LETTER: Elder Jared Jensen • March 28th, 2011

Dear mother who wrote me 6 letters who I love. =)

Things here are still going wonderful and the work is moving on. I'm so grateful for all of your prayers and I feel them every day that I go out. The trust with the members here has grown so much. Its such an amazing feeling being a tool in the hands of the Lord.

This week was fast Sunday (which me and Elder Smith totally forgot) and as we were sitting down Elder Smith leaned over and said " Hey have you bore your testimony in this ward yet?" I looked at him and said no. He replied " Hmm you should go up then." So I looked back at the front and got that shaky feeling. I knew he was right. I started to pray and ask God if he really wanted me to go up and if I did what I should say. As I did memories started to shoot through my mind about how I decided to go on a mission and on how I got converted to know the church was true. So then I knew I had to go up and I knew what I needed to share. But then you know when you start getting those second thoughts? Well ya that was going through my mind. My heart was pumping 110 beats a second and my hand was shaking like it was negative forty degree's outside. I started to contemplate on everything again. And I started to pray and ask god that he would be with me and that he would give me the strength to stand up in front of these people. As I did these things I started to receive my answer and started to have things go through my mind like " Why are you on a mission" " I chose you to be my mouth piece and I will give you the things to say and the time that they need to be spoken" So I slowly started to pump my self to go up when finally I just stood straight up and started to walk toward the front. I got up to the podium and started to bare my testimony of the church and how I found out this church to be true.

I promise you the Lord gives you the things that you need to say when you need to say them. I know that the Holy Ghost is real and that he testifies of truth to everyone that hears. I know that he did that for me as I stood up and bore my testimony. After the church service I had so many come up to me and thanking me for what I shared. We had so many members come up to us and asked us how they could help us out with missionary work. We finally got some member excitement going strong for us. I know that the Holy Ghost was with me as I was up there. I am so weak with out Him Mom. And in your letter you said you were going through some hard times. I promise you if you pray and ask for help he will help you just as much as he has helped me. I know that he can give you strength in your time of need. And that he will help you over come the trials that you are going through right now. I have learned that he will never take away any trials until we learn the thing that he is trying to teach us from it. A lot of times as I have prayed and asked for help for my trials I kind of expect him to take that trial away. But I realized God doesn't work that way. He has given me that trial for a reason. And there's something to be learned from it. And until I learn what he's trying to teach me he will not take it away.

Well I'm out of time again. I love you so much mom and thank your for all of your emails. =)

PICTURES: Elder Nunley

Below is a picture of Elder Nunley's office. Pretty sweet!

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This is a picture of everything that i bought for one week of food. 5 things of oreos. cheetos, two bags of cinnamon rolls, orange juice, nutella, goober, and lots, lots more! haha not really but it was sweet i miss living with elder martinez he is so cool!!!! Love you tons family!!! just think though i have only got like 19 more months left!! isnt that crazy

LETTER: Elder Colton Nunley • March 28th, 2011

Hello Family!!!

How are you all doing?! Sounds like everything is going way good up there. Sounds like you got some sweet missionaries up there. You gotta have Conrad over more so they can teach him. for real if the missionaries are good workers you gotta put em to work on the people who are already ready to listen... like Conrad!! haha for real if there are good missionaries when Spencer Lemer gets back send the missionaries over there right away.. Spencer is totally ready ahh man i think about him all the time and how if i woulda done what i was supposed to he could be out here on a mission right now in the Lord's church! at first i'll be honest i was a little selfish and wanted to wait to teach him until i got home but send the missionaries over there right away!!! haha

oh my gosh the field is so awesome and so are the offices haha. ok so yesterday i woke up at 4:40 and dropped some elders off at the bus station came back and studied and then President came and we had companionship study with him haha it was sweet but then right after that at like 10 i started working on the computer and i didnt finish until 9 o'clock at night haha and then after planning from 9 to 930 i had to make a bunch of phone calls haha it was super stressful yesterday though because the elders that we took to the bus station had to go Juarez and they got checked and they didnt have their stuff with them because we had to send it to mexico city to get it all updated... so they told the american that he had to go back to the united states haha oh man it was so crazy we were all over the place!!

