Denver, the Promised Land - Blog Post #5

My wonderful companion, Sister Smith. We get along great!

Colorado is AMAZING!! Denver is the promised land.  I cannot BELIEVE how many people have been prepared to receive the gospel! I'm serving in  Colorado until my visa comes through.

Miracles that I've seen since being here (this is only a few! I can't even write them all!):

My companion and I were driving to an appointment, and there were Christmas lights up, it was snowing, and Josh Groban was singing Christmas hymns on our CD player. We were like "How could this get any more perfect?!" Well, the answer came pretty quickly: Hot cocoa and baptism!

We taught a lesson to a younger couple, and they were so receptive to the truth. I invited them to be baptized, and they accepted a date and are excited to learn and understand everything. They made Mexican hot cocoa but we had to leave so they were just like, "Take our mugs! You can just bring them back next time." Haha they're so sweet! It was so perfect.

The Lord has prepared people to receive the gospel! I'd heard this, but I've seen now that it's true!

Sisters in my district. 

There are many young, honest seekers of truth that the Lord has prepared to receive the gospel. We started teaching a family and one of the boys, Pablo, is about 11 years old. He was hanging on our every word, and when we asked when we could come back, he said "Can you come back tomorrow?!" 

It's the same with another family we started teaching; she has 2 young boys and they always fight over who gets to read the verses we share. And they have amazing answers to our questions! I can't even believe how prepared these people are. It's amazing!!

Last night Hermana Smith and I were in an apartment area, and there was a super old lady on oxygen with her door open. We both needed to use the bathroom, so we asked her if we could use hers. She let us in, and we started talking with her. She was SO awesome! She's Jewish, and she turns 72 in three weeks. She said she wasn't interested in Christianity since she's Jewish, but that she respected what we were doing. But when she found out that we were Mormon, she's like, "My daughter's Mormon!" 

We found out her daughter is actually in the same ward as Hermana Smith's family! SMALL WORLD! And then we wrote down our number for her on a pass-along card, and when she saw the picture of the temple she said, "Ive been here! It's beautiful! My daughter took me there." We sang her 'Nearer My God to Thee' (in Spanish because we just had our Spanish hymn books, haha), and then told her we'd be back to check on her. We'll probably bring her a birthday card or something. It was so amazing that we met her! She's quite amazing.

We have a Spanish ward here and an English branch. Pretty funny that there are more Spanish speakers than not here. The ward is incredible! I speak pretty good Spanish, but that's actually kind of a problem for me haha. Most people learning Spanish can understand it but not speak it, but I'm the opposite. I can speak it fairly well, and everyone compliments me on my Spanish and my accent. But then they start speaking and I have no idea what they're saying so I just smile and nod and say "si." haha. It's fun.

Well, there have been many more amazing things but that's all I have time for right now! The gospel is true, no doubt about it.

FELIZ NAVIDAD AND MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

~Hermana Kayla Nielsen