anyways, you pretty much heard about my week, but it was super fun! We had some good lessons and some cool contacting experiences. 

This past weekend was crazy! Saturday morning we woke up at 5:30 and went to Eagen as a district to volunteer for a 5K. Hermana Winterton and I were the "lead sisters" so we had to help organize all the missionaries there. We just stood and cheered people on! Later that day we went to St. Paul for a Mother's Day party, and then went to a birthday party after that! Super fun! It was great to see the ward together and it gave us a cool opportunity to meet a lot of Hispanics that live in our area. 

This week is going to be crazy, but I am excited for the things ahead. I'm so glad I got to be with Hermana Winterton for 2 transfers. She is a huge example to me and I love her so much! I'm going to miss her, but I know we will be able to still see each other around the mission! I'm so grateful for all of you guys and all of your support and encouragement. I really appreciate it. Thank you as well for all of your advice about missionary work. It was a blast being able to see you! 

Thank you Aunt Ninnie for the package.  It totally brighten my day!

I love you all so much! Have a great week!

Love Hermana Nissinen