December 1, 2014

Hey guys!

Things here are fantastic! We got our money for the month so we can buy groceries! Life is good :)

This week went by so fast I can't believe it. I remember being a greenie and wondering if time would fly by life everyone says it does. I guess I just had to get to this point and experience it myself to see how true it was.

Elder A and I are having a great time. We're still working with C, trying to get him ready to be baptized. He has a sincere desire, but alcohol can be really hard for people to leave behind sometimes. Make sure you keep him in your prayers!

We had a great thanksgiving, ate tons of turkey and candied yams, etc. it was great. Plus we got to chill with members all day and play soccer. We also did a service project and cleaned the church.

Over my mission I've come to love the Spanish language. I love the culture, I love learning, and I love getting to speak it. I think it's amazing how humble the people are, and how hardworking (I think immigrants especially are) and family oriented they are.

I found a scripture that kind of sums up how I feel about how my mission has changed me so far. It's a classic

27 And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.

Ether 12:27

Before my mission I was a very different person from who I am now. I feel like I'm happier, more charitable, and more outgoing. All things that I've gained from my mission. And I feel like it's the same way for everyone who discovers the gospel.

I'm excited to see all of you this Christmas. Especially so I can issue a formal challenge to Sam, who seems to think he'll be able to take me down when I get home.

Les amo

Jake

Feliz Dia de Accion de Gracias

November 24, 2014

Hey guys

This week was pretty good. We found two new investigators - a couple of 12-13 year old kids. Their parents aren't very interested, but they're very friendly and open to having us teach their boys,  so that's cool. Elder A and I are getting along great. He's the first companion I've had on my mission who I feel is a really good friend as well. So we're having a good time.

The highlights of this week were mostly culinary. On Friday we had the branch Thanksgiving party, complete with candied yams and fried turkey with cranberry sauce. Then on Friday we went over to Brother M's house for hamburgers.

It was a life changing experience.

Bro M doesn't just grill hamburgers, he starts by folding the patties over slices of cheese then wraps each one in bacon and grills it over charcoal. It's amazing.

 Then for desert we had peanut-butter filled brownies and ice cream. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

All I all this week has gone by really fast. We teach English classes on Wednesday nights and play soccer with the branch on Thursdays, so that helps a lot.

Last Friday my companion's bed fell on me.

We have a bunk bed, and I sleep on the bottom.  After an eventful day, I was lying there thinking about the things you think about before you go to sleep (food, did I leave the iron on, what am I going to eat for breakfast tomorrow morning, rating the sisters in the zone by attractiveness, etc.) when all of the sudden I hear from above an ominous creak. I have just enough time to make a sound of confusion/terror when the mattress (and Argyle with it) falls from above and lands unceremoniously on my face mid-shout, driving the air from my lungs. This made a sound that I can only describe as a rubber mallet coming down full-force on an unsuspecting duck. Thankfully my companion had the good sense to get off of me quickly, and I escaped with a bruised forearm.

Turns out his mattress board had been shaken loose earlier by all of us roughousing/trying to take down Elder L. I guess that was God's way of saying "knock it off".

I didn't sleep very well of the rest of the night.

So that was my week. It was a fast one. I sure miss the snow, and skiing, and mountains. All it does is rain here, and there's nothing do to outdoors in Lincoln CA. Mom will be happy to know there are no cliffs here. I checked. Just miles of rich white suburbs as far as the eye can see.

Time really is flying by. I'm excited to talk to you all this Christmas.

I'll finish these last six months strong, and then I'll be home to experience Swig and the Greek Food Truck and hang out with all of you people.

Have a great week

Love

Jake

p.s.

You were asking about the members and how they feed us:

I love tamales. My favorite Mexican food is caramelos though. It's like a Mexican Philly cheese steak. Don't ask my why it's called a caramelo. It just is. And it's delicious

Our members do ok feeding us, which is good because our allotment doesn't cover our dinners, but sister M (codename: the fun-sucker, a sister missionary) had complicated things by saying she doesn't want to eat in the same homes as us.

So, if at any point you think to yourself: "I feel like sending jake a package. What should I put in it?" Food is always good. Not just cookies though.

I didn't get to be as buff as I am eating top ramen and peanut butter sandwiches. ;)

 

17 November, 2014

Hey guys, I'm on the ground in Lincoln and things here are great. My

 companion, Elder A., is really cool. Supposedly I'm "follow-up

 training" him, but he doesn't even need it. His Spanish is excellent

 and he's a lot of fun to be around.

 Plus he's also a skier so I have someone to commiserate with as I

 spend another winter trunky for the wide open slopes of park city.

 The members here are great. We ate with a member family from Peru, Los

 A., and they made us pollo salteado. It was ricissimo!

 We live in a cramped apartment with the Zone Leaders in

 Rocklin, where all the rich white people live. Elder L. and Elder

 C. are alright. Rocklin is nice area, but

 the majority of our work is in Lincoln, about 5-10 minutes away by

 car.

 It was cool to go to the trainers meeting in Roseville and see all the

 new greenies coming in. There was one Spanish elder - elder C.-

 and two Hermanas.

 So yeah. We have a baptismal date set with a guy named C. for the

7th of December, but he didn't make it to church this week. I don't

 know how solid he is - we've only had one lesson with him so far. This

 area seems to have the slowest work of any I've been in so far, but

 the branch members are great. I think they're really missionary-minded

 and willing to help out. I can already tell I'm going to love the time

 I get to spend here.

 Our address is …, in case you'd like to send me some food because Elder L.

 is a large Tongan and eats everyone else's (it's okay, we still love

 him).

 That's about everything for this week.

 Love

 Elder Nichols

10 November, 2014

Hey guys!

