March 17, 2014

Hello family!

first of all, i haven't received a letter all week. what is going on? i'm dying over here. also aww that was nice of them to get you a big gift basket :) tell them hi and that i still miss them! awww noo our trees! i never thought they would come down. 
yeah anywya fun stuff at home thanks for keeping me updated. so now i guess i will tell you about my week. it was interesting. not too exciting. we had another ztm. i finally met all the missionaries in my zone. there are so many senior couples! oh also haha yeah i went to that baby shower last week at the blackburns. it also was way snowy on wednesday! we had to stay in for part of the day so we didn't get in a car accident. we have been searching for more good investigators. oh funny story. so we went on exchanges this week. I went with Sister Stephenson to Watertown. it is such a cute town! way bigger than gouverneur. but so we were walking down the street to get to someones house and ahead of us is this screaming crazy man who is yelling at a lady in a car. we are like 10 feet away when he starts to walk away but then he turns around and yells to her "YOU KNOW, I SITLL LOVE YOU" and then she's like "THEN WHY DONT YOU SHOW IT?" and then he's like "I DO SHOW IT" and then she said 'NO YOU DON'T" or somehting like that. so funny. we got a safe distance away before we started laughing but it was seriously so funny. we considered approaching him and offering to teach him about the gospel but we didn't feel like he would be in the mood. it was like being in the middle of a drama series haha. oh and then we had a dinner appointment with this awesome family. they are hawaiian. the mom is so funny and there were like 4 teenagers. it was so fun. she made us cafe rio/costa vida basically. aw i miss hawaii.  oh also today we bought funfetti pancake mix. stoked to try that. also we had district conference this weekend. so weird the "stake" or "district" of potsdam is like as big as our ward. maybe a little bigger but its nuts. there are no members up here. they all talked about missionary work again :) i love being the most important person in the room. how is the missionary work in our ward going? well. i kind of got to go but i will add more info in my letter. WRITE ME. 
lates,
sister quinn nilsson

March 10, 2014

Hola familia. 

Yeah sounds like a crazy week for you all. Talking to you guys on the phone was really great. I hope everything goes well with the funeral and tell everyone else I say hi! hahahahah i can only imagine what sean and aaron would have said to madison. oh send me a cd or something of those piano songs, i really like them! i told madison a while ago to record her playing them and then send them to me but she wouldn't. anyway ok my week wasn't too super exciting either but i guess i will tell you about it. 

Umm...yeah i just looked through my planner again and really nothing exciting has happened. this week i have been pretty distracted and kind of stressed and also kind of over it all. i'm sure all the stuff with grandma  has to do with me being distracted this week. i still get pretty sad about it sometimes but i still know that its better she be in heaven now. mostly we have just been visiting some less actives and trying potentials and tracting. i used to be really afraid of tracting, but for the most part, people here have been pretty friendly. i also, as you know, am pretty bad at talking to strangers but i have found that easier as well. we still haven't found any new investigators yet but we just have to be patient. i'm not really stressing about it right now because i remember in corning how long it took us to find someone (almost 3 months!) but when we did finally find someone (the Aumicks :)) it was the best ever and totally worth waiting for. so yeah, just working everyday to find someone and i know eventually we will be lead to the person who is ready for us. oh i also went on exchanges this weekend though. i took over the area for the day and had sister jorgensen come up here. it was really fun! i was kind of nervous to be the leader for the exchange but hopefully she learned something from me. idk...i'm not really a leader person but i just did my thing and we worked. we also had the 2nd meeting of the gouverneur group last sunday. it went pretty well. 21 people showed up. including our cool investigator. she is going to get her answer through this church attendance! she really wants to know if the church is true and has been praying and reading and now she is coming to church so i am excited for her. 

well. thats it for me this week. make sure all you guys email me and write me next week! i understand that you guys were fairly busy with everything going on but i missed hearing from you! i love you and hope this week goes well.

love, sister quinn nilsson

March 3, 2014.

