Baptismos!

First off, everything went well with the baptisms of R-------- and M------.  They were really excited, and both of their families came to see it.  Sadly no family returned for the confirmations on Sunday.  M------ was confirmed Sunday and is excited to be a teacher.  R-------- had to work, so her confirmation will be next Sunday.  It was Elder O's first time baptizing, and he was really happy afterwards.

But other than the baptisms, it was a pretty slow week.  We had zone conference, and a lot of baptismal preparations. It will be a week of hard work to make up for last week.  We are excited, and we are starting to find some great people to teach.  Our ward mission leader is helping out a ton to integrate the investigators with members. 

We also had interviews with President Houseman, and it was really nice. We talked a little about the district, about training, about the area, and he is excited about the new missionaries that are being sent to our mission. They really are coming in a lot stronger and a lot better prepared than our generation was.  It is interesting to see how that works. We came so unprepared, but it seems like these new guys just jump right into the groove of things.

I bought a ukulele to play at baptisms. They are pretty cheap here. I still had about 70 dollars in reals, and I was able to buy a ukulele, a padded case, and a tuner. So I thought it was a pretty good buy. I am learning to play some hymns, and there a lot that go really well with the ukulele. So I'm pretty excited about that.

Its raining a ton today, and the rest of the week is just crazy hot. You don't even know, from about 12:00-5:00 the sun is just burning.

Interesting story of the week:

In our area we have a junk yard that has a bunch of old car parts, and there is a kiosk that is in the front and it makes a little corner. There is a woman there that is always yelling a bunch of nonsense inside. She passed in front of us the other day and went there to start yelling. So I told Elder M------, "If she is there when we return, we will talk to her." When we were returned, she was there so I tried to talk to her, but she had her back to us and couldn't hear us talking because she was yelling too loud. I gave a little whistle, and she heard it. She squatted down in a "spider man-like position" and started yelling for us to leave. She grabbed a bag and started trying to grab something from inside, so we started to back away. She pulled out a 3 L of water. She threw it over her head without looking at me, and I was soaked. So we left, and I was in shock. I couldn't believe that the crazy lady had soaked me with water, and it was really funny to think about afterwards.

I hope that all is well back home, and that you guys have a great week!

Love,
Elder Nielson

Another Great Week!

It is pretty cool to hear how it all works to call a new stake presidency. It sounds like it should be a great stake presidency, and it will be interesting to see what they do to help the stake grow and be stronger.  Elder Costa is a Brazilian you guys are aware, right??? (Side Note: One Elder Costa is Brazilian, but the Elder Costa that came to our Stake is Argentinian). I'm sure Heavenly Father inspired them to choose the right man for the job at this time from all the good and worthy men of the stake. Something that I try not to do in the mission is aspire for position. At times the thoughts come "Will I ever be this, or that?"  But its not something that we need to worry about, we just need to worry about keeping the commandments and serving where we are. It's the natural man that seeks for position.

We have two people marked for baptism this Saturday -- R-------- and M------.  They seem really excited, and we hope that it all goes as planned.  We will also have zone conference this week, and I'm pretty excited for that. 

Our teaching pool is a little weak right now. We need to search to find new people that are interested and willing to make the sacrifices to go to church and to read and pray. We think we will be able to teach R--------'s daughter, who is kind of avoiding us because she has a friend that doesn't seem to like us that much, but she will go to the baptism. I'm sure she will like it, and we have faith that with the help of the Young Womens, she can be baptized too. And M------ was a contact that we did with the Young Mens president, and he is pretty excited about it. His parents aren't married, and we are trying to help them to marry so that they can be baptized too. We are also helping them with the Word of Wisdom.

But other than that this week was pretty normal. We had some meeting in Recife that made it a little bit more difficult, but we still had some great resultados.

The pictures are of Elder A----, he is from Bolivia, and he is my zone leader.  We had a split this week. He wanted pancakes when we woke up, so I made him pancakes, but the flour was expired. They didn't turn out too good. But the pizza was great!

Hope you all have a great week. Love you so much!

Elder Nielson

H------ foi Batizado!!!

