April 29

I got the post card!  :)  Changing up the house while I'm gone eh?  It's not snowing today!!!  Actually good weather!  Still some wind but at least it's warmer.  

So this week Sister King was sick again.  :(  Fun times.   I have been sitting in a chair and read half of Genesis in one sitting while she sleeps. Also watched some church movies from the 80s. Had a baptism this past weekend.  She's 85 named Clover.  Her son was baptized 20 years ago and she finally came around.  For the past week she kept calling her son, "is it today yet?" beacuse she was so excited.  

So I had my first Bible Bash this past week.  :(  Some people are just confused.  It was on baptism for the dead and she said the Bible proves it's wrong.  The heck?!  She's in her 40's and kept rolling her eyes and bugging them out at us.  Strange duck sometimes.  Her daughter really wants to be baptized, but the mom says no: not until she is 18 and out of high school.  Sad day.  The daughter Angel Lee is depressed.  She loves going to church and her mom loves the changes it has made in her daughters life but does not agree with the church on some stuff (like baptisms for the dead)  so says NO.  But she'll still let her go to church and us to come teach.  Some confusion I sense.  

Been building a shed still.  I hammered 348 nails in a couple hours by hand.  (The nail gun lost pressure 3 weeks ago...)  I'm getting pretty good at it.  Found out what it's for.  It's for his coffin...  He's been building it and when it's done it goes in our shed so he can build a coffin for his wife.  :O  It's a crypt!!!  The dude's 87 and still hammering away.  Some strange people up here.  

Love,

Sister Nettles

April 21

I sit at the computer table in a family history center.  A lady is trying to get people off the computers so a new comer can have a spot.  Unsuccessful...  MWAHAHAHA  Thus is the Family History Center.  Now it's just the clicking of keys on multiple keyboards.  My thunder as the rest just quietly peck.  Poor slow bystanders.  The snow flakes flutter outside and melt on the cars.  I have just gone bowling again under the name Harley Quinn (given to me by the Elder known as Batman) and my companion was Poison Ivy (given by the Elder known as Aquaman).  Kid you not.  :)  Anyways...  They are awesome Elders and hilarious and nerdy.  Yay!  They get most of my references.  

We were sick this week with the flu but are better now.  We have a baptism this weekend, two more scheduled, one we are just trying to schedule between divorced parents and a couple more we will set this week.  Good stuff.  So... we went to the church library and I finally found a movie for Joseph in Egypt we could watch.  It's called Joseph and His Brothers.  (VHS)  So funny, I watched it by myself because we were sick and loved it so I made Sister King watch it again with me.  The young version of Joseph looks a little like Jacob from Twilight and the old Joseph is totally Michael Jackson (white version).  Hilarious!!!  If you can find it you should watch it.  It's part of the new media bible project from 1986.  :)  It's actually filmed in Egypt and the Holy Land with people speaking Egyptian Coptic, Hebrew and other stuff.  They just read the scriptures over top in English.  

Doing better now.  Hope you are all enjoying warmer weather.  Love you!!!

Sister Nettles

April 15

My area is awesome.  People keep giving us names of people to go see.  We have 7 investigators right now and a baptism April 27th.  Need to set up a few more.  Baptisms are hard to schedule when they have family out of town or have divorced parents.  Fun stuff.  I'm building a shed Thursday mornings!  The hammer is finally working right.  Or maybe the user is...  Nah, it's the hammer.  :)  So many people to see and appointments we keep having to split up and go with members.  Nice eh?  Still slightly lost but not as bad. We got maps photo copied out of a phone book.  Last Friday we went to the Twin Falls Temple.  Pretty cool, but so tiny!!!  There's not even a door or long hallway to separate the entrance from the baptismal font.  Just a short wide hall.  You could smell the chlorine as you walked in.  :)  There is also only a session every 2 hours.  Thank goodness we were not late.  Why so small!?  San Diego's better, but I'm biased.  

