March 29, 2010

Nick's Zone Conference (Elder Dennis is the guy on his left who was his MTC comp, and Elder Montoya, his first comp, is on his right)

Give up? It's a dog!

Nick, the pro photographer! These are his two comps

hey!

Well two more weeks until changes! im pretty excited as you can tell haha. i really hope i get changed to a new area so I can experience something different.. but im trying to prepare myself just incase it doesn´t happen. So all the zone leaders in the mission had a big meeting the other tuesday so i got my package, i LOVED it! thanks so much everything was so good. especially the videos! i went to watch them and for some reason they wont work on my camera... but they worked on my comps 10 year old camera haha kinda funny, so next time you do videos try it on a different one i guess? But yeah it was soo good to see the house and you guys. the house looks SO nice... have you done anything different to it? seriously i have watched it like 50 times and everytime my mouth is just wide open.. it looks so freakin comfy and ah i dont know i can´t even explain it haha. Josh you freakin owned that kid in your match, that´s my boy!! one thing though... stop getting bigger.. for real though im going to feel like an idiot of your are bigger than me when i get back haha. Thanks for the hawaii pictures too that was a good idea, im going to print them off today and put them in my apartement. i also loved the art book way good idea! my companions were sooo happy with the stuff you gave them haha they couldn´t believe you would want to give them stuff, i think they are both going to write you letters (dad will just have to translate).

Well i have good news. a women that has been taking missionary discussions for over a year now and goes to church everyweek has decided to get baptised. She used to live with her husband (although not married) and so she couldn´t get baptised because he didn´t want to get married. But finally after talking with her for a while and going over to her house consistently our prayers were answered in a weird way. She decided to leaver her husband after some issues, i talked to her for a good 30 minutes after church this sunday trying to tell her that this was a blessing and that i know it is hard for her but really the blessings she is going to recieve for being baptised totally outweighs the pain she´s going through that will pass in a relatively short amount of time. she agreed with me and said that she is better off without him and is excited to get baptised. we are going to have the baptism the 10th of april! so yeah im going have a baptism this change!! who woulda thought?

Well i have a funny story to tell you guys that happened this week. So we were waiting at a members house because we were going to teach his friend there. This member is 93 years old and is way active and everything. Anyways, we were sitting there waiting and he asked me, "hey have a question. What´s up with the whole coffee thing?" I then asked him why and he said, "well i drink coffee everymorning and have been for the past 50 years." This man has gone to the temple 79 times (he knows the exact number), and is probably one of the strongest members! He then said "i think it´s an error in the scriptures." I was soooo mad, I then read him a bunch of scriptures, he argued with me for while, told me he will just sleep the whole day if he doesn´t drink it. I read him some more scriptures and it went on and on for about a half hour. finally, i really nailed him and said something he couldn´t argue with and he replied, "i have something to tell you....i dont drink coffee, i was just testing you!" hahaha i laughed so hard i couldn´t believe it. he is 93 years old and was SO serious the whole time!! Anyways he told me that he was very pleased with me haha good stuff.

Well conference is coming up this saturday and im very very excited!! pretty much all of saturday and sunday we will just be at the stake center watching it with our zone and the members of the stake, it´ll be a good day! It´ll be cool to think that i am watching the same thing that you guys are and at the same time. Well im glad nicole got home and that she did well at her homecoming. Tell her i said hi! Im glad you guys enjoyed the email for Hermana Zelada, she is awesome! I´ve become pretty close with her, I have been at her house everyday for breakfast and lunch for the past nearly three months! I cant wait to read the email dad sent. I might not have time to buy my hammock today, but if not i will for sure next monday. it´s not to sleep on, just to relax! well... ok maybe to sleep on some nights. haha but yeah everybody here in El Salvador has a hammock in their house.. EVERYONE. So yeah i just figured i´d by one while im in the city and am able to, and just take it to each house. i also think im going to buy a machete! Thanks for the pictures of Dani´s baby, she´s so pretty! gosh i wish i was there to see her! Well love you guys i´ll talk to you more next week, watch all of converence.. no sleeping boys!!!
love nick

Daylight Savings--oops! March 22, 2010

Dear Fam,

Well sounds like you guys all had a pretty crazy week. Holy crap I wish I could have been there to see Reese be born, I'm pretty sad about it. She is way pretty though and I can’t wait to see her and play with her when I get back! Tell Ashley and Dani congrats and they are going to be great parents! Thanks for the pictures I loved them.

