Christmas Baptisms

Great week but was also pretty tough. We had our baptism. The kids are Macmac, Jobert, Kyle, Razel, and Carla. It was a great baptism!!! We were excited we held it. On Christmas, we just did the baptism and then tried to go to members that we didn't see at the Christmas party. They hold the Christmas party on Christmas here. We had some nice lessons that day.

After that things got tough. Razel and Macmac didn't come to church this week so they are still not confirmed. Mitchelyn didn't come either. We won't be having a baptism on Jan. 1 as we had planned. Their aunt showed up at their house and they been working like crazy ever since. Sunday is a normal work day for her. We picked up teaching the Bawaan family. The oldest is 24 and then there is some kids after that. They really want to listen to the gospel. They were very excited to start and were planning to come to church but there dad was drunk and wouldn't let them go. Maybe next week. Olga is doing good. She has been busy around the house so we taught her some but she wasn't able to attend church. Villorojo is good. We taught again and she is looking for the truth. She was also busy on Sunday so she didn't make it. We are also teaching the Pericima family. They went to church once and then sister got sick and she thought it was a curse so they stopped going. We had a great lesson this week with them and they know it was true so we talked about following Christ. They would have come to church this week but they had to get their paycheck during sacrament time so they weren't able to make it. Overall, we had great teachings but this was not the week for investigators coming to church. Next week should be a lot better.

The weather has been very rainy lately. The trails are very muddy so that was maybe a big reason that church attendance was low this last week. Maybe it will dry up this week.

I think that is it for the week.

Love you and have a great New Year's. I will see you next year. hehehe.

Elder Nielsen

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!
We had a pretty good week this week. Our number for lessons went up a good amount mainly because we did an event with the branch called a 1 day mission. There we chose some areas to work and then we went there with the members and talked to people that were home and shared a short message. To get in homes is really easy here. You just tell them that you want to share a message about Jesus and they will let you in. That is why we did so good. We will now be going into the hard step, maintaining them enough for them to decide if they want to listen or not. It is hard to get a second lesson in so we will see what happens there. Elder Torres worked in Barangay Paitan. There he talked to the family of some active members. They aren't members and are very devoted Catholic but missionaries haven't really worked in the area. He got us an appointment and we went there. We ended up teaching 15-20 adults that seem pretty interested. The main guy that we taught is a lay minister which oversees a small church for the Catholics. They are kind of like group leaders. He seems interested and we will be going back this next week. We might end up starting a group there because you have to take a single motor in and it can cost 25-40 pesos one way depending on the driver. It looks really good.
As far as baptism, we are for sure going to baptize 4 on Christmas and maybe 1 more. 2 of those are converts. We are looking forward to the baptism of Macmac and Razel. They are looking good. Then we are looking at 1 or 2 on Jan. 1. One is saying she isn't but maybe when we talk to her, she will continue. Mitchelyn is looking good for Jan. 1.
This week, we started teaching Renilo Albao. His mother is an active member. He wasn't baptized before because he smoked and drank coffee. Now, he doesn't have that problem because his health was getting bad from them so he looks good. He didn't come to church on Sunday because he had a fever. Lots are getting it because the change of temperature. One day it is really hot and the next is cold because of the rain. It makes a lot sick. I don't have that problem but they do.
All the investigators are coming slowly. We are seeing a lot of success. I hope that it will continue.
Love you all,
Elder Nielsen

Christmas Celebrations in the Philippines

We had a better week this week. It was sad a few times but good the other times. We had to move 2 of the Christmas baptisms yesterday because they didn't come to church =(. We were sad about that. Mitchelyn and Jessica will now be baptized on Jan. 1, 2014 the first baptisms of the year. They were ok with that but they were a little sad that they didn't come to church. You could tell that Mitchelyn was sad about it but she held strong was tried act excited for Jessica. Russel and Macmac are still good for the 25th. We are looking forward to those baptisms. We started teaching Joffrey this week and he brought a friend to our second lesson. He likes the teachings and he believes it is true. He had to work Sunday so he didn't make it to church this week. We are hoping for next week. Averina is good. We are only teaching 2 of them. One came to church 2 weeks ago. We started teaching her. She seems to like the teachings. We are also teaching the grandmother but I don't think she fully understands what we are saying and it seems like she just wants to listen and not do anything. We will see what happens the next few weeks. We also started teaching the Villarojo family. They were a referral from one investigator that is pretty much a member that just can't be baptized right now. They are a good family. They love Christ. They have been to lots of religions and doesn't like that they are informal and other things. We taught them the restoration and invited them to church. They said they would come but couldn't make it because one of the kids got sick. Maybe next week.
Christmas is a lot different here than in the USA. Santa really isn't that big and about the only big thing about Christmas I have seen is the Christmas lights, which some people leave up all year. Other then that, Christmas is present with some caroling and people giving but it isn't a big rush. Christmas focuses a lot more on Christ here. They celebrate it for him so Christmas is celebrated more on the 24th and the sign rather then on the 25th. The 25th will be a branch celebration and then other churches go to church on the 25th. It is pretty relaxing compared to the USA.
That was about the week. It was good but went by really quick. We look forward to the coming weeks and days as Christmas approaches.
Love,
Elder Nielsen

Potential

Merry Christmas!
These seemed like a very good week for us. We taught a lot and did pretty good but we looked at our success at the end of the week, it was not really that great.
We had very few teachings this week. Now I look back, people were pretty busy this week. I don't know why, but the normal investigators where gone whenever we went there. We did end of teaching a lot of member lessons which is pretty good. We also did a lot of street contacted at the end of the week. We have a few potential investigators so we are going to teach them this week and see what happens there.
As far as investigators, Mitchelyn, Macmac, Jessica, and Russel are right on tract for their baptism. We are looking forward to their baptism and sharing a great Christmas with them. We went to Olga but apparently she is staying at school in Cadiz until the Christmas break, Dec. 20, then we should be able to go there and teach. We are looking forward to teaching her again. Johnell is about the same. He has a great knowledge of the gospel but we haven't been able to get him to church yet. We might start teaching the Averina family. The daughter is a recent convert that was taught in a different place. We went to her and her family was there so we started teaching them on Saturday. We didn't get a firm return appointment so we aren't sure yet if we can teach them. We are hoping and praying that we can. We also have a potential investigator named Jeff. His girlfriend is an active member but he is shy to listen to us. We are hoping to start this week. Lots of potential right now.
As far as transfers, nothing happened. We are in the same area, same companion. It is a good thing, so that we can get more done. It rained a few times this week. It makes things very muddy. Other then that, everything is good. We will see the First Presidency Christmas Message on Dec. 17 when we have zone conference.
I think that is it for this week. We are working hard trying to get things going. No referrals yet. Maybe this week.
Love you all,
Elder Nielsen

Maayong Paskwa! (Merry Christmas!)

