11/9/09 THANKS Dad, THANKSGIVING IS a state of mind!

so this week was good and bad at the same time. im learning so much everyday but we didnt have hardly any lessons with members present which really is the only way to have baptisms. also, our baptism for marleni fell through but we resolved her doubts and will baptize her without a doubt this next saturday. weve met some great people through contacting which literally we contacted 99 people that live in our area this past week and we have some great investigators. Maria is a single mother with her 20 year old daughter Karen, and then another family Fransisco and Hermedia with there 3 sons...one in casa thats 10 years old and the 2 others live in the chacra, or outside of the area in the fields. we taught their 20 year old son with the dad the other day and it was great. we went to some mines today and i have some great pictures that i am sending thanks to the battery charger i received. thanks mom AND dad! ive got to do some fun service but the only field work i did was today for a minute which youll see in the picture. hope all is well with the family and i want to thank you DAD for writing me and giving me great words of advice and fatherly comfort. i really do appreciate it and couldnt ask for a greater father, example, leader, and priesthood holder. tomorrow we have zone conference and interviews, then wednesday we have multi zone conference with the mission and will be an uplifting day! hope all my family is praying for and thinking of me. i need all the help i can get. miss and love all of you including everyone of my nieces and nephews!! hope i can get to hear from some of my brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, or even brothers and sister in law!

11/2/09 DAY OF THE MUERTS is not like Halloween.

wow!!! so much going on at home! i hate getting the news of those that have passed, it seems like it has been at least one a week. so its raining every day here and when it rains...it RAINS!! im getting good use of my rubber boots. ha. the zone leaders are going right now to get the package for our zone so i still dont know if my package came but i will let you know. we have a family of 5 who were lining up to baptize and theyre married, which helps the process. its a couple about 60 years old with 3 daughters about 21 to 28 years old. also, we have a baptism this week for Marleni, who weve been working with since my first weekend here! shes 18, and is very smart and knows how important all the laws and ordinances of the gospel are. also, we are teaching a couple who is married and the dad is great but he only comes home on the weekends because he teaches in a pueblo 4 hours away. all is well here and we went to trujillo today to go shopping and we are now back to the cold here in the mountains. i weighed myself today and i now weigh 176 pounds!!!!!!!! so depressing, but yesterday my pensionista started giving me half the rice and im not eating bread anymore. as well, im not gonna have seconds like i do once in a while. all in all, the work is great and this morning i realized while showering and getting ready, how powerful my calling is and how powerful and real our setting apart is as missionaries. NOBODY could serve a mission without the apartamiento. i love being a missionary and helping FAMILIES become happier and closer, not only to themselves, but to our Heavenly Father. halloween wasnt much here, but dia de los muertos, the same day, all they do is put flowers on the graves and get drunk. its horrible, because when people die, they body is in open casket for 3 days while the friends and family just drink around it, and the thirdy day the have a lunch and then march to the cemetery. how great a way to remember their loved ones.
love and miss you all, and most of all i really enjoyed your letter Dad. i miss doing yardwork with you and think about you constantly. hope all is well with work for you, as well as you Mom. let all my friends know i miss them and say hi to the ward. ¡ciao!

10/26/09 Laughing all the time! A great companion!

first of all my new companion is the best in the world ever!!!!!! he is from lima and only has 2 months left in the mission or one more change after this one. he is the funniest guy in the world and the best trainer, best worker, best everything. im so sad i cant have him as my companion for my whole mission. we are working hard and finding people all the time and are going to walk 3 hours through the mountains on thursday to work in a ¨chacra¨or field with this family so that they wont have to work sunday and can come to church! to show his humor, the other day we were in a mototaxi, which is rare and ive only takin like 3 times, he was like hey man hows it going like massaging his shoulders and then out of knowhere my comp gave the taxista a wet willy!!!!!!!! ahahahahahah. the guy just laughed. we laugh all the time together and the people love our sense of humor and messing with kids in the streets. we have a few baptisms for a week from saturday and families that were working with to get to church! he always says to random people as were walking by like hey hows it going but says greetings in spanish with something in english at the end and we cant stop laughing for like five minutes after. my district leader has 6 months in the mission and is a convert of a year and a half before the mission. 25 years old, from maraga up north by oakland, and graduated from UCDavis. awesome guy and funny, but struggles with the spanish but his spirit is so strong you cant pay attention to that. my zone leaders are both northamericans now and one is from utah and the other is from some town between vegas and st george called logandale where its 88% mormon and theres only like 15000 people. he was from vegas but now only his older sister lives there somewhere in summerlin. anyway, its raining cats and dogs here and im gonna have to send a picture of me in my rubber boots! haha i love to hear about the family, but am sad to here grandpa and grandmas state! let them know how much i love and miss them!!!!!
i want to hear from more of my family!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



-----Original Message-----

October 19 - YES I miss my bike. . .but love giving SERVICE!

thanks for all the updates! yes i wrote josh a letter and he should have gotten it by now. he sent me a dear elder and i wrote back in the mail. yeah trust me i miss my bike probably the most out of all the material things at home but i never think of that when i see the people here living with what they have enjoying it. the work is slowly moving here, some less actives are reactivating and we have a few baptisms lined up and more waiting for the couples to get married, but we had a big service activity on saturday from 8am to 4pm and it was a huge success. some sisters who are seamstress´ worked all day on three sewing machines and fixed up peoples clothes who brought them by. we elders shined shoes at the curb and that was the most popular. i taught a little english class and one of the elders here went to chef school before the mission and taught cooking classes and it was awesome. the best part was the hair cutting, because a few sisters know how but our investigator who cuts hair for a living, came and worked the WHOLE day and the sunday before payed tithing and then yesterday as well payed her tithing!!! how awesome is that!? and changes are wednesday and tonight we find out which one of us is leaving but 99% sure its my comp cuz president and the AP´s told him that he was gonna get reassigned about a week ago.
love and miss you all