Well we had a multi zone meeting Wednesday, which I always look forward to! I got see and hang out with Elder Dennis pretty much the whole to so I was way happy about that. It’s so funny to talk about the past month and different things that have happened to us. It’s pretty funny how similar of experiences we have had. I also got to see elder Montoya! ha-ha but yeah it was good to see him as well. I have a picture with both of them that I will have to send next week. Also I got the package!!! thanks so much Mom I loved it! I found the money from both you and Grandma and I bought my comps dinner a couple nights ago. I made a short little video of them saying thank you in broken English haha its pretty funny so look forward to that. Good thinking with the conference CD´s they have been so nice! it has been cool to listen to Elder Scott and Elder Christofferson because they both give their talks in Spanish! From the sound of elder Scott’s accent I'm guessing he went to Argentina? look that up for me I want to see if I'm right! But yeah it’s pretty impressive how well he can still speak for being that old. But elder Christofferson has REALLY good Spanish. I think he went somewhere in Central America. Anyways thanks a ton for the package I LOVE getting them and all of it was great.

Well other than that this week hasn’t been too eventful. I have a funny story to tell you about last week though ha-ha. So I didn’t know that last Saturday was day light savings time in the states.. and it turned out to be quite the problem for me. So our church begins at 8 and before it begins we get up early and go to all of our investigators houses and try to bring them with us to church. Well with having three elders in the house we decided to get up extra early, 5:30. We got up and went to houses but nobody answered, we were pretty mad. So we went to the church without investigators and at this point it was about 7:55.. or so we thought. we went to the church and the gates were still locked and nobody was there. well I pulled out my watch to check the talk again and realized it said 6:55 and not 7:55! My stupid alarm clock automatically changed because of day light savings time and we woke up at 4:45 in the morning!!! ha-ha kinda funny. We just laughed it off and went back to the house for a bit. The sad thing is after all that we still only got one investigator to come ha-ha.

Mom thanks for the updates on my friends; I can’t believe Jason is going to Alabama! that’s perfect for him, I don’t know why but I can totally see him there. Thanks for the NCAA updates! That’s cool that BYU finally won a game, sounds like it was intense! Well I love you all, thanks for all your prayers and support. I’ll talk to you next week.

Love nick

New Companions- March 8, 2010

Elder Montoya and I

Elder Montoya's Birthday Party (a little guitar and some bad steaks!)

Our flooded room, newspaper solves everything!

Baptism Day!

dear fam,
Well im sorry i missed you guys last week mom and dad, i´ll be sure not to go to that place ever again! Well this week has been ok, a little trying! Well here is a little info about my companions. Elder Gonzalez is from guatemala, has been a member for 11 years, and has four siblings. Elder Melgar is from Ilopango, El Salvador. He actually goes home Sunday night until Tuesday, and his calling is only for year(he's blind). It´s pretty incredible how self reliant he is. He has a book of mormon in braile and its soooo sweet to watch him read it. It´s like a huge binder and there are 7 different binders that compile the whole book of mormon, so he doesn´t carry it around. But yeah it´s really cool! We still live in the same house, we just have to squeeze three beds in our room now. I look up to that guy a lot for serving!!

So the other day our pipe to the toilet broke and we couldn´t get it to stop spraying everywhere so pretty much our house flooded haha, i´ll try to send you some pics if i can of it, but it was pretty bad and at 11 o clock at night! I was pretty dang beat the next day cause it took us like two hours to get it fixed. Well I opened up the package and loooved it thanks so much!! I particularly love hearing you guys on the tape, thanks everyone for everything you said i appreciated it a ton. Mom thanks for all the stuff in there It´s been so nice having some snacks and stuff! Those coin chocolates taste so dang good for some reason haha. But yeah everything in there was awesome thanks thanks again. I also forgot to tell you that i got the pics that you guys sent last week, they are sooo good! I also got the pics this week, Josh stop getting freakin big dude i still need to be able to work you over when i get home! Adam lookin good at your concert boi! 

Let´s see what else can i tell you guys.. I like my new zone they are all pretty cool! Well right now we are just trying to find investigators, we´re are having trouble getting into peoples houses. We have find a girl named Wendy who we taught and she´s real possitive but when we came back to teach her, her grandparents answered and chewed us out for good five minutes haha no joke screaming in our faces... for some reason they REALLY don´t like mormons. So did Danielle have her baby today?! Brooke tells me her due date is today. I can´t wait to get pics.. so hopefully next week!! Well im going to send some pictures now so i´ll talk to you guys next week, love you all thanks for all your prayers and support, I know they help.
love nick