Maayong Paskwa!
It has been Christmas here since September!!! You are all slow there.
We haven't got back to our house yet. We are about the same distance anyways in the Escalante apartment. Our last apartment is in Escalante also. We have to take a jeepney to get to our area everyday. That is why we e-mail later now. We go and work in the mornings on Monday so we don't have to try and catch a bus to Mabini and back during the night.
We were short on lessons this week but I think we have almost made the breaking point so that people are going to give us referrals. We have been going to them for a few weeks now, teaching them how to do missionary work and they are now looking for some opportunities. Some of them have people in mind so we are now waiting for them to talk to them and then let us know. We are looking at 3 convert baptisms on Christmas. That is our next baptisms. They are 3 kids ages 12, 9, and 8. They are really excited. Their names are Macmac, Jessica, and Russel. They are doing great. They just need to keep coming to church and pray. The older ones read so they are doing good. Macmac and Russel's sister, Mitchelyn, was suppose to be baptized too but she didn't make it to church this week. She still might be able because we don't know the reason but we are thinking we are going to move it. We didn't make it to Olga this week and she didn't come to church. She was busy this weekend. We started teaching Leah Diana this week. Her uncle is a member and she wants to listen. We will see how that goes. The Alverez family is doing good. We are still teaching them and see if we can convert them to the point that they just have to wait for baptism.
Glad that Thanksgiving went well. I actually had an upgrade for dinner. A member feed us canned sardines with noodles and rice. I am sure you all are jealous.
Love you all,
Elder Nielsen

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving. I was thinking about it so we decided to have a Thanksgiving feast of rice and canned tuna. Hahahaha.
We now have water which is really nice. We are happy about that and so are the sisters. The sisters are in our house right now until their house is finished, probably Wednesday. Then we can go back to our house. Right now we are staying with the Escalante missionaries.
We are now back to normal with our schedule. Even when it is normal, it is very hard to teach. Olga was busy with school and wash this week so we didn't teach her and she couldn't make it to church. Mitchelyn was busy as well with a lot of stuff so we didn't teach her and she had somewhere to go this week so she didn't make it to church as well. We aren't going to the Gantalao family anymore because we were going to their house and we saw sister running so we figure they are hiding from us so we won't return. Dioney is very hard to get to now. He is taking boxing lessons right now so he wasn't there all week. We are teaching the Alverez kids right now. They are good and listen well. The problem is their mom won't let them be baptized until they are 18 so they  have a long time to go. We are going to focus on their cousin that comes and listens. I think he is very interested, he is just shy to ask questions. We might pick up an investigator there as well because they came and listened and liked our message. 
Danny's baptism was great. It was a good experience for him. He was full of joy as he was baptized. It was a little bit sad because not very many people came to the baptism. We are going to try to get more to the next one, whenever that is. We are hoping to get someone baptized on Christmas day. We are going to have a "White Christmas" by baptisms. We have some 8 year olds set up for that day.
We haven't heard about calling on Christmas yet. We heard that we do it in the morning but that is it. We probably won't know until the week before.
Since the typhoon, we have had a high attendance at church. I was a little surprised this week that was high because Manni Pacaw was fighting. He is the world champion boxer. The people here are really happy that he won.
I think that is about it for this week. We are doing alright but we need a lot more investigators. That is the problem right now. We are working on that though.
Love you all and Merry Christmas,
Elder Nielsen

Missionaries from Tacloban

Hey we get to write!!! We are to write every week so here is my letter.

Lots of changes are happening right now. We got 20+ missionaries from the Tacloban Mission. They pulled all of them out and are now dispersing them to the Cebuano speaking missions. We are a full mission. I think I heard that by the end of the year we will have 300+ missionaries in our mission! The mission compliment is 250!!! We are looking for a lot of houses right now to have places to put people.

As far as my area. We now have power and electricity. Probably by Dec. 4 all of Escalante City should have power. Some of Mabini still doesn't have power. Not much damage was done. It is just hard for them to travel everywhere and fix all the lines.

As far as investigators, Danny will be baptized on Saturday. It would have been earlier but the problem was we had no communication with the zone leaders for the interview so we had to wait a week. We picked up Olga this week. She was a former investigator and my companion met here so we started to teach her. She wants to be baptized. She says her dad wants her to wait to finish school first. We might have to wait until March but she is really good. We also are teaching Mitchelyn. Her brother is a recent convert. She has just started coming to church. She doesn't talk much but she is willing to learn. We are going to try giving her a date this week. Those are the progressing investigators in our area. We also have the Gantalao family. They listen well and want to learn but they are falling short on acting right now. We are hoping to get them to read and then we will move on from there. We are also teaching Diony Sumogat. He listens well. He came to church 3 times then stopped. We don't know the problem but we figure it is his friend which is a Baptist minister. We hope to help him progress.

We are just looking for more to teach. It is hard to teach right now but we are hoping, since the reconstruction is almost over, that we will be able to teach more people.

Love you all,

Elder Nielsen

The Typhoon

This was a crazy week!!! We did hit pretty bad by the storm this last week. We got hit by the one yesterday as well. It didn't do much. We are safe. We have no electricity and no water!!! It is rather fun and makes life so much easier (can you hear that sarcasm)!!!

We did very little work this week, as you can tell. We haven't had to do that much service because a lot of what happened is the trees fell down and a few roofs flew off. We didn't get hit that hard. If houses were destroyed, it was because trees fell on them. Otherwise there is minimal damage. We will be without power and without water until December. I have heard 4 and 14 so I don't know when. It will be alright. We use candles and there is a water pump a few houses away that we get our washing water and then the couples come and give us clean water to drink. We are just happy we have cellphone signal now. At first we didn't so we couldn't contact president. He thanks you for having me here and staying updated.

I thought we would have gotten more but it was small. We are just working hard right now. We are trying to get more investigators and help out the people that we can right now. We are looking for service opportunities to help people listen to our message. Not much to say. It was cool to watch the storm. We had a good view of it out of the back of our house. The major damage was to the banana trees.

Love you all,

Elder Nielsen

PS I am good. Not a scratch from the storm.

Less Lost

This was a pretty good week. It is a little bit different now that I am in Mabini.