haha but i took a picture of my office i'll upload it with this email. but the sad thing is is that i had to change rooms the President wants my office as a training room so i moved in to a smaller room haha but its still sweet.

ok so i have to tell you some sweet stories about the gift of tounges for real it is ridiculous 2 things ok so the first happened last week when we were contacting in the church and the hermana asked us where we were from and elder soffe said utah and i said the united states too.... but she didnt believe me!!!! haha she thought i was from Mexico!!!! haha how sweet!!?? and then the other one happened a while back we went to lunch with a family i hadnt met and they were getting to know us a bit and they asked me how long i had been in the mission. and i asked them what they thought.. and the hermano said well with your spanish and all i'd say 16 months haha i swear they are hearing things that i am not saying because when i hear myself it doesnt sound that good haha and that is where the gift of tounges comes in.

but lets see what else...... oh i am super pumped to watch conference!! i think im gonna give in and watch it in english though because i want to understand all of it to feel the spirit really strong. Elder Johnson is the Seventy that is in charge of our mission and that would be so sweet if he gave a talk. he is from casas grandes and speaks spanish and english perfectly haha.

i miss delicias so much though it really was like my home away from home. all the cool missionaries and people there...plus i could work outside all day haha but its all good here. i am learing so much so fast. the only bummer is that everyone here in the offices speaks english and they all speak it too much, me included. i gotta start working on only spanish!!

but yeah thanks for the letters and everything Love yall muchisimo!!! alright i have a little bit more time while the foto is loading. but im trying right now to write you all letters but i was only able to get one written this week haha with all the stuff we have been doing but just to let you know im trying. haha but yeah the picture is done i hope you like it haha i sure did!!!!

Cuidense Mucho!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LETTER: Sister Adrienne Schneider • March 28th, 2011

1- How long do I pray? haha i never stop praying :) jk. well, sometimes i feel like a sinner cuz i will wake up in the middle of the night and my comp is still on her knees. she is good at praying. but in the morning we have 30 minutes set aside to exercise (630-700), but we pray together as comps and....well, sometimes, we aren´t able to exercise more than ten minutes because we pray so long.....but we pray together as comps in the mornings right when we wake up and my comp likes to pray for a long time....not gonna lie, kinda like in the mornings in highschool when we were all ¨´reading the scriptures´´ together as a family

2- there are a lot of things that make me laugh. this last week, i probably laughed the hardest (inside) when the daughter of the only investigador we have brought to church was wacked in the head with the sacrament tray. serious. the first time at the church and the members are hitting our investigadors with the sacrament tray.

our investigador brought her grandchild she takes care of because the mom works like 2 jobs and barely sleeps 4 hours a night. (we teach all of them). the little girl is like 4 years old and absolutely loves me. they were passing the sacrament, the adult passing handed her the cup and helped her and it was really cute. he came over to me (i was more in the middle isle of the church) and the little girl was watching me take the cup. she was leaning really far and the adult passing turned and wacked her in the head with the sacrament tray. luckily she didn´t cry, and it probably shouldn´t have been funny, but it was. the guy passing is way cool and reminds me of camon. he gave the little girl a peice of candy and it was totally fine cuz it wasn´t that bad. i don´t know if it is bad that i was trying not to laugh.

ANOTHER FUNNY STORY:

we had this old man that likes to eat peaches with the missionaries. i guess it is a traditions and after he always gives us these lady fingers cookies things. well, we went to his house and after we had a meeting at the church. i dídn´t have room in my bag for the cookies, so i kinda put them under my jacket thing and the strap of my bag was keeping them up. we had the meeting, after i went to shake hands and the cookies fell out. it was really funny cuz i was like trying to hide them, and then they fell out and everyone was laughing really hard. of course i turned red and then we were all laughing harder. the funny thing is that i asked my comp before what we should do and we both wanted to eat them. MORAL OF THE STORY: IF YOU HAVE COOKIES, SHARE THEM!!!

