Feliz Natal!!!

This week was awesome!  First we had the opportunity to go to the temple with President and Sister Houseman.  It was so cool!  Such a beautiful temple.  There were two missionaries working in the temple from Salt Lake, and their last name was Nielson.  I talked to the husband, and when the wife was coming to talk to us, I noticed Her name was JANICE NIELSON!  Exactly same as Mom!  It was crazy.

We had a baptism saturday!  That was awesome!  It was a bit of a miracle, She was ready, and we knew it, but she just wanted more time to think about it, and She received an answer that she needed to be baptized.  She is going to have a much better life because of this decision!  I know that.  

We have the best members here in Jordaõ!  We got 3 big packages of food from the sisters in the Relief Society.  They helped us so much this week.  They made Christmas awesome!  It was really hot on Christmas day yesterday, so a bunch of the missionaries got together and played soccer.  

But it was awesome to talk with my family!  Everyone looks great, and I love you guys!  You guys do so much for me, and it was great to see you guys again!  You guys mean so much to me!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas!  Love you all!

Love,

Elder Nielson

Batismo!

Oi Familia!

First off, our baptism went through.  L--- H------- didn't drink coffee all week, kept all his commitments, and was prepared.  He was baptized Saturday and confirmed Sunday.  It was a miracle.  He didn't accept a lesson for over a month, and last week when we taught him, he told us he wanted to be baptized, and that he was quitting coffee.  It was so cool to see how much more happiness he had this week.  The Lord really blesses us as we try and obey him!

We also had a division this week.  I stayed in Jordão with our district leader, and we met with all our progressing pesquisadores (researchers or investigators).  It was really good.  I learned so much from him, and I'm trying to apply these things to my teaching.

We didnt have water for about half the week this week, so I was smelling really bad.  But we have water now, so all is well.  Many people still don't have water, and I don't know what is going on.  They are all coming to houses with water and carrying water back to their houses in buckets.  Every day there are fewer people doing this though, so I think that whatever the problem is, they are slowly solving it.

I ate this weird fruit this week called Jaka (Jack Fruit).  It was actually really good.  Look it up because I don't know how to explain it.  It is a lot of work to eat it, but it tasted really good.

We are not being moved in this transfer.  So we are going to stay here in Jordão.  I'm excited because we have the best members here!  They do so much for us, and I am so thankful for them.

We are excited for Christmas!   Hope you all are too! For Christmas we will be in a member's home.  We will use Skype.  We will call at 5 pm here.  I think that is 1 pm in Utah.  I was trying to get a little earlier, but all his family is together at night, so this works better for them.  I love you guys. Remember to serve others this Christmas!  Thanks for all you do!

Love,

Elder Nielson

Almost Christmas?

Oi Tudos!!!

This week was pretty cool!  We had a family night with the family of the boy we baptized two weeks ago.  It was the birthday of another one of their kids, so we made pizza.  The dad Irmão R---- works for a pizza place, so it was really good stuff.  Later in the week, we committed the older brother to baptism, and he shared his testimony, but said that he didn't want to be baptized.  So this week we are going to talk a lot with him about his doubts. I think it will be similar to our experience with his little brother.  We have him set for a baptismal interview on Friday, and so if he goes through with that and still doesn't want to be baptized, he wont be this week, but we will keep trying. 

We have another investigator who hasn't accepted a lesson in almost a month.  His name is L---.  We talked with him about the plan of salvation.  His only problem is with coffee.  So we connected everything back to that.  He is set for Saturday, and for the past 3 days hasn't had any coffee.  We bought some Cervada, which is like coffee but good for you.  He likes it and has been drinking it instead.  He is set for an interview Friday also.  We are talking with him every day. I know he can do this.  He was at church on Sunday.  He seems much happier.  I cant wait!  It was a miracle that he talked to us again in the first place.  But now we can see his drive.  Before we invited him again to not drink coffee, he sat up, and said, "No more coffee. I'm quitting it right now!"  He really wants the blessings that come form living the Word of Wisdom.  It's exciting!

One night, our family night fell through, and as we were walking to the house of another member. Elder Carrari knew some girls that were walking down the street, so he started talking to them.  As we were greeting them, we were shaking hands, and one girl took my hand, and leaned in and gave me a hug.  It was really weird, and we were all confused.  So we went to the members house, and talked with her for a bit, and we ate some food. As we were leaving, she asked me why I had lipstick on my shirt.  This random girl in the middle of the road KISSED my chest!  We all went crazy, what the heck?!?!  So that was a really weird thing this week.

