Waller Week 9

Hello Mom!

 I love hearing about all the fun and adventures going on around home and what not. I loved seeing all the girls dressed up spiffy like and it was strange seeing Kiley with her hair down. I might need to get a giant bubble for her to walk around in until I get home, haha. I'm glad everyone is enjoying themselves and Lathen is being humble as always. Why do grandpa and grandma have to leave (They are planning on going on a mission at the beginning of next year)in the middle of my mission and then be gone when I get home? Do they not like me or something? Oh, or maybe they will get sent to Houston!

OK, time to brag about my weather, we are consistently about 70-80 with humidity on top of that. One day while we were out contacting and talking to someone, I started seeing a layer of sweat on my skin, it was HOT and I hear it will only get hotter.

This week a lot of our appointments fell through, , but we were able to talk with a lot of people and got some pretty cool potentials. Nothing overly interesting happened this week, just the same old thing. Oh,on Sunday, I gave a talk in la reunion sacramental (Spanish Sacrament meeting), and it went really good. It was in Spanish, and I know that the Spirit was there to help me because that is the best Spanish that I have ever spoken on my mission. The talk was on the importance of the First Vision, so it was basically the whole restoration lesson, so it was one of the easier talks to plan for. Also, I helped out in primary as Angel Moroni, they had me walk in and tell a little about Moroni and I answered some questions about him. This was really a fun week, and this Friday we are gonna start up volleyball as a contacting thing, I am excited.

Much love, as always, from Texas

Elder Atkinson (Nic)

Waller Week 8

Mom (and all you other lovely folk that read these emails I send out),

I did get Kiley's package, but I did not get her letter, but I haven't looked in a while. The cookies were awesome, and I loved that they were half and half. I don't like the Spanish book (he asked for his high school Spanish vocab lists and instead of digging it out I offered to send him a book), all I really wanted was a vocab list, maybe when Val comes home you could ask where hers is? And if she would be OK sending that to me. 

I'm glad y'all finally got good weather, here has been pretty nice (hot and sunny) with a few beautiful thunderstorms, which have been awesome to see. One day we were driving and I saw lightning come down and strike a telephone pole about 100-200 yards away. It was really cool to see the sparks flying after it hit.

This week was a lot of moving from the old apartment to the new one. It took a lot longer than I expected and then we had to clean everything in the old apartment. Right now the new one is a mess with all of the stuff we moved in, and we still need to organize everything. We will slowly get it done little by little.

This week on the ranch at Bill's we helped out cutting grass, plopping a fence post in the middle of a creek and setting up his tractor and moving stuff around. It was all really fun even though there was nothing specific we did. We also had a giant meeting for weekly planning (yay?!) It was long and not the most exciting of things to do, but I did learn how to better plan so it was all good. I also went on an exchange this week with one of the ZL's (Zone Leader) which was really fun to do. He was a cool guy, but, since we are part of an English zone now, he only spoke English, so at all of the Spanish appointments I did a lot of the talking, which was pretty fun.

On Sunday, we went to remind an investigator about church, and he came with one of his kids, it was so much fun to see him there! On Sunday night we went on splits with the Hermanos in the Rama (Spanish ward members), and it was so much fun. Puro espanol esta noche. (Pure Spanish that night) It is really fun to be able to talk with them all in Spanish. 

We also found a cat roaming around our complex that we fed and named Stupid, because at first it was being very stupid. Just remembered that, and thought you would want to know the story behind the pictures. 

That was basically my week, it was such a fun week.

Love you mom, have a great one!

Elder Atkinson (Nic)

 

 

 

 

Waller Week 7

Howdy Y'all!

 

This week has been so much fun, as always, in the beautiful state of Texas. Constantly about 70-80 here, but no worries, y'all will be laughing when it's a million degrees here, so lucky you! Some of the fun things we did this week, hmmmm. We helped finish the barbed wire fence at Bill's which was really fun to do and learn how to make. Hopefully I can use that skill in the future sometime. We also had an activity con la rama (Spanish Ward) on Saturday which was really fun. We went to Zube Park and played soccer, ate, laughed and had a great time. I have found that I really love the atmosphere of the Hispanic culture, everyone is just really friendly and nice and they really help you feel included.

 

Something that really touched me this week was, at the end of one of our lessons with an investigator, he told us not to give up on him. I guess just hearing that helped me realize a bit how people lean on us and how we really affect those around us.

 

On Saturday a member from the English ward invited us to meet one of his friends, we met at the church, gave him a little tour and then taught. He had a lot of solid questions, and at the end of the lesson we were really tired. It was really fun nevertheless.

 

Right now we are in the process of moving into a new apartment, don't worry same mailing address. It will be a lot of work because we are going to have to deep clean everything and move out all of the furniture, Yay?!

 

The list for the Spanish vocab is just a good overall list of stuff that I don't usually get to talk about, I didn't want to have you worry about compiling one for me. I am not getting transferred for a while, so you don't have to worry about that. I am gonna kill my comp though (Meaning he will be his companions last companion before he heads home in May). The music is in a book we got, like something movies, its red, and it is fine. People play all sorts of music on the piano, I've heard Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean and other stuff. I am good for hymn books, I have a regular one to play from and that has been good for me.

 

Besos y abrazos (jeje)

 

Elder Atkinson (Nic)

 

Waller Week 6

Hello Mother!

 

This week was awesome. The service we were able to do, and the General Conference, everything was just awesome. On Wednesday we went and served with Bill in his ranch, like always. We continued helping him build his fence, which I am loving to do. It is just really fun manual labor. Again brag to dad about the fancy tools I got to use (post hole digger), he will be jealous. On Thursday we were able to make it down and talk with the students on Prairie View A&M campus which was really fun. I think I enjoy going and just talking with the students there about everyday life stuff and what they are learning in school and stuff like that.

 

Conference weekend was a really cool experience, I wont pretend like I remembered every talk, but I did love being able to listen to all of them. For the Saturday morning thru Sunday morning sessions we were at the church watching them, and then Sunday afternoon we were at a members house. And I only watched about half a session in Spanish, which was the last half of the Saturday afternoon, so I don't remember a lot from that time period. It was fun, about two hours before the Priesthood session, we had a bbq with the Spanish branch, a bunch of hamburgers and a lot of good laughs. It was fun to be able to talk with everyone there, and help improve my Spanish. In between the Sunday sessions we went over to the Schilds and had lunch and helped them do an Easter egg hunt. After that we stayed to watch conference there, and it reminded me of home, little kids running around and all that.

 

I did get the package, and I loved the tie, it is awesome. Do you think that I could get the vocab list from my Spanish class? It would be somewhere in my boxes, I'm pretty sure in a red folder, that and maybe some of the starwars sheet music, cause I have a piano to enjoy it now. I think that is pretty much it.

 

I love y'all and are real happy to call you my family and y'all are all good friends to me.

 

Elder Atkinson (Nic)