MIRACLES:

we found this lady, named Graciela, who is mMARRIED!!! WITH 9 KIDS!!! (that is two miracles right there) she has come to church and is reading the book of mormon.(miracles 3 and 4). it is a miracle we found her...well actually she kinda found us. but we were working with her and the district leaders wanted to meet her. the only thing is that her husband is attending another church.

well, long story short, the elders came with us to her house, and her husband got really offended that so many people came and we didn´t ask or warn them about it. he told us not to come back and we were devastated. luckily, we wrote a note to ask for forgiveness because it would be so great to have a family! i want to baptize a family so bad!!!! anyhow, the miracle is that we ended up running into the mom a few hours later, and she felt bad for how everything went. she also thanked us for the note and said no other church would have done that. she also said her husband felt bad for his words, (miracles 5, 6, 7,8) .

We also found this woman who has been to church before and is so great! she has a daughter and we were able to find them. it was a miracle we found them (actually some elders found her and just told us where she lives generally) she lives in a villa and it is hard to find people sometimes because they don´t have numbers or anything. but we taught her the other day and it was great!!!

one things we are devastated about is we seba (our amulek) because he didn´t come to church this sunday....so many members are wondering and asking about him. we would like to find more males with the priesthood and missionaries too. he fits both those categories and he has such a good influence on so many people....

daddio thanks for your support and everything! please thank bishop chamberlain and the stake president for everything too and the ward for all their help! please allow people to help if they would like to as well! it is so awesome to be a missionary!!!

love you!

hermana schneider

LETTER: Elder Brayden Schneider • March 28th, 2011

A ton happened this week!!! it was pretty crazy.... so i gave a member a book (that journal that mom sent me) hahaha i gave it to Andrej (Andrej is a super good member but was having a really hard time) and wrote a little message about how he is the best! He loved it so much! And when i gave him the book i didnt have any wrapping paper or anything so i wraped it in tin foil! i would highly suggest tin foil for wrapping any presents!! hahaha but the next day he was talking to president Fidler about how the missionaries are the best, and then after the meeting he told me he cried it ment so much to him! so mom if you have any extra notebooks then send them my way! hahaha jk

ok so we probably did about 20 hours of service this week. It was warm and everyone was asking for service.... but we also taught 18 lessons and got 2 new investigators!!! so it was a super busy week, we had to leave the appartment early every day. And i have alot of blisters!!! We went and did service at president fidlers dads house, and we had to move a huge pile of dirt up the hill with a wheel barrel. It was the best, i got super sun burned! but oh man it sounds weird but i really really miss working like that.

So church was crazy..... we had like 40 people there!! hahaha but its because we had 20 visitors for Austria, it was really interesting getting everything set up. But wow it was sooo cool to see more then a couple people show up to church. I think it gives other members hope. But sveto showed up at the end of the meeting.. and i was talking to him and his wife started going crazy! like really crazy, it was bad she started yelling and so we had to take her into the other room, and she will only listen to sveto so he calmed her down. Then later she went crazy again but sveto was having a meeting with president fidler and all the members didnt know what to do so luckily she listened to me, i tried to take her on a walk but she wouldnt she just kept yelling like really really really weird stuff, so i kinda just carried her to the other room and then she calmed down, and i turned on Noahs Ark (its the only movie we had in Slovene) hahaha but yeah it was a really good sunday but a little exciting!

Also our english classes are so so good! we have tons of students and one lady asked if she could borrow the book of mormon! haha but then she was extra excited when i said she can have it! haha but she is going to be learning more this week!

Ps... i am really good sewer mom! just so you know. i sewed up my pants and bag! It took about 2 hours though!

LETTER: Elder Jared Jensen • March 14th, 2011

Dearest Mom that is mine.

