July 22, 2013--Week 72

Hello everyone!

So, I just got finished eating cow stomach--for the second time in my entire misión (I´ve been told I´m very lucky to have only eaten it twice).  It wasn´t actually that bad.  The first time it was horrible.  But this time I kind of liked it...like I wouldn´t ask for it in a restaurant or anything but I wasn´t choking it down either. 

Anyway, apart from that, this has been a pretty awesome week.  Capped off with the cambios!  I´m staying here in Chahuites!  And so is Elder Reyes.  So, we both get to be here for the baptism of our super awesome family that we´re teaching this Saturday!  Woohoo!!!  We´re psyched.  Things are going very, very well here.  We don´t actually have that many investigators right now, but the members are giving us a lot of referrals.  And member referrals are like 1000000000000000000x´s better than knocking doors.  Seriously.  So much easier.  And so much more successful.  Anyway, the lady we´re going to baptize this week is named Imara.  And her kids that are going to get baptized are Owen and Brittney (They were born in the US.  Those aren´t normal Mexican names).  And they´re super awesome.  I thought this whole week that I was going to get changed and that I wasn´t going to get to see their baptism, but it looks like the Lord want´s me to stay here :) Which is fine with me.  I love Chahuites!  It´s the ugliest, smelliest, most horrible little town in the world that I love completely. :) Anyway, Imara is a teacher, and a lot of people know her here (like the entire town), so we´re expecting a pretty good turnout at her baptism and we´re hoping to find quite a few new investigators because of that.  So this is basically how the work of salvation is going down here:  The members give us references.  Then we teach them.  Then they get baptized.  Then those new members give us references.  Then we teach them.  Then they get baptized.  It´s like a domino effect.  And it´s wonderful. :) One of the sisters that we baptized last month is a perfect example of that.  She gave us 2 referrals and went with us to meet them and teach the lesson with us (she also got called 2 weeks ago as the secretary in the RS presidency and she went to the temple to do baptisms for the dead).  So, we´re pretty happy around here.  And the best part is that we get to stay here :) and keep helping this branch to grow.  Since we set the goal for 100 people attending in the first week of August, we went from like 50-60 per week to 72 this past Sunday.  We´ll see how things are the first week of August. :)  Anyway, sorry this is kind of rushed, but I already have to go.

Just know that this work is incredible.  It´s the most important work on this Earth.  We have to be involved in it.  We can only reach salvation ourselves if we´re doing everything we can to bring other people with us.

Have a great week, everyone!  I love you all very much.

Con mucho amor,

Elder Andrew Nickerl

July 15, 2013--Week 71

Hello everyone!  

This has been an AWESOME week!  First of all, my comp and I both got really sick!  But not at the same time.  Different days.  So we took turns being the one dying in bed and the one being bored out of his mind with nothing productive to do after already having read the scriptures for like 5 hours.  Seriously I read like all of 2 Nephi until Mosiah.  And I read all of Chapter 3 in Preach My Gospel.  And on Friday we did divisions with our district leader, Elder Stucki, who was also sick, so he could do the baptismal interview.  I was still sick at that point, so basically we left to work and taught one lesson, did the baptismal interview and then kept trying to work, but we ended up in the house eating saltine crackers and drinking electrolytes because it was just not working out.  So, it was a sick week (in a very literal way, although reading it like slang works too because it was an awesome week).

But that´s not the awesome part… The awesome part is that by Saturday we were both fine, and we had our baptism (see picture attached)!  And as if that weren´t enough to make an awesome week, Sunday was even better!  The Relief Society president here is awesome (and her husband, who is the branch 2st councilor).  Seriously they´re like my model for what I want my family to be like in like 10 years.  Anyway, she’s been bringing a friend and her kids to church for a couple of weeks.  Her friend is a teacher and here the schools just got out for their summer vacation, so she´s been super busy with end of the year stuff and we haven´t been able to talk with her and her kids.  So, yesterday we finally got to talk to her with her kids (and two other kids that she brought with her to church, her niece and her neighbor).  Pretty much the first thing that her 9-year old daughter said was "I already want to get baptized!"  And then all of the other kids were like "ME TOO! ME TOO!"  And we were like "Can you wait two weeks so that we can teach you what you need to know so that you can pass the baptism interview?"  And they were like, "That´s a long time..." but of course their mom told them to wait two weeks (oh and she wants to get baptized too). So. Yeah. That´s awesome! On the 27th we´re going to have five baptisms.  If they change me next week I am not going to be a happy camper.  But, if that happens of course I´ll do what the Lord wants me to and I´ll leave very happy knowing that this family is going to be baptized. :)

That´s about all I have to report!  I´ve never been so happy about the progress I´ve seen in any one of my areas before.  So, things are going pretty great.  I love you all very, very much!

