Bom Pastor

Hello!

I made it here to my new area safe and sound.  Bom Pastor is pretty close to the center of Recife, and it is a really small area.  My comp is Elder C---------.  He is from the Rio de Janeiro, and he is pretty crazy.  I already knew him pretty well (he was Elder D--------'s comp in the CTM).  He really is a great missionary. He finished training and I am his first comp after Elder J------.  He is really excited to work and learn. But I really think I will have more to learn with him than he can learn from me.  For only being a member of two years, he already knows the doctrines and how to teach them really well. I know we can do some great work together.

Our ward is pretty small. We don't have many active members. We don't have a Ward Mission Leader and some other important callings, so we have lots of work to do. Last Sunday I was called to speak at the last minute, so I grabbed a talk I had prepared for a Zone Conference and talked about the value of the soul. And how God loves all of the people on the earth. I hope it went well.

I can see that this area is poorer than my last one, and that the last missionaries baptized mostly little kids. So a bigger part of our investigator pool are kids, but I believe that we can make a change in our teaching group pretty quickly. We can keep teaching those that are interested, but we can also try to find some adults and some families that can help the ward grow. We already found some pretty cool people this week while contacting, and we are pretty excited to return and teach them.

This area is pretty tough with lunch. I have been here a week, and we have only eaten in a member's house once (yesterday). Normally we eat one meal a day with members. But it's nothing we won't be able to handle and figure out.

We have one investigator that is pretty tough. His name is A---, and he seems like he is trying to study the bible to prove us wrong. So we are praying and trying to know if we should stop visiting him or not, but our last visit was a lot better, so there is still hope. haha. There will be a baptism this Saturday that is the bishop's granddaughter, so it should be pretty good.

I continue to serve as a district leader here (replacing Elder J------). Our district is really good. We have three areas: Bom Pastor, Várzea, and San Martin.

When I got there the house needed a good cleaning, so we have been cleaning all day today. And we are going to Walmart (yeah, my first area that has Walmart!) to buy more cleaning supplies. But it is looking a lot better. We already cleaned the fridge and the stove and the bathroom, so we just have the floors in the house to do now.

Funny story of the week:  We played a little game. I gave a word to Elder C--------- to use in a contact. It was "sabonete" or "bar of soap" And he walked up to a man and said, "You know how sometimes we are really, really stinky, and everyone around you can smell that you are stinky? This is what happens when we sin. But luckily we have a way to take away the smell. Just like we can take a bath with a bar of soap to take away the smell, if we repent we can take away our sins."  I think the man thought that he was calling him a sinner or something because he didn't want us to return. hahaha.

I hope you all have a great week!

Love,
Elder Nielson

Q & A

Elder Nielson responded to lots of questions this week but didn't really give a weekly summary. Here are some of the questions we had and answers he provided:

1. What kind of food do you eat in Brazil?

Arroz, feijão, macarrão, galinha.  (rice, beans, noodles, chicken)

2. Is Recife a third-world country or is it pretty modern?

It is pretty modern.  It isn't third world, but it wouldn't be considered first world. They have a lot of people that are really poor, but they have all the necessities for the most part. They have a lot of favelas or ghettos, which is where you see the most necessity.

3. Are the bugs and mosquitoes as bad as you were led to believe?

There are a lot of cockroaches, and mosquitoes, but it isn't as bad as we thought. We were all thinking that it would be like I was in the middle of the jungle. I use bug spray, and it doesn't give me too many problems with mosquitoes. They also have lots of scorpions, but I haven't see too many because we usually live in apartments.

4. What do you love about Brazil?

Everyone is open and happy. The members are excited to help (most of the time), and if you ask for directions, someone will take you where you are going.

5. Do you feel fluent in Portuguese? If so, how long did it take to feel you were fluent?

I feel fluent. Obviously there are little words that I don't know, but I can understand everything and express myself in Portuguese better than I can in English right now. I think that when I left my first area, I was already speaking pretty well. From there until now, it is more about training the accent and growing the vocabulary.

6. Share one spiritual experience that you will always remember. 

I will never forget how quickly the Spirit has gone to work with E------, our recent convert. He did a full 180 and now that he has the gift of the Holy Ghost, he is growing very quickly. He is sharing the gospel with others, and he is trying to bring people back that aren't going to church. Last night he was talking to us about these efforts, and I could feel the Spirit testifying that he will do great things, and that he will be an instrument in the Lord's hands.

I feel the spirit powerfully every time that I open up my patriarchal blessing to read. I am seeing these blessings, and I desire to magnify them in the best way possible. I know that the Spirit is present with me and has guided me in the past. As I am reading the scriptures, I can see Him opening my mind and leaving everything clear.

I recognize that the blessings and gifts of the Spirit aren't automatically given to me, and this makes me think about the parable of the talents.  If God gave me these things, what can I do to strengthen them, and develop them more in my life?  This is where my search has brought me, and I can feel that I am getting closer to where I need to be; that I am becoming who God wants me to be.

7. Do you have lots of persecution because of your religion, or are people fairly accepting?

We only have persecution from the other churches. All of them talk bad about us, so usually when we start to teach someone, we have to break all of the bad ideas that they have about us before we start to teach them.

8. What are the hardest things about your mission?

We walk a lot. But for me, I don't really mind. But the heat is really strong. From 10 am until 5 pm, I am just soaked in sweat.