This week H------ was baptized!  We have been working with him for a while. When I got here in the area, we were walking around, and a recent convert was riding his bike with H------. We called H------ over,talked a little, and set an appointment to visit him. He went on a trip, and it slowed the process, but he is really determined. He even started showing up early to church to help wash the sacrament trays.  He is awesome!

We had some problems with the baptismal jumpsuits, and the zipper broke on the only one that fit him. So we had some fun with a stapler. We were able to close up the suit, and baptize him just fine. 

G-------- baptized him.  G-------- is the Young Mens President in our ward, and he helps us out so much.  He tries to give rides to our investigators, and he has helped in so many ways. It was nice to see H------ baptized by a member that will be able to take good care of him. Oh yeah, H------ calls everyone "tio"  which means "uncle" in Portuguese.  It's the culture here - when you respect someone, you call them "Tio".  So I'm tio, Elder M------ is tio, and G-------- is tio. H------ is super funny.

We had a good week, and we marked 3 people for baptism,  M----- who is also one of the fruits of the work G-------- is doing to help us.  And R-------- and G-----, a mom and son.  R-------- and G----- came to church this week, and they really liked it. So we hope that it strengthens their desire to be baptized on the 26th.

This is a different mother and son than I mentioned last week. We are still working on R----- and V-----.  R----- had surgery a couple of weeks ago, so she wasn't able to come to church.  We couldn't talk to her this week, but we talked to V-----, and for only being 13 years old, he is really intelligent, and he has some great questions.  We hope that things can work out alright with them.

I started studying the Come, Follow Me program, and it is really great!!!  It will help everyone in the church do a personal study really effective.

Hope you all have a great week!

Love,
Elder Nielson

My New Son (Greenie)

This week was pretty good.  I got my new son Elder O. M------.  He is from Santa Katarina in he south of Brasil.  He lives in the interior, and he is pretty excited to work. He is doing great.  He is 21 and he knows the doctrines of the church very well and is already teaching well. He talks in a way that shows some confidence, and I know that he has everything he needs to be a great missionary. He doesn't ask many questions other than "What are we going to do next?"  I expressed to him that especially in training its important to be real open, and as we talk about our investigators and how to help them, we will develop skills to teach. But he really is doing great. We got a new sister in our district (Sister De J----), and she gave some great animation to us.  Everyone was super excited and worked super hard this week. I'm really excited.  The District is going well, and we are finding new people to teach.

We had some great resultadas essa semana.On Friday before leaving to go to work, we prayed that the Lord could help us to find those that he is preparing for us to teach. Our appointment at 11 am fell through, so we started contacting with little results (some people lived in other places, and others weren't interested). We kept talking to people in the streets. We realized a little after that we had passed the street that we needed to enter in to go to lunch. When we turned around we saw a 13 year old kid walking towards us with his head down, looking at his feet, and bobbing his head.  We stopped to talk to him, and he told us that 6 years ago the missionaries visited his family. We asked him to bring us to his house, and he brought us to his house to meet his mom. She explained that the missionaries stopped passing by, but she really liked their messages. She told  us that she really wanted to shout for the elders when they were passing by in the street, but she knew that "one day God would bring us back to her house." These words filled our hearts with happiness.  And strengthened our testimonies that God hears our prayers and loves us enough to answer them.

We will have the opportunity to study Come, Follow Me too. We didn't get to this week, but we got our manuals and this week we will start.  It seems like a pretty great change.  Everyone was pretty happy this week at church.  How did it go back home with the changes?

I am searching every day to find things that I can change to be more like the Savior.

Elder C-------- left on Wednesday to Setubal. On Monday night Elder I---- (our ZL) slept over with us because his comp was leaving for home. We were woken up by the fireworks at midnight, and we drank some sparkling cider to celebrate. It was a nice little experience. Before he left, Elder C--------- bought 50 little pizzas.  I tried to tell him not to, but he went ahead and did it.  He then left about 30 in the oven without telling me. So today when we were cleaning we found a bunch of moldy pizzas.

I hope that you all have a great week!!!

Elder Nielson