Sister King and I are having a great time.  We keep laughing, especially about the pitiful speed limits.  25 through both of the towns.  Terrible.  They are teaching me patience.  We may be companions again next transfer.  That would be fun.  We have exchanges this Thursday so I get a newbie for a companion for 24 hours.  Fun!  We have a lesson 1 that night too.  Hope we don't get too lost trying to find it.  It's snowing again today.  Will it ever stop?!?!  It's technically spring!  What the heck?!  Hope it changes soon.  We are either having snow or dust storms.  So much farm land they can't keep their dirt with the 50mph wind that is constantly here.  Love wearing shorts under my skirts.  Save my sanity.  Hope the weather over there gets better too.  Well, love you all lots.  Oh yeah!  We also get strawberries almost every night!  So good!!!

Sista Nettles

April 8

Rupert is pretty good so far.  They are feeding us, we just don't get fed lunch which is where the easy mac came in.  Watched general conference at a members house.  We have 4 investigators who are getting baptized.  One of them we found 2 weeks ago.  The Sorenson kids are 13 (girl) and 9 (boy).  They are on the last lesson so we are trying to nail down a specific date where the family will be in town.  Reagan is 9 and the most talkative little girl you have ever met.  Hopefully will be baptized next Saturday. We are on the second half of lesson 4.  Clover is 85 and getting baptized April 27th.  Yay!  No one had a baptismal date when we came in.  So weird going from the best district numbers wise to the worst one in the mission.  We are fixing that though.  You should see the last zone vision we got.  (They are a piece of paper telling us what to focus on that month usually with some interesting pictures.)  It's all about illegal boarder crossing.  Have you heard of the shoes Brinco?  The have maps of the boarder, a compass and flashlight in them.  Craziness.  So we are supposed to be helping people "cross the boarder into the kingdom of God."  The members are our coyotes, etc...  I thought we wanted them to come in legally though baptism so they don't get deported.  Oh well...  

So our trio is down to two.  (Lion King!)  There were problems in Kuna so Sister Birdwell went to their rescue taking her GPS with her.  Down to a map now.  The Elders in our district are so nice though and let us follow them when driving to bowling, email and Wall-Mart.  Hallelujah.  It's interesting getting the dirt on the elders who used to serve here from the members.  Members keep inviting us to come watch movies at their house in sweats.  What?!?!  And the wards don't know if we want to do splits because the elders would cancel every week.  (Now we know what they were doing instead...)  Breaking tradition now so the area is seeing miracles in the work.  Lots of people ready and interested which is really cool.  

Love,

Sister Nettles

P.S.  It snowed today!  :O  Por que?!?!?!

Flippin Sweet Message

My companion's mother sent this to her.  Love it!

April 1

Easter was pretty good.  Ate almost the whole bunny!  Had easy-mac for
lunch and chicken tacos for dinner.  This transfer is the one I have
laughed the most in.  President Cannon was prophetic when he said it
would be "a sister's party every night!"  Well, it's a sister's party
day and night...  But we still get work done! Our trio is hilarious
and the Elders in our zone are awesome.  They have seen DBZA!  (ask
Emily for an explination)  The wards here are interesting.  They are
all really excited to have sister missionaries.  They have not had
them in a few years.  Some of the wards are great and others have not
been very nice to investigators or less actives.  They keep to their
clicks and shun others.  Going to be interesting to turn it around.
We have 2 investigators who want to be baptized and only have 1 lesson
left and 2 others we are starting to teach this week.
We are working with a less active family: the Hewitts (pronounced
Huyetts).  The dad and daughter are members but the wife and son are
not.  The ward kind of rode them out on a rail from church because of
gossip and rediculousness like that.  The dad came to church for Easter
though!  Going back to their house this week.
Blake got baptised on Saturday and his mom gave the closing prayer!
The penticostal, been on a church exorcism team, blunt lady.  She's an
interesting woman.  But she did it the way Sister Davenport explained
and her kids nearly fell out of their chairs.  There's hope yet.
Just went bowling! Missionaries get 2 free games.  Yay!  Going grocery
shopping next.  There is a Wallmart in Burley so we are not completely
isolated from civilization.  Whenever a missionary is sent to this
side of the mission it's called being banished.  Really feels like it
sometimes.  The closest Sister Missionaries are 40 miles away.  Our
wave of new missionaries is here.  28 this last week, 7 of them
sisters.  We are getting ready for the mission split so we now have
our own APs out here.  So weird.  And it's so far away to the mission
office now!  2 hours instead of 6 miles.  But we go to the Twin Falls
temple in 2 weeks so that will be cool.
Love,
Sister Nettles