We had very few teachings this week. I think everyone was busy trying to get in work so they can have the funds for All Souls Day. All Souls day is the day of the dead here. Everyone goes to the graveyard on that day. I think it is a lot like Memorial Day but everyone cooks sticky rice and pigs. I have never been so full in my life!!! We ate a good lunch and stacked so much, I had to force myself to eat dinner because we had a dinner appointment on that day.

I still get lost in the area but I am getting use to it. You get to know the trails pretty well. We found our way pretty easy last week and this week.

We have very few investigators in this area. Lots of missionaries say this is a very hard area and I see why. You walk a lot just to get from one house to another and for the most part, the people that are close together, don't want to listen. It is going to take a lot of work to get it going. We do have a baptism on November 16. His name is Danny Diana. His family was baptized a while ago, last month, he is the last one. He wants to be baptized but was having trouble with his word of wisdom. He is now on tract and good to go. After that, we don't know who. We have some good investigators though. The Alverez family is looking good. There are 3 boys there that listen well. They live with their grandmother and their father was a member. They listen well and participate. The problem is getting them to church. They wake up late so they don't go. We tried calling them but we can't with the difference in cellphone companies. We can just text them. We are also teaching a family named Gantalao. They are doing good. They have been taught for a long time. They won't come to church is a problem. We just picked them up so we are trying to answer some questions right now. They ask some good questions. We are hoping to help them progress. That is about it for now. We are hoping to find more this next week.

Elder Torres is from Ozamiz City in Mindanao. I will send a picture next week. I haven't taken one yet. He is good. He is native Cebuano which really helps me. I have learned a lot from him. He is 3 months in the mission. He is a good elder.

Now for Elder Andersen. It was a good meeting. We had Elder Anderson, L. Whitney Clayton, a president of the 70, Ian Ardern and Larry Echo Hawk, of the 1st quorum of the 70, and Elder Nobleza, an area 70 all at the meeting. It was a very good meeting. It was 2 hours long. I was hoping for longer. Elder Clayton talked to us about the Anti-Nephi-Lehis and how they were converted. He taught us what we need to do with the recent converts. They Elder Andersen taught us about the welfare program. He showed us Bohol, the place of the earthquake, and then he talked about how we need to teach investigators. He talked about the commandments and how they help us to grow. At the end, he talked about the atonement and how it applies to us. It was a very good meeting and we all learned a lot. We all got to shake his hand at the beginning. It was a cool experience.

Love you all,

Elder Nielsen

PS love all the pictures and am thankful that I am here and not there in the snow.
PSS Merry Christmas

Transfered to Mabini!

Wow!!! This was a crazy week.

Everything started ok. We had normal p-day and then Tuesday we had district meeting. The lesson was about recognizing the Holy Ghost so it was a little bit harder lesson to teach but it went alright. That evening we got the transfer call . . . I am now in Mabini, a barangay in Escalante. I am still district leader but what a change.

My new companion is Elder Torres. He just finished his training so he is on his 3rd transfer with his 3rd companion in his first area. It has been crazy for him. I got here and found out a lot of the mission leaders served in this area so it must be a good area to serve in! We don't have many investigators here. We are going have to build up this area so that we can have more baptisms. Right now, we have 1 planned then we have nothing so it is going to be a challenge. We worked and of course, I was lost. The area has lots of hills and all of it is full of sugar cane so it is hard to tell where you are going. We worked and I met some of the members and a few of the investigators. On Saturday, we went on splits with the branch missionaries. The one I went with didn't know the area very well so I had to lead it. That was a great idea!!! We did find everyone though. It was hard as well because everyone is preparing for barangay elections right now so everyone is very busy. The area is good but there is a LOT of MUD!!! We hope it doesn't rain so the ground stays hard hahaha.

I would love to tell you more but I still don't know much about the area.

Love you all.

Elder Nielsen

Training by Elder Nielson

It was a great week having Elder Nielson here. We all got to great him at first and when I came up him and his wife both said "Look, our long lost son" hehehe. It was a great training with him. He focused on that talk by Elder Bednar, " In the Strength of the Lord." It was a really good training. He is a really good teacher and I learned a lot about the administration of the church. It was nice to be with the missionaries but we were given instruction not to really talk because we were there to learn. When we went there, we stay the night at the O Hotel in Bacolod. It is awesome! It has a warm shower!!! We went home after the training but had to stay the night in San Carlos because there was no more buses to get to Guihulngan.
The earthquake was kind of cool. We felt it and it was pretty good sized but didn't do any damage here. We felt 6 aftershocks that day but very small. They say there was an aftershock yesterday but I didn't feel it.
The baptism of Jolie Ann was great! Her brother came, he is a potential baptism, and her mother, which is less active. It was great to have them there. The Macalua family is right on tract to be baptized on Nov.1 so we are looking forward to that. We went to Mary Grace this week. She is doing great. We are talking a lot about Adam's trangression right now. We are trying to get her to know that we are not punished for that. That is about the only thing right now that we know of that is holding her to Catholic. We didn't get to go to Gretchen this week. She was busy all week. Mariel is doing good. She is just continueing. We are still hoping that next year she will be baptized. We went to Manilyn. She is going good. I think she is having a hard time right now because of her pregnancy. She is getting close to her due date in November. We got to teach Cecil this week. He accepted our invitation to be baptized! We were excited about that. He said he was going to come to church this week but didn't show. We aren't sure why. We hope to find out this week.
In 2 weeks, Elder Andersen will be coming to the mission. We are getting excited for that. We are all wondering why he is coming. It is going to be a good experience. But first, we have transfers this week. We will see what happens. We are expecting a transfer because we have both been here for 3 transfers. I will let you know what happens.
Love,
Elder Nielsen

Jolie Ann's Baptism

 

Elder Nielsen and Elder Nielson

 