I'm going to Lincoln City. My new companion's name is elder A. I'll be leaving Gridley tomorrow at around 8 am. I'll only be training him for one transfer. So... Yeah. I'm kind of sad to be leaving Gridley. There are a lot of great members here. But I'm sure Lincoln will be great. I'll probably end up spending Christmas there. Lincoln is the one area I really don't know anything about and have never visited. I have no idea how much Spanish work is there or anything. It'll be interesting.

I got asked to give a testimony on Sunday. Elder H. was supposed to give a talk, but forgot to write it, so it ended up shorter than expected.

This week was super slow. I'm spending today packing up all my stuff since I wasn't expecting to leave and got it all unpacked this transfer. So this is a lot of fun. Transfers are always hectic. The hardest part is finding rides. Hermano O from Yuba is going to be driving me down to Lincoln. He's like the Spanish Missionary Bus. He always takes time to pick up missionaries no matter where they are and get them moved. I'm pretty sure he's driving someone just about every transfer. That's one great thing about Spanish-speaking members. They're always such humble and generous people.

Well, I'm coming up on another winter in California, and then it's the home stretch. Things are going great, and I'm looking forward to this part of my mission.

I'll send you guys an update on the new area next week.

Love

Jake

Great Hike!

November 3, 2014
Hey everyone!

So hiking today was great. We went to a place called Feather Falls. It's about an 8 mile trip total, and it was a lot of fun. California's finally cooling down so it wasn't too hot. The only bad thing was that the rivers are really low because of the drought - but that meant we could climb around the dried-up mouth of the falls right by the cliff face. I forgot my camera so I had some other elders take pictures. I'll send them to you hopefully next week. It was a really pretty area.

J., our newest member is doing great. He got up and bore his testimony yesterday, which was exciting. It's really cool to see the changes he's made in his life to become a member of the church.

I can understand your troubles writing an email about a slow week. It was the same thing here.

I really miss the mountains and snow. I actually dreamed of skiing a few nights ago, no kidding. Seems like my subconscious is reflexively adjusting to prepare my body for the coming ski - season. Oh well. There's always next year. Unless of course President Marston authorizes the zone trip to Lake Tahoe that I've been pitching to him.

Well, there's only one more week in the transfer and I'm sure it won't be as boring as this one was.

My scripture for the week is Philippians 4:13. One of my favorites.

Love,

Jake

 

27 October, 2014

Hey guys,

This week was pretty busy for us. First off was the zone blitz on Thursday, which was eat because elder H. and I split up and got a ton of work done. Then I had to translate for stake conference on Saturday and Sunday which was hard, but ultimately really good for me. Translating from Spanish to English is many times harder than going from Spanish into your native language, but I picked up on a lot of words that I didn't know and subsequently learned. The bad part was that it's pretty taxing mentally - taking the ACT test is the closest thing I can liken it to - and I did it for all four hours on Saturday and most of the Sunday session because nobody else felt like helping. So I went to our baptism on Sunday with a pretty gnarly headache. It's just been a crazy weekend.

Speaking of the baptism - it was great. Tons of people showed up, we had a lot of support from the branch, and J. was baptized by his son, J. Jr. It was great. I feel like we didn't really do a whole lot. The Lord prepares His children, and we as missionaries put in time to teach them and that's it. It seems to me like baptisms just happen when they happen. You can't force things. You just have to let Heavenly Father do His work on His schedule.

All in all it was a very spiritual experience, once I got ahold of some ibuprofen.

So yeah. That was my week. Pretty busy, which was a nice change.

Love

Jake

20 October, 2014

Hey guys!

It was great to hear about your trip to Arizona. I hope you had an awesome time. I think I'll have to make myself a homemade o- lineman sometime. Sounds delicious.

Our week hasn't been too interesting.  J. is still on date to be baptized but we had to move his baptism to the 26th because this week is stake conference, so we're going to baptize him on a Sunday.

This week the weather got down to 70 degrees for the first time, which was nice. Apparently there's still a huge problem with the drought though, so I hope we get some more rain this winter.

Other than that everything is going well. I have to translate for stake conference, so pray for me! It's going to be hard going from English to Spanish rather than the other way around.

This Thursday we're going to be doing something called a missionary blitz in Live Oak where all the missionaries from our zone go to work in a single area for the whole day. In theory this will kind of jump start the work in that area by visiting a ton of people and getting everyone excited about the work

One awesome experience that we had this week happened while we were in Live Oak. We were about to leave to head back to Gridley when a name popped into my head of someone else we could go visit.  At first I figured he'd probably still be at work, but I felt like we should go check anyway, so we went over. Turns out he was just getting home and he had some bad news. He's getting divorced from his wife because of differences over the church (he's the only member in his family). We shared a scripture with him (2 Nephi 4:26-31) and he broke down and told us how much he'd been needing to hear something from Heavenly Father and had felt like he wasn't getting any answers. We talked about testimonies and how the adversary is always looking for chances to pull us down if we let him, but that if we focus on moving forward with faith he can't do anything to hold us back.

So that was a powerful testimony to me of the spirit's guidance in missionary work, and I would encourage all of you to study that chapter if you get the chance. It's a good one :)

So that was my week. It was a pretty good one.

I've heard there's supposed to be a record snowfall this year, which hopefully means good skiing?

Mom:

I got the package! Thanks a ton! It was just what I needed. I also got Jess's letter and the 10 dollars. Thanks for adding to my food stores! Maintaining this much muscle mass isn't easy on a tight budget.

Let Jess know that after much consideration I've decided to be a missionary for Halloween, as the candy payout from members will likely be 50% higher, mitigating the doors slammed in my face and still allowing me to do missionary work.

I miss you guys too and I'm looking forward to seeing you all again!

Love,

Jake