Week #28 -Solo Una Cuestion de Actitud

Well hello my wonderful family :)

Once again, I just want you all to know how much I love you. I hope you were able to feel just a little bit of the love I feel for you from my letter last week. I have the best family in the whole world, and that fact has been made more and more clear with each day, week, and month that passes. I love you and miss you all so much.

Before I forget! Dean! Guess what song I heard this week? ´Es sola una cuestión de actitud´! Yes! It was playing on the TV while they were showing the weather and I heard it subtley at first and I was like, ´no, no...is that really ´solo una cuestión de actitud?´ It was!!! I got a huge smile on my face and told my companion all about our good times in spanish 2 with Mr. Castro. Oh man, good good times. I love you Dean!

Only in Argentina:

1) To sell your house you simply spray paint on the front of it and write ´se vende esta casa´. Simple. Who needs a realtor? Not the Argentinos!

2) Want some candy? Here´s a cough drop! Yup, cough drops are candy here! Halls are obviously the best ones! I actually had a ´sprite´ flavored ´candy´ this week. Not bad!

Nothing too crazy exciting happened that was funny this week. I guess it´s only been 5 days, so maybe that´s why I feel like nothing happened. I feel like I was just emailing you guys yesterday!

We continue to meet with F and his awesome family. F came to church again this week, but his family didn´t :( We´re going to have to really talk about the importance of church this week and emphasize how important it is that they come. They can´t get baptized unless they come to church, so we have to push their baptismal date back one more week now to the 18th of August. F, technically, could get baptized on the 4th if he comes again this coming week, but we want to baptize them all as a family. They are so golden! I can´t get over it! We get to their house and the TV goes off and the family gathers around the table with their copies of the Book of Mormon. Elder Whitlock and I have determined that this family are the kind of people that are talked about in DC that were ´kept from the truth only because they know not where to find it´. F astounds me everytime we visit him with the answers, questions, and things he says. We watched the movie ´The Testaments´ with them this past week and afterwards we were talking about it and I was blown away by what F said. He said that he knows that this is true ´sin duda´ (without a doubt) and that this is something he´s always been looking for. He told us that he´s always been looking for something to fill a void in his life, and that this was filling it. Wait though, wait, it gets better! He then told Elder Whitlock and I that he truly believes that we were angels sent to him by God to bring him the gospel. Wow. When he told us that I was just blown away. I just felt so priviledged to be called that. I truly felt like I was fulfilling my purpose when he said that.

F came to church this past week again too! He really likes it so much and the members are all so kind and loving to him. Fernando is still on crutches from his surgery that he had a few weeks back, so it´s always fun to slowly walk (or hobble) to church with him. He´s a good man that really is letting the gospel of Jesus Christ change his life. As we´ve continued meeting with him he´s told us more and more about his past life, and we´ve just continually born sincere testimony about how baptism cleanses us and gives us a new start. He always likes hearing about that. It´s looking like we´re going to baptize him on the 4th or 11th. I´m so happy for him! You can physically see the difference in him in just these few short weeks. He´s an amazing man with a sincere desire to change and be firm in his change.

I realize that I haven´t talked about the temple at all! The temple open house starts on the 4th and goes through the 25th. President Carter chose 24 missionaries to help work at the temple and I guess I wasn´t chosen. Darn. It´s ok though because we still get to go! We get to go as long as we bring investigators with us. We have lots of people that are planning on going, so it´s looking like I´ll get to go here in a few weeks! I´m so excited and so are all the members here! It´s so cool to get to be a part of this! It´s a once in a lifetime chance to be serving in an area that is so close to where the temple is going to have an open house. It´s such a unique opportunity and it´s such a blessing!

To make a quick reference back to the beginning of my email, the mission really is a ´cuestion de actitud´ (a matter of attitude). It´s pretty hard to keep a positive, happy attitude day in and day out, but I know that if I do, life is happier and I´ll have more success. I´m quickly gaining a testimony of the fact that an attitude of faith makes all the difference in the world. A happy attitude makes a happy missionary! It´s all just a matter of attitude! Who would´ve guessed that I would actually learn something from my spanish 2 class back at good ´ol Chaparral :)

I love you all so much! I look forward to seeing pictures of my new sobrina next week! Ah! Uncle Bub!

Developing an attitude of faith,

Elder Nilsen