Bronzed Shoes

This was an alright week. Not a ton of teaching but that was to be expected with no work on Saturday and little on Sunday.
My favorite talk was Elder Ballard because it is going to help the missionary work here, if any of the members hear it.
As far as our teaching. It was really great. We had an interview this week for Jolie Ann. She will be baptized on Saturday!!! We are excited for her. She is really great and received a testimony through attending church. She is going to be the key to activating her mother and baptizing her brother. It is a great moment. We also have some great new investigators. Gretchen texted us this week and told us to come over and teach them. She really wants to learn more and is very interested. She studies the pamphlets and is really searching for truth. She even talks about it with her husband! It is great teaching her. If she becomes a member, she will do a lot of good telling others about it. We also went to Mimi this week. She is the same. We gave her Nov. 30 for her baptism. She really wants to but won't come to church on her own. It is a problem because there is no members over there, just her mom. We are trying to figure out what to do to help her. The Macalua family is doing great. They are really progressing. They are on tracked to be baptized on Nov. 1. We are also seeing a lot of improvement in the less actives. Some are coming back to church so it is getting time for this unit to become a ward and the district to become a stake. It is a miracle.
We loved all of conference and the ideas we have now to continue to help people to progress. We are looking to a good week this next week but we will again miss 2 days of work because Elder Nielson is coming here for our mission tour. We are looking forward to that. Sorry, not much to tell this week.
Love you all,
Elder Nielsen
PS you can bronze my shoes when I get home =P

Excited for General Conference

Sorry about last week. I tried to e-mail but I guess it didn't go through.
This was a good and bad week. We had some very good lessons but we didn't have much time to teach.
Eric is doing great! He was baptized on Friday! It was a great experience. He was very excited about it and it turned out very well. The Macalua family is doing great as well. We didn't get to teach them this week because of me going to Bacolod on Saturday and they weren't there on Sunday when we went there. We will go there this week because there is no school this week because of some break after the college finals. Julie Ann is doing great. She believes the church is true. We gave her October 19 for her baptism but might have to move it. She wants to talk to her dad about joining the church first because he isn't a member and she doesn't want to make a problem for her family by joining the church. We don't think there is a problem but we have to wait and see. She is suppose to tell us by Saturday what happens with that. We picked up a few new investigators this week. One came to church last week and we have been teaching her. Her name is Mariel. Her husband is a member and she has the cutest child. The baby is like a doll. We have been teaching her. She wants to be baptized but we have to wait for her to be married. They say it will take a few months to process though. They say it might be able to happen in December. We are making plans for that right now. We also had one of our member's boyfriends come to church. Apperently, he has been wanting to join the church for a while so we were happy he came. We will start teaching him this week. We also got a referral from some missionaries through Facebook. We are teaching a woman named Marivic. She is really searching for the truth. She invited her friend, Gritchen to listen as well. They are both really doing there studies. We just gave Gritchen a pamphlet of the restoration and when we came back, she was loaded with questions and she believes a lot of the things we have taught. She even talks about it with her husband! We will see how things play out there.
The basketball clinic is hard. We didn't do this week because I had to go to Bacolod this week for fingerprinting. I guess it is a new law here for us to go home so all the Americans went there this Saturday. It wasn't very fun because on the way back, there was a truck stuck on the road so we had to wait 3 1/2 hours for them to pull it out or clear enough space for the buses to get through. We ended up sleeping in San Carlos. Then Sunday we rushed to church. I came from San Carlos and Elder Ponseca was at Canla-on so it was a trial. We made it back for the second hour of church, sacrament is the third so we were good. It was great at church. We had 9 investigators there. We are very happy about that. We then rushed to Vallermoso for some more interviews and then we worked. It was a ruff couple of days. I hope it doesn't have to happen again for awhile.
We are excited for general conference! We are going to San Carlos to watch. We aren't excited for the travel but we are excited to see what they have to say.
The weather has been alright. It is cooler right which is good. Not too much rain so it is just right.
I love you all,
Elder Nielsen

Eric's Baptism

Letter that Didn't Send Last Week

Have you every tryed praying about being humble? That isn't a good one. I did it in Manapla and look what happened hehehe.
This was a pretty good week for us. We taught a fair amount and we had lots of investigators come to church this week. Now where to start?
Eric had his interview this week. It was a success. We are looking forward to his baptism this week with his niece. She is 8 years old. It is going to be an exciting day. We will be held of Friday because I have to go to Bacolod of Friday to get fingerprinted. Darn. That is 8+ hours of travel and 480 pesos just to be fingerprinted. I wish it could be a different day then Saturday. Oh well. Makalua are doing great. They are more active then most of the members. We taught them on Saturday and yesterday. They are a great family and listen very well. They have taken a love for the church. One wasn't dressing that great but when we taught the Law of Chastity, she immediatly changed. It was a great testimony to me. Jessa we hear is the same. Still haven't been able to go to her because of her aunt. Darn! Mingay we weren't able to go to this week. We found out they are shy of us and want some members with us when we go there. We are going to coordinate with our branch first counsilor and the district president, because they know them, to going there with us. Julie Ann is going good. She is a little scared to be baptized because she says she doesn't know it is true yet. We are trying to fix that quick so she can be baptized on Oct. 19. She has been to church enough now to be baptized though. This week we did a lot of finding. We went through the previous investigators and got some names to visit. We started to visit them and are starting to teach some of them again. We also started teaching some new investigators that we found. It is good because we were getting low on investigators. That is what we did this week.
We just found out last week that Elder Neil L. Andersen of the quorum of the twelve will be coming here on Nov. 2. We are looking forward to listening to him and learning from him. It is cool because that is 2 weeks after Elder Nielson. We are very excited for that.
As far as weather, it was good except for Saturday. It hit us hard on Saturday.It was like being under a small waterfall and we were outside in it!!! It wasn't fun but we couldn't do anything about it.
I think that is about it.
Love you all,
Elder Nielsen

Zone Conference

This was a great week. We taught little but we were gone for 2 days so that was the reason. They had 2 days of zone conferences but the mission was split into 2 groups. The first day was for travel and then the second day we had the zone conference. It was nice to see my past companions and one of my zone leaders that is now an AP. It was nice to get some socializing in because we are in no where land.

The weather stayed good for the most part. We got rain on Thursday which made it crazy going home but we made it fine.

My birthday was great. We went out and worked and then we had the baptism. It was nice to have another baptism. It had been a long time. We had 2 baptisms. One 8 year old and then Irish. I did the baptizing. It was a great program. We are really excited for her. Now we will continue to help her and hand her off to the ward to take care that she continues. We then worked more and then we had a dinner appointment so it was a good day.

We had a great week for investigators. Erik made it to church again so we are looking forward to his interview this week for his baptism. He has a wonderful testimony and is progressing very well. Mimi didn't come to church so we don't know what is going on with her. We will find out this week. We went to Makalua this week and found out we have a potential of 3 convert baptisms and one 8 year old. We gave them a date for November 2 but we might move it to the week before depending on how fast we can teach them because they are only available Saturday and Sunday. We also gave Julie Ann a baptismal date. She is set for October 19. She isn't sure but we think she is just shy. We hope she continues and has a desire to be baptized. We couldn't go to Jessa this week because her aunt was there. Her aunt is very against her joining the church. She wants to try but is scared to when her aunt is there. We hope to see her next week. We are also teaching the Mingay family. We didn't see them this week but they are potential baptisms. He looks up to one of the members so it really helps him have a desire to join the church. We are seeing a lot of good things. We are excited to get a full week of work in this week.