9. What do you love the most about being a missionary?

I love the opportunity I have to study the scriptures every day. I also love that we can help people gain understanding and peace here on earth and help them resolve their problems.

10. Do you speak in church often?

Yes, we talk in church regularly. Usually when we get to a new area, we are called to talk in church. And when the assigned speakers don't show up, the bishop will grab us and ask us to speak about something we studied this week.

11. Are you staying in your area or being transferred this week? 

I was transferred, and I am going to Recife to an area called Bom Pastor, or Good Shepherd. I will take the place of Elder Jacklin, and I believe I will stay there with his son (junior greenie companion). But they changed how the transfers work, so we won't know who our comp is until we get there, but I am pretty sure it will be Elder C----------. I am pretty excited. I know that he speaks English well. He appears to be a great new missionary, ready to work and magnify his calling!

It's Almost Christmas?

This week was a little difficult. We had great expectations for all the new people we found last week, but we weren't able to reach some of them. We made a list of people that we could mark for baptism, and during the week we tried to get them. Nobody wanted to accept a baptismal date. We also had a couple that due to the size of our area we weren't able to meet with.  So this week we planned to focus on fewer people so we can actually meet with them, teach them, and help them to progress.  We have faith that we will be able to see better results this week.

I did a split with Elder J. B this week. It was pretty good to get to know him a bit better and help him with some of the worries and difficulties that he is having in his area. 

Do you remember that giant hamburger where we received money to eat lunch that day, so we ate a little bit of the giant burger for lunch, and we bought the rest home?  I put on some pictures of the experience. We bought another one and w
ere able to finish the whole thing in about 15 minutes. We were pretty proud.  In the past, there were two really big elders, both of them were about 200 pounds. And when they bought this hamburger, they had some times that they weren't even able to finish it all.

I also put a picture of how Elder M left the apartment this week.... with white socks. He used them because the rest of his socks were dirty. Oh I don't even know if I mentioned that our washing machine was broken for about a month, and that we were washing our clothes by hand. But we got the washer fixed this week, and it really is a blessing to have it working again.  It helps so much.

I hope you all have a great week this week!

Love
Elder Nielson

Conferência de Zona!

Well last Sunday night, Elder Montiel and I realized that the eggs we had bought would expire on Monday.  There were already a couple that were smelling bad, so we cracked the rest and cooked them up.  I think it was about 20 eggs.  It was an interesting experience.

Wednesday we had Zone Conference.  It was really good.  President Houseman talked about distractions and how we need to be completely focused on our mission.  He said, "Distractions will take away our excitement, hope, and will bring challenges and disobedience." 

This is true not just for missionaries but for every day lives.  We have our goal which is to return to live with Heavenly Father.  But the adversary will throw distractions into our lives to try and take away our focus, distract us, and make us sad.  But we can't let these distractions (sin, temptations, vain things of the world, cell phones, social media) distract us from our proposito (purpose?) here on earth.  Every one of us has a mission.  We need to always work to hear the Spirit and know what God wants us to do so that we can fulfill our mission on earth. 

But just as the adversary gives us distractions, God also gives us distractions for good. As we study the scriptures, participate actively in our church meetings, fast, and keep all of his commandments, we are being focused.  God is showing us His will in our lives, and it will help us to be strong enough to resist any temptation.

I know that God talks to us. We need to learn to recognize when he does.

Things are going well.  We were able to teach 19 new investigators this week, so that definitely will help us to get a new group going. Elder Montiel is doing great.  He has more time in the mission than I do, so it feels a whole lot easier to have someone with experience on your side.  We are running all over the place, and we don't really have much time to think.  Just work.  Which is really good. 

I got to see Elder Price this week. It was the first time that I got to talk to him in about 9 months. We bought a ball in the CTM with a minion inside. We each paid one real for it. So now we switch it every time that we see each other. And it had already been with him for 9 months.

Saturday as we walked through the streets in the center of Paulista, there was a group that met up, and they were having a preaching service, with rock music and everything. One of the pastors stood up and started talking. "Hello everyone. I'm so grateful for this opportunity to meet with you and to praise God here in the middle of the street. If we are able to bother everyone when we are in church, imagine how many people we can bother here in the street."

I couldn't help but laugh at that.

I really liked that story that you shared from Brother Bodily. This is something that I am trying to learn to do. Something that I am trying to be familiar with. President Houseman taught us about Goals of Faith. How a lot of times we set a goal that we are already in a good position to hit or that we can see how to hit that goal. Maybe we call them realistic goals. But to set goals of faith, we need to reach for the things that we can't see. Our goals with faith should have a part that we can't see how we can accomplish them without God's help.  He explained how we can leave some room for God to work with.

In his mission, President Houseman set a goal to baptize 20 people in a month. But it wasn't just a goal he set. He felt prompted with his companion that this was the goal they needed to set. They worked and worked, and baptized all 15 of the investigators in their teaching pool. They still had 2 weeks to have 5 more baptisms, so they prayed and showed their works to God and asked for his help so that they could find the people that he had for them to baptize. They found a family and they were baptized.  He baptized 23 that month. But only because he followed the inspiration that God gave him.

This is a trait I studied this week, and learned that the gift of discernment can be to discern the whispers of the Holy Ghost too, not just to know the thoughts of the people. I know that my patriarchal blessing says I have this gift of the Spirit, so now I am working to develop it.

I hope that you guys are doing well, and have a great week!

Love,
Elder Nielson