Introducing: The Triple Threat!

SISTER WITHERS AND I ARE GETTING A TRAINEE:):):):):):):):):):):)

So this week was super long for some reason but also very good. Lots of stuff happened and I am eternally exhausted. But, here we go!

SO on Monday Sister Withers and I made the 2 1/2 trek to Farmington in the fog and rain and deer-infested roads, driving through reservation and then getting a phone call at 8:00 from the Assistants to the President telling us we were late for a trainers meeting we didn't know was happening. SO that was wondeful, now we are un-trained trainers but we still made it to farmington safe and on time (at least the time we thought we were supposed to be there) so that was good. We woke up nice and early to get ready to meet our trainee! I got to see some old friends and that was fun, and it was soooo much better to be on the trainer side rather than the trainee side of that meeting. we got assigned our trainee, her name is Sister Dowd! She is super cute, she likes broadway and Disney, and is from Oregon. She is loving the work already so that's good, glad she is cause i definitely wasn't day 1. Anyway we spent our first day in Dove Creek (which is an odd little town) and she loved every minute of it! and of course Sister Withers and I did too because we love our people. Ok so on Wednesday D---- (mean granny) took us out to dinner and I ordered a buffalo burger, thinking it was going to be a nice patty with buffalo sauce and blue cheese and such...then when the lady plops down my plate and i see a sauce-less burger i face the brutal reality that i will be eating BUFFALO MEAT. which is something I never wanted to do and had no plan of doing, but alas I had to eat it anyway. It wasn't too bad, just the thought of eating buffalo threw me off a lot. Also, good news! R----s (11yearold) dad agreed to let someone else baptize her so R----- has been thinking about who else can baptize her! so she can be baptized pretty soon hopefully, i love her so much. Also, A---- got the priesthood on Sunday! he could be ordained right to a Priest, so he is doing so amazing. he's so happy and is such an example to all the other young men in the ward. he really appreciates the gospel and knows life with and without it, which not a lot of people around here experience. so ya

we also knocked on this door this week, and a lady named M---- answered. she's a strong roman catholic so we shared a scripture for the bible, and then the conversation took an unexpected turn to her abruptly closing her bible and asking 'do you ladies take birth control?" and then she started talking about natural remedies for that kind of stuff and got in to WAYYY too much detail, it took all of our might to not just bust out laughing right on her doorstep. needless to say, M--- wasn't interested and we probably won't be going back.

ah on Saturday was a hearbreaking day, one of my favorite less-active couples are having major problems (the ones who feed us dinner all the time) and it hurt my heart so much to see them struggle. T---- is facing hard decisions and she is so sweet and just deserves the best life ever, as does her husband C---- who has had addiction problems in the past which has messed with him mentally. i came to the conclusion that addiction is one of Satan's strongest tools and the one i hate the absolute most because it just destroys people. so ya don't do anything addictive it's evil. So that was hard for us, but T---- got a priesthood blessing and came to sacrament meeting (which we totally didn't expect her to do ), so hopefully things work out better.

thtas basically the week...life here is amazing! stil can't believe i have only a year left, that is just gonna fly by. I hope you all enjoyed your week! I loveyou!

Love,

Sister Nilsson

Sister Nilsson, Sister Withers, and their new trainee, Sister Dowd! Madison refers to them as the 'triple threat'

planning for the day

lovely members who feed the sisters pizza

Sister Nilsson and Sister Dowd

She says its a slumber party every night with a trio. Missions aren't all hard work, they can be fun too :)

always finding an animal to love

The Hiatus is Over

hello everyone this is Sister Nilsson's older sister Quinn who volunteered to be in charge of the blog and I am doing a horrible job. I apologize I will try to do better.
But now for news on Sister Nilsson!
Last you saw her, Sister Nilsson was in Cortez Colorado but just a few weeks ago was transferred to Monticello Utah! She was really sad to leave Cortez, she really grew to love the area, but after a few weeks in Monticello she is warming up to Utah!
She loves her new companion Sister Withers and they recently were able to see one of their investigators baptized.
She tried Venison for the first time, she said it wasnt too bad.
The sister missionaries' BFF from Cortez came and surprised Sister Nilsson at church this past Sunday and she was over the moon.
She and her companion sang at a 50+ singles ward mingle spontaneously.

The favorite member in Cortez came to visit Monticello!

Missionaries even have magic eye fun 

this sandwich is called the Sandberg Sandwich. Apparently its a big deal

Welcome Winter

Highligts from the week:
"we have a new investigator, her name is ____ and she has a cute dog :) "

"she had so much makeup on her face when she hugged Sister Hillam she left a face-print on her shirt. We laughed a little bit."

"we just ate usual Thanksgiving food except for fry bread instead of rolls. It was all delicious"

they finally got a pic of the couple that drives a lawnmower to Walmart. 