Yesterday, I got to do 3 more interviews in Vallermoso. We are also expecting another one next week. It makes things hard in a good way. They are baptizing but we get less time to prosylete on Sundays. What a good struggle to have.

I think that is about it for this week. We did get a good study on the atonement this week by President Lopez. He taught us a lot. He had us read a talk by Elder Bednar called "In the Strength of the Lord." It is very good if you get the chance to read it.

Love you all,

Elder Nielsen

 

District Leader

This was a harder week for us but to say the least no transfers for both of us. I am now the district leader in the Vallermoso district.

Irish is doing great. We had her interview on Sunday and we have a baptism on Saturday!!! We are excited for that to happen. It is cool to have one on my birthday. What a great gift. Erik is doing amazing but he didn't make it to church this week. Some of the members went over there and they said they had no money to go to church this week. We are going to have to move his baptism now. It is a long walk if they would walk, I think about 8 km, so we can't blame them. We didn't get to teach the Makalua family this week because the kids had school to make up for a celebration this week. They can choose to make up school here on Saturday if they don't go because of a barangay celebration. They didn't make it to church this week either. We don't know why they didn't come. Mimi is also doing great. She didn't make it to church either. We text her and she said she tried but the gate was closed and locked so they couldn't enter. We don't know what happened with that but we did see her on a motorcycle prepared to go to church. We will probably just move her baptism a week later. Julie Ann came to church again this week. We were excited about that and want to give her a baptismal date but she is shy for us to teach her unless her mother is there. Her mother is very busy so we have a hard time teaching her. We hope that we can get that going because she has now been to church twice. Mary Grace is also doing great. We had a great lesson with her about the plan of salvation. She had lots of questions but she said that it was a lot better because people don't go to hell. We are trying to get her to pray to know it is true so that she can get her testimony and make the transition to the church.

This Sunday, I went to Vallermoso and did my first baptismal interview. It was a cool experience. The spirit was so strong as I interviewed him.

The weather has been pretty nice here. It has been overcast most of the week so not to hot. We did get a little rain but not as much as you did. We get enough to get the roads wet but not much more. It is crazy that you are getting so much. It is pretty nice that amount we are getting right here.

I wish I could tell you more about my week but it was pretty dull and we spend a lot of time walking trying to get some teaching appointments.

Next week might be about the same. We are going to Bacolod next week for zone conference with President Lopez which will take up two of our days.

Love you all,

Elder Nielsen

Great Hopes

Well, it wasn't the week we planned but it wasn't bad for the time that we had to work.

We had zone meeting this week. Most of it talked about the upcoming mission tour that we will have with President Brent Nielson this coming October. President Lopez is pretty serious about this and we are getting a lot of new things that we need to do so it will be perfect by the time that President Nielson comes.

This week we did a lot contacting referrals. It was a little bit hard because a lot of them didn't want it so we did the best we had with the investigators that we had.

Irish is doing great. We are looking forward to her interview this week. We are happy to have one again. Erik made it to church this week! We are happy that he is still good for his baptism on September 28. He is really great and asks some very good questions. It is good. Jovenal didn't come to church this week. One of his relatives, a member, went over there after church and visited him. They said he is worried right now because his wife is Catholic and he is worried she won't approve of him joining. He knows it is true but would like her to join with him. We can't talk to her right now because she is in Dumagette for work so his baptism is going to be delayed. We had quite a few investigators at church this week. We had two from the Makalua family. I don't know if I told you but we found Sister Makalua while trying to contact a referral. She told us she was a member. She is having us teach 3 of her grandchildren. 2 of them will be converts and one is 8 so the branch president will work with that one. They are really ready for the gospel and are really great people. We are teaching them and are excited to give them a baptismal date as well. Julie Ann Bayna also came to church this week. We have taught her for a while and she has never been sure about going to church but she came this week. It helps that her boyfriend is helping her come. We just need to find time to teach her the rest of the lessons. They are very busy so we are trying to get a schedule with them. Elder Ponseca went over to Jessa this week, we went on member exchanges, and taught her. She really wants to come to church but is scared because her aunt doesn't want her too. She says she will try this next week. We gave Mimi Brava a baptismal date this week for October 5. She didn't make it to church but it looked like it might rain so we didn't expect them. She just need to come for 3 more weeks and she will be baptized. We went to Mary Grace this week and had a great lesson with her. We taught about Joseph Smith and the restoration. She asked some really good questions and we had a great spiritual experience. She said she can't go to church because the groups she is in at the Catholic Church but if she finds our church to be true, she is willing to change. We have great hopes for her.

The weather was good this week. Not to hot but we still didn't get much rain. It made the road wet this week but not much more then that.

We have transfers this week so we will see what happens with that.

Love you,

Elder Nielsen

10 months!

I can't believe that 10 months have passed already. It has only felt like 2 months have gone by! It is crazy.

We had an amazing week this week. We had a pretty good amount of appointments this week and we are seeing a lot of good things coming out right now.

We are happy to say that Erik came to church this week!!! He brought his niece with him that isn't a member. She came and listened to us on Saturday and we asked her if she wanted to be baptized. She said yes, she is 9 years old. We were so excited! We are now looking forward to 4 baptisms coming up. Jovenal didn't make it to church this week. We went over there yesterday to find him sick. He is still good for Sept. 28. We set his baptism late so he could still be baptized on that day if he missed a Sunday. He is doing very well and has a great testimony. We had a great experience with him this week. We taught him the Word of Wisdom on Thursday. We knew that he had a cigarette problem. We taught him about it and he told us he went to the doctors earlier that week and they told him that he needed to stop smoking and stop drinking coffee because it wasn't helping him. They told him that it was bad for his body. It was great to see how the Lord helps us by sending some of our investigators to the doctors to find out that is bad for them. They will listen to the doctors. Some of the missionaries say if they won't give up their word of wisdom problems you pray they will get sick so they go to the doctors so they will stop. It isn't the best to pray for but it works for getting them to stop. We went to Irish's parents yesterday to ask them to sign the baptismal record so she could be baptized. The mother was hesitant at first but Irish went inside the house grabbed a pen and told her to sign. It shocked us a little bit to see that she had such a desire because she doesn't talk much during the lessons but she has a great testimony about the truth. We are planning on going back to their mother and teach her because she says that she hasn't listened to the missionaries before. We are looking forward to seeing if we can help her join as well. We were a little bit shocked yesterday at church. We contacted a less active about a week ago. We were looking for a referral and we asked her where the referral lives. She told us she was a member. To keep things short, she came to church yesterday and she brought her grandchildren. We know 2 of them can be baptized, one a covert the other is 8 years old. We are looking forward to teaching them this week so they will be baptized as well. We also have been working on Mimi Brava for a while now. She has been taught for a long time. She is a part member. Her mother is less active. She also came to church this week. It was cool because we haven't seen her for about 2 weeks because she went to Manila but she got cold there because of the typhoon and came back and she came to church. It was definitely a great day. We also had a branch fellowshipping night. We had the members invite others to come to the church to tour it. After they had some activities. They had 36 investigators come. We started contacted them yesterday and one is interested. He said he wanted to come to church so we will meet him there next week and set a schedule to teach him.