March 25

I'm healthy again!  Except for a residual cough.  :)  Also got to go to a chiropractor a few times which helped the headaches.  So today I got transferred.  I am now in Rupert Idaho.  Even farther east than Twin Falls: cold and windy.  So if I'm still here after July 1st I would be in the Twin Falls mission.  Crazyness!  Super tiny potato farmer town.  Gone from 6 wards to covering 5.  I have two companions so I'm in a trio.  Sister King is from Georgia and Sister Birdwell is from Huston.  My second Texan companion both with no accent.  :O  This is also her last transfer before she goes home so I will be a murderer. 

 

The town is so weird.  Hardly any stop lights or stop signs and it's a grid system.  Cars are parked along to road so you can't see around them.  So scared I'm going to get t-boned that I stop anyway.  I'm the driver again!  Still in a Corolla. Feel like I stole Rachel's car.  Found a burger place and the library, but we don't know our home address so we will have to try and find out so we can get back.  It was a 2 hour drive out here.  The only sisters around are the twin falls sisters: Sister Christiansen (from Alberta) and eventually her trainee.  The elder's area we are taking over is hopefully not as messy as their car is...  Glove compartments can be a scary place... 

 

I mailed some stuff I got at Christmas home so hopefully you get it by next week.  :)  Love you all.

 

Sister Crazy Nettles

 

P.S. Tomorrow is my 6 month mark!  Crazy!!!

 

March 18

Well today is my first official full-day out of bed since Sunday a week ago.  I'm better now!  Mostly.  Apparently I have contracted the unholy and impure offspring of strep-throat and mono.  A lovely mutant that is appearing this year and only a few antibiotics actually work on it.  My awesome companion has been going out with other sisters from our ward while I sleep at home while the lady we live with watches tv.  I have literally slept for a week.  Today is the first day my brain seems to be functioning again.  It was crazy!  My imagination was all over the place and I could hear music everywhere, and I could just open or close my eyes to change the lighting on whatever the heck I was dreaming I was seeing.  12 dreams a night.  Pretty sweet.  Pixar ever run out of ideas again just give em that for a week and they'll be good for decades. And I can sleep through the night now!  I'm not waking up at 3am with a 103.5 fever or taking meds every 3 hours all though the night.  The highest my fever got was 104 and we called the doctor and were in in 10 minutes.  She put me on an iv and I got 2 L of fluids.  I had been drinking!!!!   Apparently not enough.  But I'm good now.  Anitbiotics are almost done.  The cough just won't leave me alone.  Been trying different perscriptions for my headaches, but with the other things going on it was just making it worse.  Trying again later. 

Depsite my lack of help we have a new investigator and are meeting with another brand new one this week.  So at least 2 new ones.  Now I need to meet them and not scare them away.  Blake passed his baptismal interview so he's a go on the 30th. 

Transfers are the 25th.  Crazyness is going to happen because 7 of us are going to start training new sisters then.  The 8th couldn't get her visa.  :(  And the 9th didn't get her call in the mail...  She was still waiting when our mission office called her to see if she got the call clarification packet.  Maybe next transfer. 

Well I love you all,

Sister Nettles