We got to ride in a car.  That was a really an odd feeling.  It was my first time being in a car since we drove to the airport in Utah.  Weird. 

Our toilet is even more sketch now.  The string you pull to flush it broke.  We are trying to figure out how to fix it.  For now we just fill up a bucket of water in the sink, and dump it into the toilet.  It usually works pretty well.  But we try to use the toilets at the church as much as possible.

It would be fun to sing Christmas hymns, but my companion isn't much of a singer and I'm not much of a soloist.  Neither are many people here.  Hymns are usually flat, but it is cool.  They are trying to worship the best they can.  It's about how loud you sing, not how well you are on key.  Christmas still doesn't feel like it's happening.  It's hot, and I haven't heard too much music.  Not many decorations either, stores have them, but not many houses have decorations here.

Things are good here in Brasil!  I love you guys and all that you do for me!

Love,
Elder Nielson

Another One Bites the Dust! (Another Week)

Oi!!!

It's crazy that its P-day already!  This week went by pretty fast, but Saturday and Sunday felt so long.  Saturday morning I realized it was Nationals for high school cross country and that the Springville team was racing, so it felt really long waiting to hear how it went... That's crazy that they are 5th in the nation!!!  I'm proud of those guys!  They definitely put in the work to get there! It's odd that this would prompt my first bout of homesickness, but I'm feeling good right now. It's weird.  I've never been homesick before, so I'm trying to adapt to these feelings while also adapting to mission life.  

Do you guys know what time it is?  I didn't know what time it was this week because one day Elder Carrari decided to open my watch up while I was reading through a grammar book and "compare" our watches.  We can't get the back to go back on, and it stops working at random times... so we are trying to figure that out.  But it's all good. I wont have a crazy bad watch tan line for a little bit, so that is a good thing.

More on the apartment: We have a decent shower, but when we run out of water, it doesn't work (as with other appliances in the house). It has tile in it, and I think you can make it a little hotter or colder if you want.  But for the most part it's a neutral temperature.  I don't use the mosquito net because I have no way to hang it up.  The sealing has tiles, with no gap.  But we shut the door to keep mosquitoes out, and sleep with bug spray on.  I also spray my bed regularly to keep other bugs out as well. I'm staying healthy. Funny how you don't get sick when you aren't stuffed in rooms with other people 24/7 like in the CTM.  I love the food here, and it's fine on my stomach.  I haven't had any problems with digestive problems yet.

We had an service activity again, and this one was replacing a roof.  We got there, and they had already taken the whole roof off, and we were replacing the wood, and using a hammer to make new holes for the slats to fit into, then laid the roofing on top.  It was pretty cool.  But it looked really hard on the interior of the house, because you basically collapse the whole roof inside, and move the stuff outside.

We have the best members!  We still get lunch every day, and they help us so much!  Right now (as you can see from the pictures of our fridge)  We have a full fridge from random people giving us food.  The members will just walk up with a bag of food, and give it to us.  It is awesome!!

We have been working hard with Seja a Luz do Mundo (Light the World)  Everyone we talk to, we share two cards with them, and ask them to invite someone else to participate.  I invite all of you to participate too.  Watch the videos, and serve.  Its really simple.  Christ's whole life was service to others.  The only reason we celebrate his birth is because of the life he lived.  So the best way we can celebrate Jesus Christ is by serving others.  Don't worry about presents or stuff, just go spread kindness to everyone.  Smile.  sing for people in the old folks home.  Make everyones' lives around you better!

We had one investigator tell us this week that he wants to be baptized.  Its difficult because he is a tatoo artist, and doesn't want to give that up.  But he came to church, so he is trying his best.  I think after a couple of good lessons, we can get him to commit.  The other son of Irmão R---- came to church too!  We had been doing family nights with them, and he was participating really well.  He actually knows a lot about the church.  We invited him to church, and he said he didn't want to come.  But on Sunday he showed up at 9 am.  His ward has sacrament meeting at 10:30 am,, so he took the sacrament, waited for his ward to start, and took it again with his family!  What a mericale.  He is ready to be baptized, but we need to talk to him about doubts. He was telling his little brother all the things he couldn't do in the church.  There is definitely a really good chance he will choose to follow Christ!

I hope this letter finds you all well!  I love you all so much, and thanks for all you do for me!

Love,

Elder Nielson

This week was crazy!