This week was very hot. We had no rain. It was very different and we felt like dieing yesterday because it was so hot. We were walking and would stop every so often to rest because we were drenched with sweat. It was very hot.

We celebrate Labor day here but it is a different day but it is different. Everyone still works. It is just like a normal day.

Well I think that is all. It was a great week.

Love you all,

Elder Nielsen

PS Merry Christmas. We are starting the Christmas season now. It starts 100 days before Christmas day. Time to start singing the Christmas songs!!! YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Life is Good

This week was pretty crazy with all our teaching appointments especially Wednesday. Wednesday was a holiday so we were packed with activities. It was good that we could go on exchanges with the members that day so it really helped the load of things. (Don't ask about the holiday, I don't really know about it just that the president's dad was shot on that day.)

We had a lot of teachings this week. We didn't get to go to Jessa because she was still busy. Elder Ponseca went to La Libertad on Wednesday to start to contact those referrals. I went and did some home teaching. It was good. We went to Erik on Saturday. We had a good lesson with him about the plan of salvation. He really likes it and we gave him a date for Sept. 28 for baptism. He didn't make it to church this week but we weren't expecting him to because they said they have no money. We are also teaching a relative of our branch president's wife. His name is Jovenal. We have taught him a couple of times over the past few weeks. We gave him a date on Saturday for Sept. 28 as well and he accepted. He also came to church on Sunday! It was a great find for us. We also went to Mary Grace again. Her husband was the Catholic apostle. We had a great lesson with them. The first time he said that the Book of Mormon was just the same as the Bible but now he says it is different. They are reading and we were able to teach them about how the Book of Mormon came to be and why we need it. We were able to testify that it helps us get closer to Jesus Christ. After we finished they told us that we are different then the other religions that have tried to teach them because we don't argue and try to prove them wrong. That is one thing President Lopez told us to do for them because we asked him how to help them. He told us just to testify. It was a great testimony to me that this is the true church because we don't need to argue. We know it is true through the Holy Ghost. We also had a lot of good lessons like that one with other of our investigators. We had a very good week. We contacted one of our referrals this week and low and behold, another group of boarders. This time we are teaching 14 girls, one of them is a less active from a different branch. One of them is very interested and we don't know about the rest because we had one small lesson with them. Maybe when we return we will find out more. The other boarders are doing about the same. They did ask some good questions this week. One asked about why we need to be baptized. We were then able to testify about baptism and how it was a commandment and was needed for us to return to God. We are waiting to see what they are thinking and feel about baptism.

As far as me. I am very happy right now. As long as we can teach life is good. We are constantly trying to figure out what else we can do to help our investigators recognize their answer about if the church is true. That takes up most of our time. We are also trying to figure out right now how we can focus on some of our investigators because it is hard because we are working with a lot of investigators and they are far apart. It is a good problem to be dealing with. They weather was hot at the beginning of last week. Today has really cooled down and is raining. Just the typical weather here.

We now have Facebook going and it is growing right now. We are now trying to figure out how to best use it to promote missionary work not just a place to go if we have no appointments or just a site. We are trying to figure out how to make it productive. If you have any ideas, we would love some.

The work is good right now. The Lord has prepared many for the gospel we just need to find and teach them.

Love,

Elder Nielsen

Basketball

We have started working on an online proselyting program. We now have use of Facebook, skype and other internet access devises to help move forward the work! It is very exciting because it can really enhance the work here because a lot of people are using technology here. I think we are the test mission for the Philippines because I hear the Davao Mission doesn't have it yet. Now I must warn, don't look us up or try to find us. If we get a friend request, we will reject it and if some tries to write us, we won't respond. This is for the people in each area and for the return missionaries so that they can keep in contact with their converts. It is a great thing.

President is also having us start doing basketball camps. We are going to teach young women and men how to play basketball. Basketball is big so this will draw attention and will give us more referrals. For members to join they must bring a friend that isn't a member so we will get the young people's attention and then they will introduce us to their parents and family so that we can start teaching them.

Another thing we are doing is we are going on exchanges with members every week. One person will go to investigators and the other will work on home teaching with their companion. This will help us with the rescue program to bring people back to church and will also give us time for investigators. It will double the work that day. We are very excited.

We told President about La Libertad but right now we are thinking we need to contact some of them and make sure there is some very good investigators there before we ask for missionaries. We don't want to start an area just to have it close in 3-6 months.

As far as teaching we had little. There was a lot of parties this week, I don't know why, so we ate a lot but taught very little. As far as investigators, we went to Jessa but she wasn't there. She says she will come to church on Sunday. We are excited for that. We planned to give her a baptismal date but we will have to do that this week. We made it to Yuriza this week. She was good and we cleared us some confusion. We tried to give her a date but she just said that she will be baptized when the time was right but right now she has duties in her other church. We had 2 very good lessons with the boarders. The boys are really great. They believe it is true and they are reading and really studying the scriptures. We are now hoping they will stay some Sundays so they can go to church because they live in La Libertad but they are very far away. We went to Galanza this week. We taught him about prophets and he knows that we need one but he won't budge. He is very Catholic and won't change. We are trying to figure out how to further help him. We went to La Libertad this week and we got 6 new investigators there. We are seeing how they will be because right now they seem very Catholic. We also got a new investigator as we were visiting some less actives. His relative, of that family, died about a month ago so he is really receptive. He has a great knowledge of the gospel. He really wants to join and we are excited for him to see how he progresses. His name is Eric Vergara. Right now we are working with a lot of investigators and seeing who will progress quicker so we can put more attention to them.