Con mucho amor,
Elder Andrew Nickerl

The picture above and below are of our chapel.  They take care of the grass a lot.  Grass like this basically does not exist here in normal places (it´s very very VERY rare for someone to have grass in their yard).  So, this is definitely the prettiest church in all of Chahuites and we love our building.  All of the other churches are made of stuff like concrete block.

I tried to get an action shot of what we do every day, but it didn´t really work out that well.  Unfortunately my arm doesn´t stretch any further and you can just see part of me and the pamphlet we were using and the investigator.  We were teaching the word of wisdom here to a lady who is actually the mom of one of my comp´s aunts.
It´s a small world down here.  

July 8, 2013--Week 70

Hello everyone!

Is it really Monday again?  These weeks are starting to pass by really, really quickly... Well, this past week we went to Tuxta for our monthly Council of Zone Leaders.  And it was pretty awesome.  We broke down the Work of Salvation broadcast and talked about its implications for us and how we should be working with our units.  So this week here in Chahuites we started our branch mission plan.  Right now, we have about 60-70 people that come to church every week.  We set the goal last night to have 100 people attending every week.  So, that´s a pretty drastic change for so short a period of time, but the members committed to making it happen, and of course we as missionaries are here to back them up every step of the way.  So, I´ll be letting you know how that goes in about a month (assuming they don´t change me when we have changes here in two weeks of course.  Side note: If they don´t change me then I will have been here in Chahuites longer than any other area). 

Apart from that we´re going to be having at least one baptism this Saturday.  We may have one Friday as well--we´re not sure yet.  Unfortunately, after these baptisms, we are going to be completely without investigators that have baptismal dates.  But that´s ok! There are some families in the branch (like the one in the picture below--he´s the 2nd Councilor in the Branch Presidency and she´s the Relief Society President and they are AWESOME) that are working hard and already have people for us to teach.  So, we will definitely not be spending too much time without more baptisms.  We´re happy, the members are happy, and we´re all working together. :)  That produces some pretty amazing results.  

So, that´s about it this week!  I love you all. :) Enjoy work and your summer vacations!

Con mucho amor, 

Elder Andrew Nickerl

This is our zone this change. :) We took this photo at our zone training that we

 gave this past Wednesday.

This is our branch council.  Included we have (more or less from left to right) the YW Pres, Primary Pres, son of the Branch President, RS Pres and her husband (the 2nd councilor in the branch presidency), the YSA Rep and his wife, the branch secretary, the YM Pres, the Branch President, the EQ Pres, the Ward Mission Leader,
 and the missionaries. :)

July1, 2013--Week 69

Dear Family,

So, since I didn´t have time to write last week, I want to start off by talking about the Work of Salvation broadcast. We watched it here and it was such an incredible experience (and I got to watch it in English :D). The only thing that I really like much any more about the Gospel in English is listening to the general authorities. I don´t know if you guys all saw all of it yet, but if you haven´t, I invite and implore you to please do so. It completely reiterated what we´ve been trying to teach the members here since last October. Sometimes as members of the Church we have the idea that missionary work is for the missionaries and we´re there to help every once in a while (I definitely thought that before my mission). The broadcast made it very clear that missionary work is for every member of the Church. The missionaries are the ones that are there to help. So, that was cool.  We´ve seen a lot of change in the members of our branch since the broadcast. Tuesday, we went to the house of one sister in the ward.  And she had her grandson there and had been talking to him about the Gospel. And now they want to get baptized. Also, one of the daughters of that sister (who we´ve been teaching for a while) also decided to be baptized as a result of the fact that her nephew is now going to get baptized. So, they´re going to be baptized the 13th.  All the rest of the members put themselves the batteries (that´s what we say in Spanish, I don´t remember the appropriate and equivalent expression in English) and started working. We had branch conference this Sunday and 15 investigators came. Only 5 of them were even in part because of us. Neither my companion nor I had ever had more than 10 before. So, we have a LOT of new investigators and a lot of work to do.   

