Some Special Happenings

Here are some photos of the baptisms last week. We visited them this week, and they are so happy.  T---- (the mom) has been grabbing all of her neighbors and throwing them at us. She tells them to listen to our message, so that is great to see a recent convert so anxiously engaged in missionary work.

We also had the chance to attend the temple yesterday.  It is not often we get to go as missionaries, so each trip is special.  I love to be in the House of the Lord. It is such a sacred place.

Our bishop made a ton of lasagna and sent us home with a whole pan! How we love and appreciate the good members of our ward.

Crazy Week!

This week was transfers, and it was super crazy!  We had to get everyone out on their flights on Tuesday morning, and Tuesday afternoon the new missionaries arrived.  We gave them training, and on Wednesday was the transfer.  Thursday we were going to the airport to get a missionary that went to São Paulo to do some work on his visa to Canada.  We got out on the main avenue to get a bus to the airport, but it had been raining all morning.  We were walking through the water, and the bus we needed wasn't passing, and taxis weren't even accepting riders.  We were going to walk to the Metro station, when we finally got a taxi, and we decided to go straight to the airport with him.  Every street was flooded, and the main bus station was closed because it was flooded too.

We got to the airport about a half hour late, and we went looking for the missionary.  We noticed on the flight board that there was a message for us to go to the airline desk.  When we got there and asked about his flight, it had been rerouted to Jão Pessoa.  about a two hour car ride form Recife.  There wasn't any time frame on when it would be cleared to land in Recife.  But after about an hour it was cleared and it made it to the Recife Airport in about 20 minutes.  He stayed with us that night, and we put him on a bus first thing Friday morning. Then we went running off to the airport to renew President and Sister Houseman's visas. 

I had never seen so much water in Recife.  The buses looked like boats, and everyone was taking their shoes off and rolling their pants up to wade through it. 

Our miracle of the week was T----.  She has been coming to church for a little more than two months now but couldn't be baptized because she was living together with someone.  She called us his week and said that he had left and that she would be baptized on Saturday.  She will be baptized tonight with her daughter S-----.  She is so excited, and the ward is pretty happy too.  They have been waiting so long, and they exercised so much faith to get here.

I hope you all have a great week this week!  I love you all so much!

Love,
Elder Nielson

A-------'s Baptism

From the Video Chat This Week:

We are grateful to have a missionary serving, and grateful that we get to talk to him every week. However, without a written account of the weeks' events, I'm afraid we aren't very good at keeping track of everything that we talked about during the call. But Elder Nielson sent us some pictures of A-------'s (Brazilian Napoleon) baptism and said it was a great experience.

He said that they have been busy preparing for transfers this week, and they will also go and do some apartment inspections this week as well. Elder N---- will leave the office this transfer, so it looks like they will be back to just a twosome again. Also, one of the AP's, Elder N-----, returns home this transfer.

I always like to get a food report each week. We tried to find out what kinds of vegetables Elder Nielson has to eat. He said he likes a kind of root that reminds him of potatoes but not really. And they have corn and other types of vegetables. They like to go to a place for lunch where you can fill a plate, kind of like an AYCE salad bar except you have to fit AYCE on one plate. And there is a large variety of vegetables with that. He also reported that he cooked up some Chicken Alfredo over noodles this past week using a flavor packet from Sister Houseman that was going to expire. He thought it turned out pretty good. Mixed reviews from his companions.

We also like to find out how much things cost in Brazilian reals (pronounce hey-eyes). One real is about 25 cents U.S. So it's fun to do the math on how much food costs. One interesting thing he mentioned is that they don't have apartments plumbed for natural gas... you have to buy a big canister and connect it to your gas stove... kind of like we do with our grill outside. We did that math on that it was about the same price in Brazil for a container of gas as it is in the U.S.

Here is Elder Nielson's photographic journey as of late:

These are cookies... kind of like oreos except with a chocolate filling.

The Work is Moving Forward

From Video Chats this week:

Elder Nielson didn't write an email this week. He just sent some pictures, so I thought I'd share some of them.

This is a young man named V----- J---- who was baptized last week. He is one of a group of young men the missionaries have been working with and the first to be baptized.

This last Saturday, this young man was baptized. Elder Nielson refers to him as a Brazilian Napoleon Dynamite, but the young man really doesn't know who that is. Give him some gold aviator frames and teach him to smile less and say "Gosh" more, he could pass as Napoleon. He is a great young man who has a strong testimony of priesthood power and the responsibility priesthood holders have to live worthily in order to exercise the priesthood.

Here is Elder Nielson with a home town missionary from Springville, UT. They are both from the Hobble Creek West Stake. It's always nice to see a familiar face from home. Elder McConnell is a good missionary.

Elder Nielson also reported that they have 5 people marked for baptism, and he and his companion are hopeful that all 5 will be baptized in a couple of weeks. One lady who has been living with her boyfriend has started making arrangements for him to move out so she can join the church.

Elder Nielson also reported that he bought himself a new pair of shoes this week. They are low top army boots that he bought from a "buff" military guy that sells military gear in his store. He thinks they will be able to withstand the rigors of missionary work until he returns home in October. He was showing us his shoes last week and both pairs have been patched with Shoe Goo with big splits in the soles. Not good for walking through rain-soaked streets So we were happy to see him get some new kicks.

Elder Nielson also got to call home for a few minutes on his dad's birthday. An added bonus.

He is healthy and happy and enjoying the hard work. We can see great growth in him... both spiritually and level of maturity.

Batismo!

Olá!