Hiya Family!

Gosh I'm sorry to hear about Grandma. That must be hard for you guys. Just remember that everything is in God's hands and that whatever happens is for the best. And don't worry about me, I'm doing ok with it all. I've got lots of other things to distract me! But I will for sure keep everyone up there in my prayers.

In other news, things in the new area are going pretty well. Oh and clarification for dad, I'm not a trainer but I'm a sister training leader which is basically like a district leader but for sisters. Our main job is to go on exchanges with the sisters we are assigned to be over and to just help them with their missionary work and lives. So for that leadership position we get to go to MLC or missionary leadership council every transfer I'm pretty sure it is. We got to ride down with some other sisters and our zone leaders to Utica to spend the night in the mission home and then go to the council thing the next day. oh but guess what, we had to be at the mission home by 8:30 but we got into Utica around 7:30 and one of the sisters needed winter boots so we got to go to the mall! with a target!! It was an hour of pure heaven for us haha. It was seriously like walking through a wonderland. Sister Church and I got twinner shirts. We didn't even plan it either haha. yeah we went to Target and H&M. So great. The elders told us they saw us and tried to get our attention but all us sisters were just so out of it and only in shopping mode. It was funny haha. Anyway so MLC was cool. The mission department or whatever is implementing a new method of teaching and we are going to be the guinea pigs. I will tell you how it goes, its crazy. Its totally different than what we've been doing but it looks like it will be effective so we'll see. we also had our first Gouverneur Group meeting this Sunday! it was a success I think. We had about 25 people there. It was weird having church in a community room covered in St Patricks day decoration but it was cool too haha. Hopefully we will be able to see more people come next week. Yeah, things are going pretty good here. Sister Church is a really hard worker which is great. I like to be with people who get work done. Looking to be a pretty good week, minus the cold. I love you all and will be praying for you. Keep me updated with letters please :)

love, sister Quinn nilsson

Greetings!

hello family!

greetings from corning! i'm still having a great time over here! oh also, tell nick and nate happy birthday for me! i dont know exactly what day its on but i knew it was this month so yeah. there were a lot of peoples' birthdays this month. sister stephens' was on the first and tim's was yesterday! we went to branch council that morning and told everyone so then like 5 people came up to him within 10 minutes of each other and wished him a happy birthday! he was so happy about it and it was so cute haha. we also gave him a homemade card and a picture of the temple and it was like the girliest present ever and he is this outdoorsy hardworking man man but he loved it! :) yeah really this week was pretty bleh. sister stephens was sick most of the week so we stayed in. not super fun. she slept and i tried to keep myself entertained with church movies and the keyboard that the elders were nice enough to let us borrow/have. it was snowy this week anyway though so a good time to be sick. literally everyone has been sick but i am still good so i'm hoping i was just lucky enough to avoid all of it. we had zone training on friday though so that was good. so many people will be going home soon, its so weird! we are going to get new AP's probably and new zone leaders. i really really really want to stay this next transfer like i've told you guys haha. our investigators are just doing so great! we went over the baptismal interview questions with the aumicks last night and tim never ceases to amaze us! he says he believes joseph smith was a prophet and that thomas s monson is the prophet today because aww:) he has been praying about it. he says personal prayers along with family prayers:) so basically he is the best investigator ever and the spirit must really be working with him because he used to not be religious at all but now he is coming to church regularly and repenting and being the most awesoem person ever! so really they were the highlight of our week again. please please contine to keep them in your prayers. especially big tim. also tell me how grandma jean is doing, hopefully better! i love you all and thanks for the letters i've been getting but keep writing me! g2g

love, sister quinn nilsson

Hello family!

Hello family!

Sounds like an exciting week. Ew i forgot about the inversion utah always gets. glad i'm not there! really though i love it here. ok i will tell you about my week now.