We had two baptisms!  I will explain.  Wednesday we had divisions with our zone leaders.  We split up so that we could cover more ground here in Jordão.  We had 4 missionaries in one area, and we got so many new contacts.  

 

Our first baptism was D----.  He is 14, and his parents were baptized 4 months ago.  He didn't want to be baptized when we first invited him to be.  His older siblings were telling him that he couldn't have a girlfriend, drink coke, play video games, or eat cake if he was baptized.  It took some work, but after we explained to him that we can do all these things and that we just don't want to do too much of one thing, he was happy.

Our second baptism was D------.  She is 27 years old and has been an investigator for a while.  We taught her all the lessons, and she felt ready, so she was baptized.  Her family are not LDS, but her uncle is, so he baptized her.  It was really cool, and she said that she felt "lighter" after her baptism.

It was really cool to see two people make the decision to be baptized and follow Christ this week.  I know that their lives are going to be better because of it.  Baptisms seem to come relatively easy here. But there is a really high rate of people that fall away soon after baptism.  But I think these two will be great members.  D------ has a lot of friends in the ward, and D---- has his parents to help him.  Now we are going to start working on his other two siblings.  Oh it's exciting!

There are a ton of random churches here.  There is probably 200 or 300 (carrari) churches very near by.  They range from big buildings, to someone putting plastic chairs out in front of their house.  There are a lot that have rock music, so its always fun to walk past those.  They are really just people that have a garage band who have words about God, and people come to listen to them on random days.  Some churches launch fireworks.  I thought they were for soccer games my first week, but no, its other churches lighting them off.  But it really helps that everyone here is crazy religious.  We can talk to anyone in the street about the Bible, and they believe and recite scriptures to us.  It's a really good way to get in to teach these people.

We bought some food, Mom and Dad, so don't worry.  They had Black Friday here, so we went and bought some things to eat for breakfast and dinner (bread, jelly, snacks, and more eggs).  Black Friday for Food! Ha! It's weird that Christmas is in a month because it is so hot here.  It's going to be weird not having any cold for Christmas.  The little stores here have Santas and Olafs set up, so we got some pictures with them.  Its pretty funny.  

There are so many cats here, and my allergies have been so bad the past few days.  Every house we have gone to has had cats.  Last night was really bad.  I had to take a pink pill right when we got home, and it just knocked me out.  

Things are going great here, and I hope that everything is going well in the states.  I love you guys so much!!!

Love,

Elder Nielson 

Second Week in the Field

Oi!!!

This week was awesome!  First, a little more about Recife.  The sun goes down here at around 5:30 pm.  So for three hours we are working in the dark. It's pretty cool.  I'm not sure on when the sun comes up, but I woke up one morning at 4:30 am, and it was light out. We are not far outside of Recife. We can see the city really well from parts of our area. We can get there in 30 minutes. We take a bus and then catch the train.  We actually go to Recife tomorrow for more training.

To send emails, we go to a LAN house (internet cafe). It costs about 3 reals (about $1) for the time to write emails. It is pretty fun. We do laundry at our apartment. We have a little washing machine and dry the clothes on a line. We just hang them up and go to work.  We walk a lot, but its not that bad, it feels really good!  I convinced Elder Carrari to go on a run with me today, and it felt so good!  We do a lot of talking with members and teaching lessons to investigators.  When we aren't doing that and have some free time, we knock doors (clap outside). It's so great!

I maybe worried you a little last week when I said we have no food in the house. We don't, but have no worries!  I have a full tummy always!  The members here are fantastic and keep us fed! They give us lots of treats and goodies that I'm never crazy starving!  The one meal a day thing is definitely a cultural thing.  A lot of people are poor, so if they eat one huge meal in the middle of the day, it avoids having to spend money on two other full meals.  That's also why it is a lot of high carb stuff like rice and beans.  We had hard boiled eggs this week and they tasted sooo good! We just haven't had time to buy food yet, but we are doing that when we get home after this. 

We have the best members here.  Every night when we are walking around, we have anywhere from 1-7 members walking with us.  When we need a member to come to a house with us, they are always ready.  We ran out of phone minutes this week and could only accept quick calls from non-missionary numbers, and they would call us to see if we needed them!  They always give us snacks and random treats, and we have lunch in one members house every day!