I testify that God is a living God. He directs this Church and this Work. Miracles have not ceased. I am so incredibly grateful to be a missionary in this crucial time in which the Lord is hastening His Work. I invite each one of you to redouble your efforts to spread the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. Your capacity to help others to have the light of the Gospel in their lives is just as great if not greater than that of us as missionaries. Our efforts to share the Gospel are a direct measure of our love for the Lord and for others. It may not always be an easy thing to do, but Lord gives us the strength to do so as we rely on Him. As Christ once said "Fear not, only believe." Be a light. Help others receive the Gospel and the sacred ordinances of baptism and confirmation so that they have the direction and knowledge and actions that lead to salvation. "After all that has been said the greatest and most important duty is to preach the gospel."

I love you all very much. I want you all to know how happy I am. The promise that was made to me in my mission call that greater blessings and more happiness than I had yet experienced awaited me as I served among God´s children is being fulfilled. There is no greater happiness than helping others receive such happiness. I invite you ALL to try it. :) If you love Him, feed His sheep. You´ll be glad you did.

Have a great week!

Con mucho amor,

Elder Andrew Nickerl

June 17, 2013--Week 67

Hey everybody :)

I can´t believe Adam and Jared already graduated.... and that my graduation was two full years ago and that about two years ago as well I was starting at BYU.  Seriously... where does the time go? 

This was a pretty good week.  We´re having a wonderful time here in Chahuites apart from burning to death as usual :) So, I have a couple of cool stories from this week:

--First of all, we found the family that the Lord wanted us to find. :) Right now we´re just teaching the mom and one of her daughters, but she has two other sons and we´re hoping to be able to teach her husband, too.  Our first lesson with her we had an incredible experience. She told us about something that had happened to her about 15 years ago. She lost her first child in an accident, and she told us that for a long time she had nothing to hold on to and that she had constant thoughts of taking her own life. Her little girl had died without being baptized in the Catholic church, and all of her family told her that her child would be in limbo forever and it was her fault. Needless to say, she was passing through a lot of guilt and depression. One day, on the way home from the doctor, she randomly (better said miraculously) found a Book of Mormon laying in the street. Even more miraculously, she opened up to Moroni 8.  Out of all of the 633 pages in the Spanish Book of Mormon, she turned to the only chapter where it talks about infant baptism.  As she read verse 11 and read "little children need no repentence, neither baptism" until verse 12 where it says "little children are alive in Christ" she told us that everything that she had felt just went away, and she knew that it was true.  I am so grateful for the Lord's promises to us.  I know he prepared this sister to recieve the joy of the Gospel, and I know that he kept the promise that He made to my companion and me that we would find this prepared family.  

--On a less spiritual note, we rescued an abandoned puppy that´s like two or three weeks old.  I´ll attach a picture in a second.  We´re not allowed to have pets, so we took it to the members that we rent from and begged them to keep it there (but we give it food and take care of it, which is kind of borderline on the rules even though it´s not in our house) until we find it a home.  We plan to do today because it´s probably not ok.  But, it was just abandoned on the side of the road in the pouring rain and I couldn´t leave it there to die.  

--Not really a story, but we´re super psyched and happy because the zone is doing awesome. :) Everybody is baptized and working to find their family.  A couple of areas apart from us have already found them. :)

--Also, thank you very much for the package.  I didn´t really mention it last week because I ran out of time.  Seriously, that package was so incredibly awesome.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE the Jon Schmidt "Hymns Without Words" and the BYU Mens Chorus "Set Apart" albums.  On that note, everyone reading this email LEARN TO PLAY THE PIANO BEFORE YOU LEAVE ON YOUR MISSION.  MOM ISN'T KIDDING WHEN SHE SAYS THAT YOU'LL REGRET NOT BEING ABLE TO PLAY THE HYMNS WHEN YOU´RE IN A BRANCH IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE WHERE NOBODY PLAYS THE PIANO OR KNOWS HOW TO SING THE HYMNS.  Ok.  I think that deserves capital letters just so that everyone understands where I´m coming from.  Learn until you can sight-read the hymns and acompany in sacrament meeting.  You´ll be extremely grateful that you did.  I finally got fed up enough with the branch here while they sing that I ordered myself a symplified hymns book from lds.org store to see if I can acompany like that.  

Well, my time is up and I've got to go.  I love you very much. :)  Have a great week!

