Jean Nielsen

                              December 2017 Spotlight

Elizabeth Jean Nielsen goes by her middle name and is currently serving in our ward as our Relief Society Music Leader and our Amazing Family History Teacher.  She has two daughters, one lives in Lynnwood and the other in Missouri.  She also has eight grandchildren (four live in the Everett area) and 7 great-grandchildren (all 7 live close). One daughter is a registered nurse and the other holds a PhD in Cellular Immunology. In addition to her daughters and their families, she is a step-mother to 2 girls, 6 grand-children, and 3 great-grandchildren.

She enjoys spending time with her sisters.  On their decade birthdays (50, 60, etc.) her three sisters along with their spouses spend 3 to 4 days together for a birthday party. They have stayed in a Light House Keepers House, spent a day in the Portland Temple taking one name each through all the temple ordinances, gone to Arizona, stayed at Stehekin on Lake Chelan, and gone on a docent lead “birthday party” at Cougar Mountain Zoo, to name a few of their activities.

She has been on many great vacations.  A few that stand out are: her first 50-mile backpacking trip, were she hiked to Miner’s Ridge and Image Lake in the Glacier Peak Wilderness; back-packing the ocean front in the Olympic National Park, several times; walking to the light house on Dungeness Spit; seeing and entering the Egyptian Pyramids and King Tutankhamun’s tomb; seeing the “Bridge on the River Kwai” in Thailand; going with Weston to his father’s birthplace in Demark; and spending time in Israel (something she never thought would happen in her life! One might think going to Israel would be the best vacation ever but to her it was one of the best spiritual times of her life.)

Her favorite smell is fresh mountain air so it makes sense that she loves spend time with friends in the outdoors - walking, hiking, camping, talking, taking pictures, identifying wildflowers, smelling the air, getting physically tired, learning about this world, sharing gospel insights, and just being a friend.

She also enjoys The Book Thief and Anne of Green Gables - both the book and the movie. Her favorite type of fiction to read is Fantasy - Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, DragonRiders of Pern series, and Harry Potter.  She enjoys reading above watching movies or television.

If she could be any fictional character she would choose…well, as a young girl, she liked Jo in Little Women – not because she wanted to be a writer but because she is one of 4 girls and she liked her personality. Her sisters didn’t interest her like Jo did.

Some things she is most grateful for are: a body that is healthy and finds walking easy; parents that joined the church and stayed active the rest of their lives; sisters that live the gospel; the opportunity she has had to identify ancestors and relatives (She loves the process of finding and proving they are hers. She becomes very possessive of them and has a hard time doing the ordinances one at a time! She wants them done Right Now!); friends; an education (her college degree is in Home and Family Life Education) along with the ability to read and write; and most of all for a wonderful husband that puts God first in his life and loves her with all the rest of his heart. She says, “He lets me be me!”