This week we marked two people for baptism.  One could be baptized Saturday, but we have to get permission because she has been attending a ward that isn't in our area.  But she is ready, and she started filling out a membership record.  The other is a man named R--- that wasn't too excited when we first challenged him, because he didn't know if it was true. We promised him that if he read and really sincerely asked God before and after reading, he would receive an answer. And he did! He read 1 Nephi 6: 2-4, and received his answer.  He understood that Nephi could have written more about his interesting lineage, but he instead he wrote the things God needed us to know.  That's so cool, and it was really a miracle.  He is living with a less active member, so they are going to get married, and then we are ready to baptize him!

Elder Carrari is a great trainer. I'm learning a lot from him. He will randomly turn to me during FHE, and say, "You have a scripture, right?" So I have to make something up on the spot, but I have found those impromptu messages are some of my better messages.  He likes to make fun of the dogs here, and twice this week two HUGE dogs stuck there heads over the fence and scared us really bad.  It was so funny!  

I feel good with the language right now, I still have a lot of work to go with it, but I can communicate with the members when I need to, and I am speaking more clearly in lessons.  The Lord truly helps us, and I see it every day! We had 6 investigators at church on Sunday, which was great!  

There were a couple of days this week that were tough because I didn't understand any of the people, and they always talk about me to Elder Carrari.  But Sunday was awesome!  We went to two wards, and they were both primary programs.  They sing the same music as they do in Utah, and I really felt the Spirit!  And that really helped me during our lessons that night.  I was more confident, and the people I was talking to could understand me.  I can talk with the members as we are talking, and it feels so good!  I am feeling really good right now.  

Oh, and we had Lasagna twice yesterday!  Its good, but different.  They always use ham, and it is interesting.  Still not as good as you make it though Mom!!!

The Lord really helps us when we put our faith in him.  We still have difficulties, but he will never let them get the best of us!

I love you guys so much, and all you have done for me, and I hope this email finds you all well!

Love,

Elder Nielson

Eu Estou Aqui!

Oi!

I've got a lot to write about; its been a crazy two weeks!  We will go in order.

I will not be wearing my Garmin, because apparently here in Brasil it is worth $1,000...  Plus Recife is one of the most dangerous cities in Brasil, so I will not be using it.  Don't worry, though. I am safe. That is just a problem in the big city part of Recife.  We are pretty safe here in Jordão.  

Last Monday, a member of our MTC group informed us that he was going home.  It was really rough because we were all planning on going to Recife together, and it felt really empty not having him with us. We are all pretty close, so it was tough.  But the next day, we all arrived in Recife.  We were sleeping in a little hotel the first night, and we heard a horse outside of our window.  We are in the middle of a city with 6 million people and a horse is right there.  It's really crazy.  

The next day, we got assigned to our trainers.  My trainer is Elder Carrari. He is from Argentina, and he is awesome!  He speaks some English, and I have to keep reminding him to speak Portuguese for me.  Our area is Jordão.  It is just south of Recife, and it has a bunch of little houses and the airport.  The mission doesn't use the airport, but there are lots of members here.  We had Stake Conference yesterday, and there were probably 300 people. We have been teaching every day, and its a little rough because I understand almost nothing.  They talk so fast, and I just pick up a few words at a time.  But I'm getting better.  Slowly, but I am getting better.

Our apartment is this little thing above the stake patriarch's home.  We have him under us and a family of members right next to us.  We don't lock our door, because we just twist the vent and can reach in to open it.  But don't worry, there is a gate down the stairs from us that locks.  There are lots of bugs, and our toilet is pretty sketch, but there are people here living a lot worse than us.  We don't have any food in our fridge.  We don't really eat breakfast or dinner... I'm not sure why.  We have lunch every day with members.  

The food is way better here.  We still have a lot of rice and beans, but they have more flavor.  Their food here can have a little spice, but not a ton.  This is the only place in Brasil that has spicy food.  I love it.  We don'

t really eat bread.  Last night we were at a member's home, and her husband works at a bakery, so she gave us bread there and some to take home with us.  It was so good.  I never thought bread could taste so good, but it was amazing.  

We had a service activity, and we literally helped people build a roof.  We both got really sunburned, so we are definitely going to be using more sun screen.  

I love you all.  It's really different here.  Its tough at times, but I'm learning so much, and I know that the Lord is helping me through so many things.  I can't even begin to describe how I see his hand in my life. One day we had a lesson fall through, so we just stopped at a random house, and this lady named Edna started talking to us about how here son is addicted to drugs, and he was passed out on the bed, and he beats her.  We shared the Book of Mormon with her, and she was so accepting.  We are stopping by again today to check in on her.  

The Lord really helps us when we try to do what is right!  Love you all!

Elder Nielson