 

this week was very very very good! we got to go to the kuenzli's for family home evening last monday and they invited the aumicks over too! they had a great time getting to know each other and they kids loved playing with their dog. its called a maltepom (maltese and pomeranion i think) and it is no joke the cutest dog in the world we need to get one. well anyway so monday was great and then the rest of the week was aweome because we took this adorabel 17 year old girl, out with us on wednesday and thursday! she has had a difficult life and is just starting to get back into church and after going out with us she decided she wants to go on a mission! she had so much fun just visiting less active members with us and thinks missionary work is just amazing. it was so cool to be able to be such an influence on someone and inspire them to start preparing for a mission!

lets see what else was great this week. ha, can you guess? we got to see the aumicks like 3 days in a row and we are seeing them tonight too!! melinda brought the kids to game night on friday and they had so much fun! it was also elder jones' birthday that day so we had a little celebration and it was just great. there were lots of branch members there too to get to know melinda and the kids and they all love them. then on saturday we went over to teach more lessons to prepare them for baptism. blasted kids are still stuck on coffee though haha. we will work on that with them. we will need to move their baptism date back though to next month and transfers are in a couple weeks so PRAY THAT I DONT LEAVE I SERIOUSLY CANNOT LEAVE THIS PLACE. they all love church and everything about the gospel. anyway so they came to church yesterday and loved it again. brother riggs (gospel principles teacher) asked big tim to say the prayer at the end of class and sister stephens and i both freaked out inside. we havent heard him pray yet because the kids all want to pray when we are over there and it was the cutest prayer ever. its such a simple dumb thing but there is something about hearing someone who has never been religious who you love so much and want everything for them pray that makes you die inside haha. so anyway later that night after dinner at the kuenzli's we went to the aumicks again. we kind of had planned on going over a memory game we made for them that had questions and answers to the stuff we had taught them but they wanted us to play phase 10 with them <3. of course they had the football game on so i saw denver get destroyed and all the lame commercials but dont worry, i was more focused on phase 10 than the television. and yes, i knew exactly what i was missing at the lambs house with all that good food but there was literally no where i would have rather been than at their house. you probably get so annoyed with me talking about them the whole time haha but really, they are like they family you dream of finding on your mission, it is my favorite thing ever to be with them. so thank you for keeping them in your prayers and please continue to.

well that really sums up my week. tim, melinda, little tim, brianna, mackenzi, and emily are my favorite people in the world right now. i love love being a missionary. keep praying for them. have a superb week. tell pali to write me a letter.
love, sister quinn nilsson

Merry Christmas!

Hello family!

First things first, yes I got both packages! They are under our tree right now:)  Ok well here is our week.

 

We went on exchanges Tuesday. Sister Stephens stayed in Corning and I went up to Ithaca with Sister Musser. Its really cool up there. Its very snowy and there are 2 colleges up there! Ithaca College and Cornell. Cornell was faaanncyy! It kind of remined me of Monsters University haha. I guess it is a smart people school and it shows! It looks like a castle and all the students walking around looked very intelligent. I think it would be great to serve in college land. Lots of young people who are open to stuff. So that was fun. It was fun to work with another sister. Also she looked just like Paige Kelly but shorter with shorter darker hair. Anyway, after we got back from exchanges we had plans to see our new investigator Tiffani but she said it wasn't a good day for some reason I forgot. So we were bummed about that but while we were texting her she told us she had been reading the Book of Mormon and couldn't wait to meet up again!! ahhhh!! She said she would be available after Christmas so we are definitely calling her December 26! We also saw our beloved Aumicks this week:) We taught the kids about baptism and McKenzie wants to be baptized so we told her to talk to her parents about it. Mind you her parents are the sweetest! Also their grandma is there right now cause her arm is injured and when we asked her name she told us "Grandma Carol. Well my name is Carol but you can call me Grandma!" So sweet! Also big Tim, the dad, told us he thought it was wonderful when we asked what he thought about us coming over to teach the kids! Love love love love them! So yes, pretty good week. We also met a lady last night who was on our potentials list. She had seen elders before and told us she has her own church but because we are so sweet and she admires the fact we are on missions she's be willing to visit with us anytime! Also we had a good snow storm this week! Its kind of really cold with that but its awesome! We shoveled one of our potential's driveways for service. Hahahah funny story. We are trying to think of creative ways to get people to like us/get potentials to become investigators so we decided we would write a Christmas poem and make a treat to deliver with it. We had planned to make fudge and carmel corn. Everything that could have went wrong, indeed went wrong. The fudge didn't ever set and when we took a test spoonful we are pretty sure what we made wasn't fudge and the carmel corn recipe was kind of weird because it wanted us to put the popcorn in a paper bag then drizzle the carmel on it then put it in the mircowave multiple times after shaking it. We didn't really want to put a paper bag in the microwave so we put the popcorn and the carmel in a tupperware (the carmel didn't turn out great either, it dried all crunchy and nasty) and then put it in the microwave and it melted the tupperware!! there was a big old hole in the bottom of it!  so those did not work out and we ended up melting chocolate chips and drizzling them oer the popcorn. I need that white chocolate popcorn recipie haha. So yes, I still definitely cannot cook.