This week we also had district conference. President Lopez came to our area to interview some people. We got a new presidency for the district. We also had an area 70 come. I forget his name. His is the area 70 for the Bacolod Mission. He was good but it was hard because he was talking in Ilonggo and talked very fast so it was hard for us to keep up and understand.

As far as traveling, it isn't good to travel a long distance at night. That is why we travel at 5pm. It is hard to get a tricycle after and the buses could be far away.
The weather has been good. We had some hot and some rainy. That is what it is always. Mostly it was cloudy so it was good.

I believe that is all.
I love you all,

Elder Nielsen

Birthdays

Here it has been very rainy. I am glad that I got a new umbrella on Wednesday when I was in San Carlos. This week went well. We got a lot more teachings in this week. We also went to a new area. We went to La Libertad. There we had a great experience. We taught a less active family with a part member and that less active family gave us 31 referrals in that area!!! We are thinking right now how we are going to be able to teach all of them consistently because we can't be there past 5 pm because of transportation, tricycle or bus, and we can't go there very often because it costs us 20 pesos to go there and takes about 15 minutes. We are going to ask president for missionaries there so that they can try to start a new group there.

We taught Mary Grace again this week. Her husband was there as well. It was a different lesson because her husband is an apostle for the Catholic church, each big church has 12 apostles. He really tried to use the Bible to understand us or disprove so we didn't get to teach. We told them about the Book of Mormon and committed them to read it. He is still wondering where Lehi is in the Book of Mormon. We will focus on the Book of Mormon. We didn't make it to Paskil and Galanza this week. We went to Jessa this week. She is doing great. She wants to go to church but is shy so we talked to her and tried to help her. She is also shy because her aunt doesn't want her to join. She knows it is true so maybe in 2 Sundays she can attend church, we have district conference on Sunday. We tried to return to Yuriza but she wasn't there so we taught her sister Agnes. We taught the plan of salvation and she believes it is true. She just needs to pray to know the Book of Mormon is true. We also started teaching a relative of our branch president's wife. She didn't want to let us teach at first but when she found out they were members, we were able to teach. That is the power of having a fellowshipper that people know. The boarders are doing alright. We are still trying to get them to pray about the Book of Mormon. They seem scared to do it. That is our focus right now. We got a lot of new investigators this week that seem really good. I will tell you more about them later.

We eat a lot of coconut here but we don't eat the fresh ones. We eat the baby ones that just barely got the inside growing and has the water. We use the water and add the inside then we add milk and maybe sugar then we eat it. It tastes very good. The mission rule for houses is they have to be cement and have tile floors. They also have to have a gate and have screens and bars on the windows. Most of the houses in our area is cement because it is a "bigger" city and our area is a richer area. We have some that are made of dried leaves but not to many.

We had a great week this week. It is a lot better to have lots of lessons.

I love you all,

Elder Nielsen

PS the picture was a cake for Elder Ponseca's birthday, last Monday, and early for my birthday

Beginning of Typhoon Season

This week was slow as we thought it would. We had a hard time finding people to teach because of the midterms and we have entered into typhoon season. We got hit pretty hard with rain this week. Right now it is clear but the past 3 days it was heavy rain. I need a new umbrella because 2 of the poles broke on my other one.

We had a great baptismal service for Lionel and Sister Esposo! It was very spiritual and they are great people. The branch is very supportive of them and are really helping them. Lionel even worked with us yesterday. He wanted to see what we do so he came with us and helped us. It was a good experience for him. He is already talking about his mission!!! Bytheway (John), I am both us are still in Guihulngan.

Kyle and Mary Jane are good. We couldn't teach them this week because they were busy so we will try again this week. We went to the Galanza family this week. We took our branch president and he shared his thoughts about baptism and shared some verses from the Bible about baptism and how infants don't need to be baptized. It was good but I don't think Brother Galanza was very happy to hear it. He is very firm about being Catholic. We also taught Paskil this week. We made a lot of progress on them. We found out where they were in the teachings with past missionaries and found out a lot of his beliefs about religion.  We now know more about the direction we should go. We also started teaching a referral. We were given her name 2 times. The first we text her and she refused but the second time a member told us her name and we went to her house, not knowing it was the same person, and contacted her. She found out it was the same person and she is willing to listen. She has been to church before so we just have to build on what she has learned. Her name is Mary Grace. We went back to Yuriza this week. She is still confused so we told her to write down her questions so when we return this week we can answer them. We can't continue Irish's baptism because her dad wouldn't sign the baptismal record. We will continue to teach her and hopefully he will change his mind. She is ready for baptism so we just have to wait for her parents to sign.

As far as the area, we have a lot of coconut trees here. We live close to the mountains so we walk up hill a lot (both ways in mud up to our waists or maybe the middle of our shoes). It is a big city for this side of the island. We have a big college here. It is the 3 most recognized in the Philippines. Lots of teachers and students live here. It makes it hard because we start to teach and find out they go home on the weekends so they don't come to church. The beaches really depend. Some are really rocky and some are good sand. Some of the water is clear and some is really dirty. It depends on the spot.

One thing you have to know is a city here is like a county back at home. What we call a city is a barangay  or a sitio. Those depend on the area. A barangay is bigger then a sitio. The people are really good here and when they are converted, they really help with the work. We get lots of support.

This area we eat a lot of rice and chicken. We get some vegetables but that is the bases of our diets. (It is making me fat. I am about 170 now).

I think that is about it.

I love you all.

Elder Nielsen

 