Another district hike!

"story behind this picture: we went knocking on doors with ____ this weekend and it was like mildly cold but not too bad so neither of us wore coats. Well that night (the person they went out with) and ____ knocked on our door and shoved Walmart bags in our hands and said 'try these on' so we pulled on these coats and they were a perfect fit! ____ bought us coats cause he thought we were gonna freeze to death, it was super nice of him!"

New Companion

Sister Nilsson's trainer, Sister Strigham recently got transferred to Farmington and Sister Hillam came to Cortez! They are having lots of fun together already

First Zone Conference!!

enjoying goodies from the family. lets hope she shared

She loves the people of Cortez, especially doing service for them such as 

spending a whole Saturday helping people move.

beautiful companions

Transfer Calls

Big news of the week:

Sister Stringham, Madison's trainer, is being transferred to Farmington! She will finish her training with her new companion, Sister Hillam.

at the ward dutch oven cook out

A ward member who stopped by our house to pick up

a care package to bring to Sister Nilsson. She loves the 

members in Cortez

The beloved truck

what an artistic shot

Lots of unique people in Cortez. She loves them all!

Fall Begins in Cortez

Hello again family,
This week has been a pretty good week. We've had a lot of members available to join us for our lessons, which is a thing we really try to strive for. The more members the merrier. Although some appointments have fallen through with J---'s brother, D----who is having trouble quitting smoking but he thinks he'll be able to do it. Unfortunately, we will have to push back his baptism date, so now we only have one person on date for baptism. That's ok though. The elders had to help us with our care the other night because the tire pressure light wouldn't go away and we checked all the tires and they were fine so we were stumped. The elders came and took a look, didn't find a solution to that problem but helped flip over the spare tire under our truck so that way we wouldn't lose points on its next inspection.


We got to sing with the special needs today and one of the boys kissed my hand, such an honor.


Also our house is infested with earwigs so that's actually awful. I guess they really do crawl in your ears? That's what people keep saying. Way nasty. OH MY GOSH we had the crazies day yesterday. Friday's is when we spend the whole morning reviewing the lessons we gave the past week and planning for the lessons we will giving for the upcoming week, as well as set goals and such. Anyway we had all that done, we went to bingo and the next thing on the agenda was tracting a trailer home. We went there a couple days earlier and found a hidden less active member and gave away some Books of Mormon. So we decided to go back. We met a guy named G--- who sure liked to talk about Trump and other extremely political things for small talk, but he accepted a Book of Mormon.


We got some rejections and we were approaching the next door that we almost walked past cause there was no car but then there was a cute kitty so we knocked anyway. A Navajo woman, probably in her 30s answer the door and just kind of looks at us. We introduce ourselves and she just mumbles "I'm house sitting..." then another Navajo lady walks up to the door and just looks at us. We tell her we share a message about Jesus Christ and she explains how she is mad at God because her daughter  committed suicide 3 weeks ago. Of course both our hearts sink for her and we start trying to say words of comfort but next thing I know she is in Sister Stringham's arms crying. Bawling actually. Asking us why Heavenly Father would do this and then telling us how she has been trying to commit suicide herself. Of course Sister Stringham and I are extremely taken by surprise here but we do our best to comfort her. lots of hugging and wet shoulders, then we try to explain that she will see her daughter again and that her daughter made a choice and Heavenly Father couldn't take away her agency and intervene that situation. After she calmed down she said "come in, I want to talk to you" so all of the sudden we were sitting on her couch. Her name is J--- and her sister is I----. J--- shows us where to sit then takes a huge swig of vodka, then comes and sits next to us. She's pretty durnk. She tells us about how she basically drinks all the time. Her sister has had to stop her from drinking bleach and other harmful chemicals. Then she shows us where she has been shooting heroine. Her sister then explained how 10 minutes before we showed up, she had been praying for J---. They were both amazed how we came so shortly after her prayer. J--- cried to us a good amount. Told us the story of her daughter's suicide, then worked herself back up and stood up, walked over to the table, and shoved everything onto the floor. I was a little scared but mostly just so sad for the poor lady. S She kept telling us "I need help" and we know the gospel will help her. Well another unfortunate thing is, she hates Mormons because of bad past experiences. So Sister Stringham and I are lost as how to teach her but I just want to help her so bad. We helped her calm down and told her the message we share and what we could teach will provide comfort, as well as time and patience. We prayed and then after the prayer J--- said she wants us to come back. We left the trailer wide eyed and with no words.


 We are fasting today because we have no idea what to do, we called our zone leaders today and they gave us some good ideas. We are just praying that J--- is more open to Mormons and will start associating us with good things.


K--- got baptized today! I played the piano and even our zone leaders came.


(this is a summary of Sister Nilsson's week as her emails are about a mile long)

Week Two

Hello again! Here on the alphasmart because so much has already happened since Tuesday and this thing is a lifesaver because one hour email goes by in a snap.

