Lord has promised blessings for reading and studying His words

Well family, it's been a week since i invited y'all to read with me in the book of mormon! How is it going... we should all be in the 7th chapter of 1Nephi! I really hope y'all are able to do this! The Lord has promised blessings for reading and studying His words, not the least of which is a greater relationship with Him and His Son! I know this is true I've experienced it and seen it in the lives of others! Please share with me what you are learning! I am recognizing more things this time through that i didn't before! I love that the same words can being different insight and inspiration each time i read it! 

Last Monday after i emailed y'all we had lesson that night with Sunshine, we taught her the 10 commandments and it was a wonderful lesson. Sister Cefalo and i taught in perfect harmony and the spirit was really strong. While sister Cefalo would teach i would pray silently that she would be given the words that the Lord wanted sunshine to hear. every time i would do this, she would always say something that the spirit would confirm was for sunshine and the spirit would fill the room, and i felt so much love for sister cefalo and i was proud of her! then i would begin teaching and we were able to go back and forth flawlessly! it was a great lesson, one in which the spirit was very much a part... we have struggled in the past to teach in better unity, but we have gotten better as the weeks went on. but this day we were able, with the help of the spirit, to teach beautifully! it was a really neat experience! 

Tuesday we participated in a mission fast! We are doing a month of consecration for all of July... where we push ourselves to be more diligent and obey with exactness and really consecrate our whole selves to the work. so in preparation for this we fasted. (we started today and can i just say, i can already feel the adversary working... my whole mission ive never had a hard time getting out of bed at 6:30 every morning. but this morning i had a really hard time... i was still out of bed, but when the alarm went off i was really tempted to hit snooze and fall back to sleep. dang satan... i hate that guy!)

Anyway so we fasted all day on Tuesday and i was fine, the lord really did sustain us... but the again Satan tempted us... we had two out of the blue phone calls from restaurants with the wrong number telling us that they had our orders ready for delivery... of course this would happen today while we were fasting... ha ha! but how weird is that!?

Wednesday we taught the restoration to a family from Guatemala and we had to have someone come along to translate it into Spanish... that was interesting... the reason we had to do thins was because the Spanish branch that meets ion our building doesn't have a set of missionaries... so their branch president asked if we could come teach them... we are seeing them again tomorrow... it is an interesting experience for sure.

Thursday we had lunch with (opera lady), we call her Ro! she is from New York and has a sweet accent! ha ha it is so fun to listen to her talk. we went to the park here in lilburn and had a little bbq with her and some friends she invited. they are really great people! we were able to tell them about what we do as missionaries and answered some questions. we are hoping to be able to set something up with them again and maybe see if they would be interested in learning more! But Ro is an incredible woman, she has fostered 55 children over the years.. she has so much love to give. I really hope to be able to teach her too! 

Friday was.... interesting! we spent much of the day planning as we usually do, we went visiting teaching with some sisters in our ward then took a late lunch. during our lunch we decided to move the couch that is in one of the bedrooms out into the living room... we discovered that it was a hide-a-bed ... when we tipped up to fit it through the door, the bed fell out and landed on sister cefalo's toe! it split her toenail open and it started to bleed like mad! she screamed and hurried to the bathroom where it bled all over the floor! she sat and sobbed, and gagged went into shock...and i hurried and got a cool wet towel to put on her forehead so she wouldn't pass out ...then i cleaned up the blood... she would hardly let me touch it to clean it so i gave her some pain reliever all the while she is wailing in pain! finally the bleeding started to slow so i helped her to her bed and we propped it up to slow the bleeding some more. i couldn't really do more to help... so i just had to let her settle down and she finally did as her toe stopped throbbing... but then i had to bandage it because we had to go to the church for Sunshine's baptismal interview... i tried toe bandage it as gently as i could, but just the thought of me being anywhere near her toe sent her into another fit of hysterics... i felt so bad... but it had to be done... i got it bandaged let her set for a bit before we left... she calmed down... but then i had to change the bandage before we left because it had bled through... and that sent her into another fit... but i finally got it changed and we went to the church for the interview... 

while we waited for the interview to get done, there was a crazy awesome wind and thunderstorm that blew through! it was incredible! 

Sunshine did great in her interview as we knew she would! now she is ready for baptism! YAY!                   

Saturday i went to centerville, the next area over for an exchange and on of the centerville sisters came to lilburn with sister cafalo...

we did service all day long in centerville... it was great! we helped a couple move and then we went and cleaned up debris that was left after the storm yesterday! it was fun! we worked together with the centerville elders and had it done in no time. i got a blister from raking so much stuff out of people's yards... i think ill live though . I found a tiny toad but it wouldn't hold still long enough for me to kiss it! . No one would hold it not even the elders... they were all freaked out by it ha ha elders are wussies!! ha ha jk 

Sunday we had a BAPTISM!!! We were so blessed to have a baptism! We had to scramble a bit when the person who was supposed to be performing the baptism had an emergency at home so he had to leave last minute, and we had to quickly find someone who could go home and get their white clothes and do the baptism.... we had one of the priests do it... he did such an awesome job. I never think to ask priest to baptize people... i forget that they can do that... but some of the best baptisms ive been to have been when an aaronic priesthood holder perform the ordinance! there is just something about it that i just love. 

Well family! i hope that you all have a good week! I love you so much!

LOVE 

Sister Dannika Nielsen