Today we will have a baptism! J--- V----- has been preparing for the last month, but something was not quite right. We persisted, and we finally found the root of his problem. He was able to resolve it and move forward.  It was a miracle!

This week I was companion to Elder Price.  His companion got his Visa and left late Sunday night to go to his mission in Mexico.  So Elder Price stayed with me in he office, and we just kind of floated between our two areas until yesterday.  It was pretty tiring -- one day sleeping in our house, the next his. So it took a lot out of us this week.  He will be companions with my brother, Elder Duarte (who was also trained by Elder Carrari).  I think here is a picture attached of us together. 

We are excited to see how many more people will be baptized in the near future.  There are some that are marked with a baptismal date, and they seem to be ready to change their lives for the better.  I hope we can help them do just that.

I hope you all have a great week! 

Love,
Elder Nielson

Baby Bryan

I would like to share an experience that happened yesterday.  I hope that all can learn something from the example of the little boy I met yesterday.  I hope we can all see how blessed our lives are, and that we can be happy with what we have.

In a letter to President Houseman, I explained this experience:

We had the chance to give a blessing last night to a baby named Bryan.  He has a rare muscle disease.  Where his brain isn't able to control and fire up the muscles.  So he needs a respirator that gives the pressure in his lungs that the diaphragm would give him to be able to breath. He is 9 months old, and he has been in the Hospital Portuguese for the last 7 months.  He is a super animated child, and he is able to communicate with his eyes, which is pretty cool.  It was interesting to see how he, even with so little time in this life, is able to be happy despite his difficulties.  As he was preparing to leave the hospital last week, they took the feeding tube out of his stomach, and it got infected.  So he is still staying there until they can get rid of the infection and close the hole up.  His stomach acid is, however, causing some problems with the closing.

It makes me see that really I don't have anything that I can complain about in this life.  I have very few difficulties.

His mom also showed great faith in God.  She said, "I don't really know God´s purpose for Bryan here on earth.  I don't know if it is his will that he is cured, or that he grows up.  Maybe it's his purpose to come here for a short time and be an example to everyone he knows, teach me and my family very important lessons, and be brought back to God's presence as a perfect, sinless child.  Many people can think that that is something horrible to say, but if it is God´s will, I accept it."

I really cant explain how deep that quote is.  She has such spiritual trust.  For a person to be able to see so many ways that God is working, even amidst the trials, is incredible to me.  I really learned a lot yesterday as we had the opportunity to give Baby Bryan a blessing.

We have a new missionary in the office. Elder A. Ferreira will be the new Housing secretary. Elder Nunes will train him this transfer.  He is from Rio, and he is a great missionary. So the office staff will be a threesome again for a transfer. I look forward to working with him.

I hope you all have a great week, and that you see the good around you, and be happy for all that God has blessed you with.  Even the small things like health, safety, etc., that often pass unnoticed.

Elder Nielson

P.S.  Like my new cup, Riley?

Crazy Week

Hey Everyone,

So this week was super crazy. It started off by us and the AP's having 13 investigators to church, so that was great. We also rounded up a bunch of 12 year old kids and had them come to the meetings which was a disaster. Never again. They got bored during the second hour (Sunday School) and left the class. But they didn't go home. They hung out at the church and started playing some loud music. We had to admonish them a couple of times that they needed to either be in the class or head home. But they had come with our ward mission leader who uses his VW minivan to round people up and bring them to church. So they had to wait for a ride home. We did get them back into the class, but when it was over, they were the first ones to the minivan and everyone else had to wait until they got dropped off. Who knows what might come of it, but right now it didn't seem like a positive experience.

We helped two sets of missionaries move to new apartments back to back on Monday and Tuesday. One was a three hour one way trip into the interior. We saw some cool landscapes that reminded us a little of Africa (or at least the movie The Lion King). During one of the moves, I was carrying a stack of boards and went past the apartment. As I was coming back down the stairs, my foot slipped and I bounced down the stairs on my back with boards landing on top of me. Fortunately, my head didn't hit every step on the way down, but my back is feeling a little stiff. But I'm okay.

Wednesday was a holiday, so everyone was avoiding work. Everything was shut down. However, we needed to hang a whiteboard in an apartment, but when we got there, the doorman told us we couldn't use a drill in the apartment because it was a holiday (people sleeping in, I guess). After some discussion, we said we needed to do some other things as well and went up to the apartment. It was on the top floor so there were no sleepers above us, and the doorman would not be able to hear from the first floor. We checked with neighbors on both sides who had no problem with us drilling. So we quickly buzzed 8 holes and go the white board hung without disturbance or incident..

Thursday I went to the Federal Police to renew 4 visas. While there, I ended up helping a man from Texas do a first register to get home. He couldn't understand Portuguese and apparently didn't have all the paperwork he needed. I was able to translate for he and the agent. He had his computer and a heat printer (no toner required) and was able to print out what he needed. He was very grateful and I was sad I didn't have an English Book of Mormon. But I have his address and I'll see that he gets one. He has a wife and two kids, and I could picture them dressed in white. He is a welder working for a large U.S. company.

Friday I worked in the office trying to catch up with everything that we missed earlier in the week.

We have been finding new people to teach, including a man named Pedro. His nickname is Fofinho (little cutie) that some little kid gave him and it stuck. He is super interested in the Book of Mormon.  He and his wife are legally married, and we are hopeful that they will come to church tomorrow.  We will go over there right now to try and teach him.

Overall, a pretty crazy and productive week. Hope you all have a great week.

Love,
Elder Nielson

Leo and his mother Rosangela

Our lunch today.

Apartment buildings of people we are working with.