Con mucho amor,

Elder Andrew Nickerl

I´ve wanted one of these "walking with the companion" photos for a while so we put the camera on a timer on a bridge and walked by :) and it worked.

This is the puppy we rescued.  We named him Padrino.  We´re going to find him a nice home today.

The pollito (little chicken) thought he was a parrot. 

June 10, 2013--Week 67

Hello everyone!

This has been an incredible week!  We had the baptisms of two sisters, Azucena and Norma.  I´ll send the photos in a sec when my comp finishes sending them to his family. :) Apart from that, we did exchanges with the assistants to start the week and then later in the week we did exchanges with one of our district leaders so that he could interview the sisters that were going to get baptized and so that we could interview the brother that they were going to baptize.  

I´ll start by talking about the exchange with the assistants first.  It was AWESOME.  One of the assistants right now was my zone leader in Comitán (Elder Gunter), and I´d done exchanges with him before, but this time he came here to Chahuites and stayed with my comp.  I went with his comp  (Elder Cerna) to their area in Tuxtla (They have the temple in their area and I saw it again!!!!  The offices, which is where they live, is like  2 blocks away from it.).  I´ve wanted to have an area in Tuxtla my entire mission and this was the first time I had even worked there so it was pretty cool.  Anyway, Elder Cerna is from Peru, he´s a convert of three years, and is probably the most charismatic missionary that I've ever met.  It´s his first transfer as assistant, so I hadn´t really heard that much from him before, but I learned SO MUCH from him.  So, that was a really cool experience. Also, by miraculous means, the package that you had sent was already there (and I went on Tuesday)! More on that a little later.

Later in the week, after I got back from Tuxtla, we did divisions with our district leader, Elder Stucki.  I stayed in Chahuites this time and was with Elder Stucki, and Elder Reyes went to Zanatepec with Elder Jensen (Elder Stucki´s comp).  It was awesome.  Mexicans don´t really appreciate the pure genius of Reese´s Peanut Cups (that you sent in my package), so Elder Stucki and I took advantage of the opportunity to buy ice cream and eat it with the Reese´s.  Also, unexpectedly, one of our investigators bought us like 10 empanadas each, so we had a feast Thursday night while listening Jon Schmidt´s "Hymns Without Words" (another thing that Mexicans don´t understand the sheer genius of). So that was a lot of fun :)

Then, the other days we had baptisms. :) Both of the sisters were confirmed Sunday morning, as well.  All in all, it was a very happy week.  That´s about all I have to report.  I love you all very much!  Make it through the last week of school and then start enjoying the summer :) the only thing it means for me here different is rain!  But I love it :) and I love all of you!  Have a great week!

Con mucho amor,

Elder Andrew Nickerl

P.S.  So I´ve got a random logistical sidenote.  I learned officially today with transfers that all the missionaries that were here for the weird transfer of 10 weeks will be going home 2 weeks early, and not 4 weeks late.  So, it looks like instead of getting home in late March, I´ll be getting home in mid-Febuary.  So, if you guys can keep an eye out for a job out for me that I can work like 40 hours a week when I get back that would be great. Don´t worry about agressively job hunting, just if you hear of something keep it in mind for me :) because it looks like I´ll be home for a couple of months before going back to BYU. I'm hoping it´ll help me get a job that I know Spanish (although Spanish speakers in San Diego are a dime a dozen, I think I probably speak a better Spanish than most of them speak English, so we´ll see if that helps...) and I think maybe I could present my mission as leadership experience since I´ve been district or zone leader for like 8 months now and it´ll be more than that by the time I finish.  So hopefully with all of that combined I can get a good job and can save some money.  I decided that if I have that much time in house before BYU, I´m not going to spend it idly, so I´m also going to practice a lot the piano, reremember all the programming that I learned (I realized as Adam and Jared were telling me that they´re going to do CS and CE that I don´t really remember how to code anymore... we don´t do too much of that around here...) and do crossfit and whatever other productive things I can think of in the meantime. :)

Norma's Baptism

Azucena's Baptism

June 3, 2013--Week 66

Hello Family!

