Week #3 - Breaking Through the Brick Wall

Family,   Well hello! I can't believe it's already been a whole week since last time I emailed! The days take forever, but the weeks fly by! I'm a transfer (6 weeks) away from being in Argentina! So excited!   This week was kind of an emotional one for me. I had to break through the "homesick brickwall." I just missed home so much. Missed home, family, friends, and BYU life. It just really hit me when we got finished with class on Saturday and my teacher (Hermano Litzenberger) told us that he was off to the BYU basketball game. It just hit me so hard for some reason. I just wished that I could out into the "outside world" and I missed all my friends at BYU. Missing friends at BYU quickly turned into missing family, which quickly turned into missing friends from back home, and I just was pretty down on Saturday night. It's hard to describe how I was feeling. Homesick is the best word that I can think of to describe it, but it was more than that. I don't know exactly.   I kind of started to reflect back on my last three weeks. Overall, I won't lie, they've been really tough. I've been trying so hard to have a positive attitude through everything, but it's still been hard. Missions are hard. I've been told that forever, but it just hit me this week how hard this has been and how hard it's going to be. Two years is just so intimidating to think about and it physically hurts to think about sometimes. Looking back on the last 3 weeks I realized kind of why it's been so hard. All my life I've just been able to sort of "piggy-back" off of your (my parents) testimonies of this church. I've had two awesome older sisters to look up to as well. I've always known this church and the gospel is true, but my whole life I've been able to "piggy-back" it. I've been on my own the last 3 weeks. I've definitely had to find out for myself that these things are true. No more mom or dad there to help me. No more Heath or Heid there to help me either. I had to find out for myself. It's not like I doubted the church to be true, but I really had to find out just so that I could know that I wasn't wasting my time for 2 years. Just like it says in Ether 12:6, we don't receive a witness until after the trial of our faith. Well, the past 3 weeks have been a huge trial of my faith.   And now I'm finally starting to receive a witness.   I finished the Book of Mormon this week and that was definitely a huge blessing. I finished at night, in my sleeping bag, with a flashlight while the rest of the Elders in my room were already in bed. I won't get too into it, but I'll just say that the Book of Mormon is true. I'm 100% sure of it. How could it not be true? It's such an amazing book and we are so blessed to be able to have it in our lives. I love the Book of Mormon.   I'm doing a lot better than I was on Saturday. Saturday was tough, and Sunday morning was too, but I'm starting to receive my witness. I'm growing so much and I'm able to see the change that's already taking place within me.   On Tuesday night we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the MTC here in Provo. It was was cool! Rumor was that the prophet was going to come, but he didn't. We did get the next best thing though; two apostles! We were blessed to be able to hear from Elder Holland and Elder Nelson. It was so awesome. Elder Nelson re-dedicated a few of the buildings here that had be remodeled and it was so awesome to be a part of that. I love the Spirit that apostles bring when they speak. The Spirit is just so powerful and I love it.   Really quick last story. For service the other day I was vacuuming the stairs and I thought back to the first time that mom taught me how to vacuum the stairs in our St. George house. It was then that I became the "designated stair vacuumer" of the Nilsen family. I was vacuuming the stairs and just was smiling as I thought about you Mom. I thought about how well I've been raised by you and Dad. If I could, I'd just like to quickly thank you for the way that you raised me. Thank you for teaching me how to be a good kid. Thank you for teaching me correct principles. I owe so much to you and I thank you so much for all you've ever done.   Sorry if this email isn't as good as some of the others. I'm trying to focus on typing a nice email, but there's some really loud and obnoxious Elders behind me that are being annoying.   I just wish I had more time to tell you everything that goes on here, but I only have 30 minutes and that time is now up :( I'll try to type faster next week, but until then I love you so much.   Working hard,   Elder Nilsen