Tuesday went pretty well. I got hit on for the first time buy a guy. He asked if we were into any extra-cirricular activities like swimming which we had to break the news that we didnt' even have a swim suit packed. He took a Book of Mormon though and our number (I dont think he realized that we gave him our number to call us for questions on the Book of Mormon) so who knows with that guy.

We had an entire day of cancellations so we tried tracting and came up with a huge zero so that was nice.

We tracted down another road and got more rejections, one lady seemed genuinely interested so we got her number and I'm pretty sure she'll read the Book of Mormon. We were knocking on a door when a car full of teens pulled up and two teenagers started swearing "who the --- is that?" where at first we were like "aw shoot" but then we went up to them and although they were 17 and smoking cigarettes they still listened to our message and took some Books of Mormon. So lots of tracting experiences. Some other old creepy guys walking down the street said "you look good today, ladies" where I threw up in my mouth a little bit but what can I say.

We volunteered again at the thrift shop and they had us hang up Halloween decor and such. The elders were supposed to help but ended up suit shopping instead. We then got to price old vhs tapes and they had a lot of 80s "beach booty" yoga videos that the elders laughed about but refured to take home.

Wednesday was a ridiculous day. We had every appointment cancel except one, and so we tracted the area instead and got a big fat 0. One lady's door we knocked on, I was telling Sister Stringham that I feel like every time I talk, the people dont want to listen. Anyway, while I'm saying that some older lady cracks open her window and says "What do you want?" so I turn and say "We're sister missionaries fro-" then she sharply interrupts me and says "I don't want to talk to you" and slams the window then locks it, as if we're gonna break in. Point proven right there. I honestly always dreamed of having someone do that to me so it was more exciting than degrading, but still, her loss. We had a few good lessons that evening, including V--- and her girls, where they explained they wanted to go back to church so horay. Sister Stringham suggested I slow down a little bit which I knew talking fast would come back to bite me. So I know what I'll be working on this week. Also the other day while we were teaching, we looked to our right and saw some old lady on a jazzy dragging a desk, cruising down the sidewalk. It looked like she had gone garage saling and found a great find so she found a way to get it home. She tied it up and hooked it to the back of her jazzy. She was unstoppable. Unfortunately I have no doubt in my mind that if dad every finds himself in a jazzy, he'll be doing that exact same thing.

We also had our first meeting as a zone which was fun, it was a zone training. They already found out I play the piano so I got stuck with prelude which was actually kind of nice because I miss the piano. The training was good and I learned a lot and also the missionaries were all super nice to me and didn't treat me like the pathetic newbie I am. We drove to Durango for the training, which is pretty nice...lots of trees and green. I guess work there is pretty slow so I am good staying in Cortez. Still a fun training.

We got to teach J---'s recent convert friend named G----. He's an older guy and farms a marijuana field. He also knows all about the Bible so I got very nervous when we approached his door. He was more curious about our church rather than interested in baptism or anything of those sorts, so we basically told him what we believe and asked any questions he has. Sister Stringham thinks if we teach him correctly that baptism will become more of an option for him.

We've been having troubles with exact obedience which I thought at first was a load of bologna because they tell you, "Exact obedience brings miracles" and I thought they just said that to trick you into being obedient but by proof of the other missionaires  who are experiencing amazing things out there, we're gonna give it a try this week.

We also have a baptism coming up! Her hane is K-----, she's 9 and her family is just starting to come back to church. She gets baptized on the 17 and she's pretty excited. The only thing she is nervous about is her interview which will be with our district leader- our district leader's name is Elder Bowie and he's a little Canadian guy who likes to cook and his mom sends him cookboosk so he's the least intimidating person I've ever met. So she should be fine.

We are also teaching J---'s brother, D----. He is a little odd and he frustrates me because he seems so insincere when we teach. He goes on about how he "always knew this gospel was true" but like if you knew it was true why didn't you do anything about it earlier?

Weirdly enough I'll be in Utah today because we're going to the temple. my companion is dying because she hasnt gone in 6 months and I'm excited but not on the verge of crying like the other sisters because I was literally there 3 weeks ago. I'll still injoy it and I"ve never been to the Monticello temple so it will be good.

I've been out for over a month! Weird huh? I mean I'm only on week 3 of the field (which thats still half the transfer!) but including the MTC I've been out a month and 2 days. Its been fast and slow. I kind of feel like I've been out forever cause the MTC felt like so long and was still pretty recent.

I love you all soso much, give Spud a hug for me and Kiki some nice scratches.
Love,
Sister Madison Nilsson
                                    SOME PICTURES FROM THE MISSION FIELD

                                The glories of tracting

her best breakfast yet

Monticello, Utah temple

more Farmington, NM sister missionaries