So, we had another AWESOME week this week.  Although it was a little bit disrupted by a hurricane.  And nobody even advised us ahead of time.  Which we did not appreciate very much and got very wet because of.  Sorry, I don't have pictures because I still don´t have my camera charger. :( The Comitán zone leaders forgot it in their house which is very understandable because I think I´ve forgotten one thing each time I've gone to something in Tuxtla my entire mission).  But that´s ok!  So, we started off the week by going to Tuxtla for the Leaders of the Mission Council (the translation is something like that now.  It´s not called "Zone Leaders Council" anymore because the sister missionary leaders are there too).  And it was pretty cool.  Each month we have one of those, and we have an "analysis of the zones." We look at all the numbers of the zones and the zone leaders whose numbers have gone down go up and make excuses for why and the ones who improve go up and talk about what they did to make it better (that´s basically what it comes down to).  So, the month of April we had only had 3 baptisms in the entire zone (that´s a pretty low number), so we were trying to do a bunch of stuff this month to help the zone to improve.  And this month we had 8.  So we were pretty happy about that. And we´re even happier this month because we´re going to have 8 baptisms in this week alone.  So, I think we're definitely improving :) and we like that.  Then, later, we were in the consejo, and I just randomly had this thought pop into my head "the zone needs to be teaching more families".  So I told my comp and he was like, "Huh, that´s funny, that´s exactly what I was just thinking".  And we really felt like there is a complete family in each one of the areas in our zone ready to accept the Gospel.  So, that´s pretty much what happened in Tuxtla.  

Wednesday (the day of the hurricane), we had our zone training, and we talked to all the elders (we don´t have any hermanas in our zone) about what we felt in Tuxtla.  That everyone needs to find that family.  One of the areas has already found their family, and they´re preparing to be baptized at the end of this month.  We're still in our search, but we know that we´re going to find them soon :) I hope I´ll be able to say by next week that we've found them.  We´ll see what the Lord´s timeline looks like.   

Afterwards, everybody came to our house a few blocks from the chapel to get materials, and we all got soaking wet.  And then we went to eat, and while we were eating (we were in a very stable house, luckily) a very unusual amount of wind picked up.  And started ripping trees out of the ground.  It was kind of scary.  But, we had appointments with the two sisters that are going to be baptized this week (Friday the 7th and Saturday the 8th), so we decided we needed to get going anyway and teach them the lessons that we had prepared. :) On our way, the ward mission leader (who is an RM and understands that the Gospel is still true even when it´s raining so as missionaries we keep working) told us that we were crazy and to go home.  And we said, "OK!" and then we went to teach our lessons :) and then the wind stopped.  It was a nice day--a really wet, nice day.  Anyway, the next day, two of the elders in our zone (from a little town called Zapata) came to live and work with us for a couple of days because their area was the one that got REALLY flooded and they had a power outage for a couple of days and they didn´t have cell phone coverage and stuff.  But, the Lord protects His missionaries, and we`re all fine here and where it passed through Chiapas they´re all fine, too.  

Apart from that, the work keeps progressing quickly here.  We´re seeing so many blessings from the Lord.  This week we´re going to have two baptisms, one Friday night and one Saturday night.  We also found another brother this week with very sincere desires to change and be a better person.  He´s going to be baptized at the end of the month.  We also have a couple of other sisters who we´re going to see if they get baptized this month or not. :) But we´re very happy and very, very grateful for these many blessings.  The branch is starting to get really excited and we are all progressing!  

I just want to tell you all that I love this work.  My companion and I have come over the same promise again and again and again this week in our study of the Book of Mormon (it's definitely one of the central message that it contains):  "Keep my commandments, and you will prosper in the land."  It´s so simple and beautiful and true.  The commandments aren´t restrictions.  They´re more of a how-to manual on living a happy life.  It comes again in Doctrine and Covenants:  "Fear not, little flock, do good, let earth and hell combine against thee, for if ye are built upon my rock, they cannot prevail." (DyC 6:34) and "But learn that he who doeth the works of righteousness shall receive his reward, even peace in this world and eternal life in the world to come." (DyC 59:23)  Do good, and prosper.  So, it´s ok. :)  Trials will come.  Temptations will come.  Just follow the commandments.  Trust in Christ.  Trust in His words:  "Fear not, little children, for you are mine, and I have overcome the world, and you are of them that my Father hath given me; and none of them that my Father hath given me shall be lost.  Wherefore, I am in your midst, and I am the good shepherd, and the stone of Israel.  He that buildeth upon this rock shall never fall."  (DyC 50:41-42, 44)

I love you all very much.  Have a great week.

Con mucho amor,

Elder Andrew nickerl