June 1, 2020

PETA Would be so Disappointed

Well first off I got a much needed haircut from my companion Elder Briggs. For the most part he did good, but he did my bangs dirty unfortunately. It doesn't look horrible when it's combed, but when it's not combed it's a little funny. 

Let's see Tuesday. There is a member here in town who is really old and can't come to church and every so often we go pick up her tithing. Well we were on our bikes because she only lives about a half mile from us and as we were biking I saw this squirrel start to cross the road. Well I started doing some quick math in my head and realized that if the squirrel kept his path and I kept mine, I would hit said squirrel with my bike. Well I had a very important decision to make. Should I slow down and make the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals happy or should I keep going and make myself happy. I think y'all can guess which one I chose. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but I do know the squirrel hit my back tire and went flying into a storm drain which he promptly got out of to go climb a tree and reevaluate his life. Good times. This member also gave us a huge box of food to take home so that made for an interesting bike ride.

Oh you remember that kid Colten I talked about like last week? Well on Friday I think it was we taught him a lesson and we put him on date to be baptized!! We are so excited! As of right now he should be baptized on Saturday but we'll see if that works out, but we are really hoping it does! So yeah that was definitely a miracle for the week!

What a time to be alive! I've heard a little bit about the riots going on all over the country and boy it sounds crazy! Just remember who is at the head of our church! It's God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. And how blessed we are to live in a day with a Prophet who can speak to us from God. That's quite the blessing I'd say. Be good this week everyone. Don't go looting. It's bad. 

Warmest regards,

Elder Nixon

Pics: My wonderful haircut

          A giant windmill blade 

          I made bread this week

Oh and I feel I should include this PSA

In case y'all didn't know, the little lights you can turn on on most standard ovens get REALLY hot, especially if you've left them on all day, and it only takes oh not even half a second to burn your fingers on them pretty bad. It took me 19 years to figure this out so hopefully I can speed up the process for some of y'all!

May 25, 2020

Tickle, Tickle

What is up everyone! Look at me being proactive and getting a weekly email out! I can't promise this is how it'll be from now on but I didn't have anything better to do so here I am! We had another great week out here in the old 620! Lemme tell y'all a little bit about it

We had the chance to actually teach someone who lives here in town which was great! His name is Colten and he's 9 and his Mom and Grandma are both members. His mom is apparently super less active but his Grandma isn't and she watches him a lot and so we went over to teach him and he told us he wants to get baptized and keep going to church with his Grandma!! We were so excited so we're gonna hopefully get him baptized here in June! 

We also invested in an ice cream machine this week. We picked it up at Walmart for like 30 bucks. We figured we have so much time during the day we might as well do something fun with it! So we spend a lot of time making ice cream. Some of it we keep and some we take to other missionaries. It gives us an excuse to go see other missionaries and to do something nice for them! So far we have made Peanut Butter Honey, cookies and cream, salted caramel pretzel, cake batter, and our own special creation which we call Sewing Kit Kookie Butter TM. For that flavor we took those cookies you can only find in the blue sewing kits that a lot of grandmas have. Well we took those crackers, smashed them up, put them in a vanilla base and then put some biscoff cookie butter in to change the base to cookie butter instead of vanilla. Turned out really good! 

So recently we had the opportunity to help a family move. They were just moving from one house here in town to another. It was really weird because we couldn't go inside so we just took stuff from the porch to their van and then drove over to the new house and unloaded everything onto the porch. Well during one particular unloading time their son, who I guess is around 12, came up to me, tickled my shoulder, and simply said "tickle tickle" then walked away. It was easily one of the weirdest things that's ever happened to me. I just looked at my comp like what the heck just happened and we both just laughed about it. And we continued to laugh about it. This kid also heard me singing Tangled and without missing a beat started singing with me so that was funny to! 

Yeah I think that's all I've got for the week! 

Warmest regards, 

Elder Nixon 

May 11, 2020

Fishers of Men...or Just Fishers of Fish

What's up everyone! Thought I'd send an email real quick! This week was not too bad I guess! We've been fishing a lot and you'll be happy to know I caught a fish and have actually caught quite a few fish so I'm getting better! Now one could ask "how do you get better at fishing?" Well let me tell you. You stop breaking your line every other cast and you don't lose your bait as much because you actually know how to cast. Oh and you learn how to cast far. So yeah I'm having fun with that!

We also went to the Keeper of the plains this week in Wichita which was lots of fun! It's this big Indian statue and it's one of the few things to see in Kansas! 

Umm yeah that's about it! We're trying to teach lots of lessons so if you'd be interested in a lesson via messenger, hangouts, or another form of communication we can use, let me know and we can work something out!

Warmest regards,

Elder Nixon 

May 4, 2020

Elder Nixon: Master Fisherman

Hello everyone! I thought I'd be proactive and get my email out before my parents ask me to send one! Go me! This week wasn't too bad honestly! We did a few things that got us outside and doing stuff which was pretty great! 

The first thing I'll write about is some service we did for a member here in the ward. He called us and asked if we could come over for the most interesting service project of our mission, which intrigued us, so of course we said yes and we went over. So for this service he needed one of us to crawl into this crawl space in his garage and then move a bunch of 2 liters full of water while they threw more at me from the garage. It was a tight fit getting in there, but it wasn't so bad once I got in! They threw a bunch of bottles down the hole and then I took them and moved them all to the side so the entrance was clear! Pretty exciting stuff. I'm not sure if it was the most interesting service I've done though. Not sure who all remembers the cat lady from my first area and the service we did for her... but that was interesting.