 

Well I cannot wait for Christmas!!! We have a countdown:) Get all the skype stuff figured out! I hope you all have a good week and please keep praying for our investigators!! I love you all and miss you!

love, sister quinn nilsson

Season's Greetings!

season's greetings! :)

 

sounds like you guys had a great week! also, cute cute baby! tell des congratulations! anyway here's my week.

let see...oh! we picked up another investigator :D she is the coolest person ever. her name is tiffani and she just moved here from kentucky. yes, she has the coolest accent ever and i want it. anyway, she lives with her inlaws and i guess the first time when we were over just for a minute talking to her at her door she told them about us and they were like "don't let them in. they are jehova's witnesses" but we came back and she let us in anyway:) we also assured her that she is safe cause we're mormon. and then. she was like "oh i've never heard of mormons. what do you guys believe?" whaaaaaat!! best thing to ever hear on a mission. so as we were freaking out internally we taught her the restoration and gave her a book of mormon and i'm excited to see her again! also we taught tim's family again this weekend and it was amazing. i'm always kind of nervous to go over there cause the kids are super into but the parents dont really seem to be so we pulled up to their house behind their car and i see big tim (there is a dad and a son named tim so we call them big tim and little tim) come out and i'm like aw man, he's leaving. so we ask and he's like "nah, come on in!" so we go in and the whole family is there and they all get their chairs and clear off their little table so we can start our lesson. they have been praying and trying to read the book of mormon and they love the pamphlets! they have chosen their favorite pictures and when we were wrapping up they were like "do you have another pamphlet to give us?" so freaking cute. we asked melinda, the mom, and she said she would be open to taking them to church but they wrestle (ugh) so tournaments could get in they way but we will try to work with that. so excited about people here! also the branch did a cool live nativity thing at the corning christmas event called sparkle that we went to and it was way fun. it was very cold but there were so many people there and it was super christmasy. haha also as we were standing out on the street these teenage boys came up to us and were like "can we have a book of mormon?" and sister stephens was like "wait, seriously??" and then they're like looool no, we're members. rotten kids. ha jk they were funny, they got sister stephens really excited though.  speaking of christmas....16 DAYS TIL THE CHRISTMAS SKYPE. so so so excited. we will be going to the Brignone's for christmas eve to have a swedish smorgishbord or however you say it and then to the Beans for christmas day. what are you guys doing for christmas? hope its fun for ya! sister stephens and i are doing great. we have a lot of fun together! she says i remind her of her best friend so thats funny.

well, that about sums up my week. i'm loving it here. freezing cold but its all good. excited to talk to you guys. keep praying for our people. keep writing me!

i love you all and have a good week!

love, sister quinn nilsson