Monday August 6th. 2012

Hello family! It feels good to finally be able to write you! A lot has happened to me in this past week! First of all I am serving right in Santa Rosa! My area covers Windsor and   Shiloh Park and we are a part of the Shiloh park ward! It is a nice area and the weather here is soooo nice!! I love it! There are vinyards as far as the eye can see and tons of trees and oh man its sweet. My Dad is Elder Stainback from North Carolina. He is an awesome elder and he reminds me so much of Ryan because he has the funniest stories to tell and he tells them in a way that no one else can! He is super cool. Oh I have to let you know that when I unpacked my stuff all my white shirts were right next to my shoes right. Well I forgot that I had just polished them. So almost every shirt i own had black shoe polish on them. At this moment they are being washed so le’ts all pray that there is no staining. I was pretty frustrated about that. EVERY shirt. So annoying! Not to mention they were wrinkled! Anyways, so le’ts skip forward to my first day in the field cause it was pretty insane. Just so everyone knows, tracting is the worst thing ever!! Just kidding just kidding, I LOVE TRACTING. SO my first day yes I knocked my first doors. and I was so nervous. Seriously, I told my companion that I hated him for making me do this! I got rejected a lot by the catholics. We had a funny experience with a lady on the street though! She walked past us and we were like hello can we share a message with you or something and she was like No I am a evangilist christian(???) and I dont agree with your Mormon Doctrine. Then we were just like okay well what doctrine dont you agree with? Then she was just stuttered through a couple sentences and was just like the mormon doctrine! ha she had no clue about what our doctrine is about. she then proceeded to tell us to check out her doctrine and then went in her home. The funny part is that like a little bit later we were sitting in our car deciding who to go visit and that same lady pulled up on the side of us so we rolled down our window ready for more blubbering about mormon doctrine but she surprised us and said "Despite all that i said about mormons and even though I dont believe in your doctrine Im still voting for mit Romney!" and she drove off! Haha we thought that was pretty funny! So I got rejected a lot but we did find two Potential investigators! one was named amy and we ended up coming back and teaching her the restoration and giving her a Book of Mormon! She is going to read and pray about it and we are following up this week. So yeah knocking doors is really probably my least favorite thing to do. I get crazy nervous, cause you have absolutley no idea who is going to answer the door!! I forgot to mention that that EVERYONE here has stinking dogs! Some have been small so no biggie, but the majority all have huge monter dogs that act like they are going to eat me! Its the worst!!! Lets see what else.. Oh President Alba and Sister Alba are so amazing! Sister Alba is seriously the Sweetest  lady I have ever met in my entire life! They are great. And you can tell they really love and care about all of us! The eldres here are all awesome! so are the sisters! But the elders are seriously great! tHE AP's are in my zone so we see them all the time and they are really awesome elders and men! Our zone leaders are awesome as well. They always come up and tell me how amazing I am and stuff. In a couple of our meetings I have had to bear my testimony and they all compliment me and tell me im awesome so its nice haha. Oh also on my first day I had to give a blessing! It was crazy and i gave another one yesterday so thats two! I have had to learn fast and im growing really quick as well. Its crazy how many situations i have been in that make me so out of my comfort zone!! Im being stretched in ways like i never thought i would be. Just like Sister McGill said I would be!. Oh another sidenote elder andersons new companion is elder Nelson. haha he went from me to a different elder nelson! Pretty funny! The roads here are pretty crazy. I forgot to mention that on my first day as well I was given a cell phone, and i am the driver of our car!! Good thing I am used to cali traffic!! I am so pro at turning around these days.. We have a brand new toyota carolla, fresh of the lot that we cruise around in. Its pretty sick I must say. That thing never has to make a two point turn! I wish i could spend the next hour telling you everything but those are the highlights! Today is Elder stainbacks 16 month mark. that seems so long! Oh I invited someone to be baptized this week too.

 Thats so good to hear about little tyler!! I can get pics and vids through this email! Congrats to liesel and Dan!! Im so jealous!! Thats so fun!! Oh man did I mention that im seriously so tired!? When I wake up it feels like i just went to bed and when i go to bed it feels like i just woke up!! Its  terrible! I miss you guys a ton and hope you are all doing well and that I answered all the questions you had! Tell liesel i still expect a letter and that a new baby doesnt get her off the hook! i love you all so much! I look forward to all your letters in the mail!! my new address is 5203 Old Redwood Highway #48 Santa Rosa California 95403! Talk to you soon!!

Elder Nelson