We got the opportunity to do some more service this week too! Or at least we thought we were going to get to do some more service. There was a service project in Wichita that we volunteered to go help with one day. Well we got there and apparently a ton of other missionaries volunteered to help as well! Our Zone Leaders had to send some missionaries home because we had too many people there and we wanted to follow our mission rules and not be in groups that large... so unfortunately we were some that got sent back. We did however make good use of our time in Wichita! Us and a few other missionaries found a disc golf course and we decided to play a few holes. I am not very good at disc golf but I had a good time. For some reason whenever I throw my frisbee always goes to the right which is annoying, so you can imagine I got pretty nervous when we were throwing next to a river, with the wind blowing toward the river and my throws curving toward the river. I decided my safest bet was to just keep the frisbee low and not throw it far at all. I'd throw the frisbee maybe 6 feet, go get it, throw it another 6 feet, and so on till I got to the metal thing. It didn't help that this was the only 600' hole in the course so yes it took a while! 

The last thing we have started doing is going fishing! Which as it turns out, I'm also not good at! I enjoy it and I like being in the sun, but man I don't get it! I thought fishing was just something everyone could do, but we fished for a long time and I didn't catch a single fish... my companion did get one on the line and let me reel it in which was nice but I don't think that counted. 

That's all I've got for this week! I hope y'all are doing good and hanging in there! I'm surviving out here! It's hard to believe I've already been doing this for 9 months! The time really does fly! I hope by now y'all have listened to at least a few general conference talks again! Those who speak to us during that truly are inspired. How amazing that we can listen to their words over and over. 

Warmest regards,

Elder Nixon

April 27, 2020

Another Week in Paradise...

Well we had another very uneventful week... and honestly I don’t have much to say. We have transfers this week and I'm not leaving, but I am going to be the District Leader, and I'm not too sure how to feel about that! I think it'll be good tho! We are doing all we can to further the work in any way we can! Well that's all I've got! I would also like to formally apologize to my older brother Tucker for always making fun of his short emails. I totally understand it now. 

Elder Nixon 

April 20, 2019

It Finally Happened...

Well folks there is actually some decently good content for the week! Lots of funny stuff and a little bit of good missionary work!

So, first things first. It finally happened. (I know addressing the title at the beginning so y'all can quit reading after) anyway. I knew my mission was going to be hard about a month before I left when I called the McDonalds out here to learn they didn’t have hot and spicy mcchickens. I love hot and spicys and I didn't know how I would survive without them for 2 years. (To all my friends who can’t eat them, I apologize) Anyway after a 7 month drought the McDonalds in Kansas have decided to start serving hot and spicy Mcchickens!! I got a message on Facebook from my trainer and he told me the news. I didn’t hesitate to go find out for myself. Oh how sweet was my joy to find out he was telling the truth. I ate four of them and coulda died a happy man! So that's exciting!

Next on the list is we met this less active named Cenek Sekavec. You would think he's like this short Checzh guy, but he isn't. He is very white and has no accent whatsoever. Anyway we talked with him and he is SUCH an intelligent man. It’s a good thing my comp is so smart because they just had a grand time talking while I just sat there pretending to understand what they were talking about. Good times tho.

We were out walking on Saturday and we walked past this elementary school where this 9 year old boy was balling out. He saw us and started yelling him and his family don't need Jesus and to keep walking. Train ‘em young I guess.

I don’t know how to preface this story, but I'll try. We were talking to this dude who was showing us his super cool bible and how it has cross references and everything. I feel a little bad, but I shredded this man's bible with the KJV and by the end he didn’t like his super cool bible. I then proceeded to destroy his idea on the trinity. Didn’t feel as bad about that. Well he was getting sad so naturally he turned to conspiracy theories. We went outside because we were leaving and he goes, " These are his words. "You see those stars? Those are aliens. President Putin- the antichrist- well he told Obama that he better tell everyone we were in a war with those aliens. Orion’s belt is actually 3 UFO's called the gray aliens. You can google it man. I wouldn't lie to you about this" We got a good laugh about that.

We have some tennis courts right across the street from our house and every morning we get up at 6am to play tennis for an hour. It's so much fun! I'm getting pretty good I think. Saturday me and Elder Brown were up at 5:30 to play tennis! I was pretty tired the rest of the day but it was so worth it! RIP to my good friend Scott who just bought his racket and pass and then got transferred... I'll serve it into the net for ya.

Ah yes. I ran my first red light this week. Some of the stoplights here are really dumb. Let me explain. They have the two straight lights and then off the side they have the turn arrow. Well I didn’t see the turn arrow. All I saw was a green light so I made the turn. Well about halfway through the turn I realized what I did. Oops. No cops saw so we good.

Umm lastly. I shaved my legs. No I didn’t cut myself. Yes my sheets felt really weird. Yes my legs get really cold and yes I am very not excited for the hair to start growing back.

Overall the mish is a grand time! I'm loving (almost) every minute. It's hard but it'll be worth it! I love this church and the peace it brings to me!

Warmest regards,

Elder Nixon