That's amazing that you had a dream like that. Looks like one of your spiritual gifts are like Lehi's when he had a dream of the destruction of Jerusalem.

My move went well. I do miss some of the families back in my other area. The missionaries here lost all the trust with the members so its mine and Elders Smiths job to gain it back. We are tracting a ton right now and we are both very tired in just this week.

The mission president called Elder Smith before I got here and told him that he had never felt so strong about putting missionaries together then as me and Elder Smith. And my new companion is way amazing and is a really hard worker. He actually knows Kade Moss if you remember that family that use to be in our ward. We have found alot of people to start teaching since we have been here. We will be doing a bible study with a group of moms that will let us in on Wednesday. We will slowly slide in the book of Mormon with them as well. =) We have also been meeting with a man who was Excommunicated from the church who is trying to come back. This man is a very smart man in everything that he does. But the reason I'm sharing this about him is because of what he said when we asked him this question. "So have you been able to feel any different when you lost the companionship of the Holy Ghost" His reply was " Oh Ya...You don't even know. This whole time I felt like it was myself that was so educated and smart. But when I lost the Holy Ghost... it felt like the only thing I could do now was make an educated guess." I think sometimes we all take the holy ghost for granted and we become so use to it as members of the church that we start to forget that it really does help us with everything that we do. I guess the saying you don't realize what you have until you lose it comes into play here.

Man there's so much I want to tell you but they just give us so little time so I will have to make some of these other stories shorter because I want to be able to remember them when I get home. Alright a couple nights ago we met with this lady named Tina who has been a less active for a couple years now I'm guessing. When we met her she let us right in and told us that there is no way that she was going to be coming back to church and said that she already haves home teachers that come over every month and they have not been able to change my mind. So we started talking with her and asking a few simple questions and then asked when was the point when you just decided no more. She stated that she had a real hard time with us not letting in gays because she deals with so much of them everyday and tries to help them through all the hard ships. So we started telling her why we believed what we did and then I shared when I had a hard time before I left on my mission when our church wouldn't let blacks have the priesthood. I started telling her what I did and how I got my answer and asked her to do the same. And in the end she loved us and wanted us to come back again so that we could talk with her and also said that she didn't know that our church let us study other religions. So I had to make that so short but I'm almost out of time.

Well i am in Spokane again so my crazy stories will be coming back. One of the crazy guys we met here said that our bible says that black people come from another planet. We were trying to explain to him what we believed and why about black people. But in the end he really couldn't tell us where black people come from. I think people fail to realize that what we know about black people are true. No one else can really explain where black people began to be. It was Adam and Eve. Not Adam and Eve and Tyrone...

I love you the mom. =)

LETTER: Elder Brayden Schneider • March 21st, 2011

hey family!

so this week was different! I think i met the craziest lady this week. Well we have a member that just moved back to maribor and he is super cool. And we went over to his house to try and have a lesson with Ivan outside but this lady was outside and she was trying to give us some money, but we wouldnt take it, so she would say really really random stuff and then start crying and then be ok, so we decieded it would be better if we just kind of ignore her and just hurry with the lesson... so when we wouldnt listen she would get like 2 inches from our face and talk crazy to us.... its really hard to have a lesson in this situation. haha but everything ended up working out! And the member was really patient with her, which was super good.

OK so at church we had 22 people!!!! that is tons!!!!!! it was crazy, a non active dad that we have been working with brought his family and we are teaching his family with the sisters!

So we have english class this week, we have 70 students sign up!!! we had about twice as many as last time, so we are having 2 of every class. And english class is the funnest and by far the most effective thing we have found. I am super stoked! i love maribor! my district is doing super cool! we got with alot of members this week.

well thats all, we are going hiking and i dont really feel like writing!!! i wanna go climb a castle or something! :)

love you family!

ps.. SO remember that lady i met last week, well i am sending her a BOM as soon as possible... i got permission! :)

ps.. Mark that is ok if you use my story about that lady!