10/12/09 THANKS FOR ALL YOUR PRAYERS!

soooo....thanks for the letters nikki, peter, dad, and mom!!!! love hearing about my nieces and nephews always, and dont worry for me and my attitude with my trainer...it really is a problem and he didnt train me ONE bit, which is why one of the AP´s and a zone leader from trujillo came to help him out and president had a good hour long talk with him on the phone. it was bad, i was the one taking lead and being the motivator, and i just am sad that we were having low numbers and next week we will see where we all go for changes but my companion is leaving, thats already been established. im sending a few pictures from this morning and am glad to report that with the help needed, we had 4 investigators at church sunday, and testimony meeting was the most powerful EVER!!!! 6 missionaries to start with and the people here are the best because they keep it simple, and that the way it should be. a couple about mom and dads age are gonna get married so the can get baptized, marleni, who is 18, a 21 year old who after one lesson, watched the talk of elder holland from saturday on the internet, and wants to serve a mission!!!!! haha how powerful is that!?!? also, a recent convert who is 16, is helping her 12 year old sister who is investigating. i know it was because of the fasts and prayers from my family and am so greatful to you all and love and miss you. i got to see the saturday sessions in english and priesthood in the stake center in trujillo, and then sunday watched her in the house of our pensionista in spanish!!!!!how cool no?!?!?! her husband works in television transmission so i listened to the prophet in the mountains of peru in an adobe house haha. love you all and keep me updated

10/5, Fall is in the air. . .Cow Stomach? Interesting. . .

hey mom, first things first, the only thing you can send to the pouch service is trifolded single sheets of paper taped. the little note you sent with the art from elyse came but was opened and had a sticker saying that they dont send them like that which is why they checked inside or something. so yeah. but anyways, still no success for us as far as baptisms go...its killing me but reading that letter of jordans that said he had the same struggle the first 2 months made me feel a little better. a 9 year old named alexander is ready to get baptized and has been to church 3 times but since he watched a baptism a few weeks before we got here with the old elders, he saw that the girl was freezing cold when she came out of the water and now he doesnt want to get baptized, solely for the cold water. so were gonna try and do something to work that out but hes never home and so we cant tal to him. weve taught his mom lessons 1-3 and ive her scriptures to read everytime and she does it and is very interested and understands very well and loved the plan of salvation lesson. the only problem is she still hasnt prayed specifically to recieve an answer about what weve taught her, which is the problem with all 804573586730947563 of our investigators!!!!!!!! ahhh it bugs but ive been patient and know the time will come. also, Marleni, who in 3 days prayed twice about what we taught her and recieved an answer to both, and committed to getting baptized, has since begun teaching catholocism classes to little kids at the catholic church, which is very strange because she told us she didnt practice any religion. so yeah, i worry for this branch because the president does nothing, doesnt come to correlation meetings, and didnt even come to the activity thursday night!!!!!!!!!!!!! and HE LIVES in the same place as the church?! yeah, theres problems, but prayer is keeping me motivated, and although my companion is not doing his part a lot of the time, im probably gonna talk to the zone leaders and hope he makes a change. for the second time yesterday, we ended our fast by eating cow stomach, which totally is not fun.
ciao everyone, love and miss you all.
thanks for the dearelder heidi! i loved it and get so excited when i hear how well the missionary work is there in yours and nikkis ward love - Elder Nichols

Kylle's style hat will have to wait for his son, Carter is already too big for it!

9/28/09
yeah i live behind the casa capilla or chapel house and its not a good idea to send mail up my way. just to the trujillo address you have. and ive only dealt with diahrrea and like two killer head aches. suprisingly, my feet havent given me a HUGE problem, obvious pain but nothing out of the ordinary. thanks for everything and i just sent the memory card to the house with a little alpaca beanie for carter, and two little pins that have little peruvian people for lucy and elyse. i got them in lima and just never sent them. thats my present for tyler and katy so carter better sport that bad boy. 100% alpaca son! the little pins were a sole but i felt so bad for the lady who was selling them i had to buy one and then when i bought it thinking lucy would think it was funny or who knows what, i was like hmm, elyse might be upset with the thought that i got something for lucy and not for her. so yeah. love you all and miss you and hope all is well in all your respective homes with your respective families!!!! were having a "noche de kilo" this thursday night in our branch which is supposed to mean everyone brings a "kilo" of some dry good prepared into a easy but good thing to eat as an emergency preparedness thing. oh yeah, and also, when we got back from trujillo last week after p-day, we went straight to the funeral of the 2nd counselor in our branches 2 year old son. very sad occasion but i have realized even more how true the church is in light of this experience...he was inactive for about a year until about 2 months ago and then yesterday in church i saw him as a different person, he is happy and bright now whereas before he wasnt to excited about stuff but even the day of the funeral HE was the strength for everyone. also a side note, the funeral was very different. you just pick an empty spot in the cemetary, and dig a hole, which he did, and then we helped fill in the hole, and as we did so came across a full head of grey hair that was in the ground before and a nice bone. welp, thats all for now. !ciao¡