Monday is Cleaning Day

This week wasn't quite what we were hoping for but we did alright.
We struggled to find teachings this week because all the students and teachers were preparing for midterm this  week. They have lots of projects to do an are preparing for tests. They were very busy.
Sister Esposo and Lionel are now ready for baptism!!! They both passed their interviews and will be baptized on Saturday! We are looking forward to their baptisms. They are both great people and have great testimonies of the church. Irish Maghanoy is right on tract for her baptism on Aug. 10. We are teaching her and she is listening and really knows what we teach. She is reading the Book of Mormon is things are really going well. All of our investigators really know that the Book of Mormon is important. It really helps them to progress. They are able to fill the spirit more and they are more likely to accept the gospel. We still haven't been able to go to Jessa because she is busy with school. We text her but she still isn't sure if she will be baptized or not. We are hoping to go back on Sunday since midterms will be over. We are teaching 2 new investigators right now. They are part members. We are teaching Kyle and Mary Jane. They really know the gospel. They were taught before but didn't get baptized. We are now continuing to teach them. They would have come to church on Sunday but because they are going to a Catholic school they had to go to the Catholic school on Sunday. They will probably come to church on Sunday. The Galanzas are doing good. They are really receptive and they listen good. Brother is still stuck on being Catholic. We think we are starting to see changes in him though. He is starting to pray more like we do then before. It is still Catholic but it is more structured like ours. Sister wants to join but she has a hard time going to church. We need Brother to help her. We will continue to help them and hopefully they continue to grow. We are also teaching a family like the Galanza family. We are teaching the Paskils. They believe the Book of Mormon is true but they are Catholic so they won't be baptized. We made a lot of progress with them yesterday. We found out a lot about their past so now we can move forward with them.
So p-day here is just us in Guihulngan. Everyone else in the zone goes to San Carlos. We would too but the it is 1 hr 15 min to get to San Carlos. It costs a lot so we just stay here because we have everything we need. We just stay home and clean. I do my wash on Mondays. It gives us things to do.
Well that was my week. It was a lot of walking and little teaching but we got a lot of work done. We are looking forward to a better week this week.
We also have transfers on Tuesday. We will see how that goes.
Love you all,
Elder Nielsen

A Great Week for Teaching!

This was a great week for teaching. We are slowing moving up with more teachings every week. We are really excited for the progress this branch is making.

Sister Esposo is right on tract. Her baptismal interview is on Sunday so we are looking forward to our first baptisms in Guihulngan. She is really excited and as we have taught her she seems to get more and more anxious. Lionel is also doing really great. His interview is also on Sunday. He has a firm testimony and he is extremely excited. We saw him on at church and he told us he had read all of the pamphlets that we had given him, we gave him the last 2 on Thursday. He is really good in his reading. He is about half way done with 1 Nephi and we just met him 2 weeks ago at church!!! He is an amazing person. Some of the planned baptisms dropped for Aug. 10 because their sister says they aren't ready because they just like to make fun of me and my Utah accent, yes we do have a big accent. We will only baptize Irish Maghanoy on the 10th. She is doing great. She has a hard time paying attention but she understands what we say and why we are there. Those are the people with baptismal dates so far.

The Bulabon boarders are doing good. Most of them are reading but the problem right now is they won't pray about the Book of Mormon. We are a little confused about that because usually we can get people to pray but not read. We are really focusing on getting them to pray because they all have felt the spirit and their faith is really growing. They just need that confirmation in their hearts before they are willing to accept a baptismal date. Once that happens we will then focus on getting them to church. We are teaching a part member, Jenessa Gabetero. She attended church last week and she knows the church is true. We are trying to get her to continue to come to church and feel the spirit. We tried to give her a baptismal date but she wasn't sure if she would. We will continue to teach her and strengthen her testimony of the gospel. We haven't been able to go back to Jessa Cuebas yet because she has been busy. It is midterm right now at the college so they are really working on projects and focusing on school right now.

We are really working with the branch council right now on trying to get more investigators to teach. We planned out an activity for next month to get investigators to the church. We are going to have a branch fellowship night for investigators, less actives, and members. We are going to focus on getting members to bring less actives and investigators to the church for this activity so we can teach more people. The leaders are really stepping up on the work and they are starting to get excited about the work that we do each day. It is an exciting time right now. We are looking forward to the harvest that will come because of our efforts and the efforts of the branch. We are going to reach the Bacolod Mission Vision of having baptisms every week. That is the goal we are reaching for and we will reach it. It isn't that far away.

Love you all,

Elder Nielsen

Baptisms lined up for August

This week wasn't as good as we were hoping but it seemed to go alright. We were hoping to teach more but it didn't happen. The good side of this week is that we have a lot of investigators progressing and the baptisms are really lining up for next month.

Sister Esposo is on tract to be baptized on August 3! She has finished the lessons so we are just focusing on her having spiritual experiences right now. Her children are members so it gives her a little bit of a push to be baptized. She is really going great. We also have Brother Lionel Bayon-on getting ready for baptism on August 3. He is very smart. He is 18 years old and really knows the gospel. He is asking questions about deeper doctrines and wants to know how things work in the church. Most of the time he is helping us teach the lesson. He is amazing. He says that I am his idol because I am American and he says that I am Mr. Bean! He is a great person. We also have 4 children preparing for baptism on August 10. Their sister is an RM. We teach them at the church because of family problems. They are really great kids. It is a little bit harder to teach them because of their understanding but we manage. We think Sister Jessa is doing good. She didn't come to church and when we went to teach her yesterday, she wasn't there but we talked with her dad and invited him to come and listen to us when we teach her. He said that he would. It is good because he his friends with our branch president so it gives a support system for him. Sister Zapanta is doing great. We taught her about baptism and she decided to wait to be baptized until she is married. We think it is a good decision so we are just going to support her until that happens. As far as the boarders at our branch president's house they are really gaining testimonies. All of them feel the spirit very strongly. We took them on a church tour and watched the Restoration with them. They all really felt the spirit. They all went home so they didn't attend church this week. We know that 2 of them probably won't continue because one of the members received texts from them that said they were baptized so they won't continue. It was sad because they really felt the spirit but the can choose.

Right now we are trying to get baptisms in the branch so that we can get more missionaries in the area. There are 4 cities, cities here are like counties, that are part of our area that we haven't touched. It is a very large area so we are getting baptisms so that we can ask President Lopez for more missionaries to start working in some of the areas that we aren't able to cover because of distance. We are hoping to ask in August.

I love you all,

Elder Nielsen

A Week Full of Miracles

This has been an amazing week full of miracles.

First of all, we received 12 referrals this week!!! I think that is a high for my mission for a week. We were able to contact 9 of them. We contacted 7 of them because they live at our branch president's house. In Guihulngnan, they have a big college. They say it is the 3rd most recognized in the Philippines. They attend that college so they live at our branch president's house. We started teaching them this week. They are really prepared for the gospel. There are 5 girls and 2 boys. We taught them on Tuesday but we forgot the Book of Mormons so we were only able to give them 1 for all of them. We went back on Thursday, with the Book of Mormons, and all of the girls had read the introduction of the Book of Mormon. They then asked about who Mormon was as well as Moroni. We were able to tell them and then we started to teach them the plan of salvation. The spirit was so strong and all of them felt it. We are looking forward to going back to them on Wednesday night. About 2 weeks ago, we were trying to find a less active and so we asked some people and then gave them a restoration pamphlet and asked if we could come back to teach them. One of them texted us about an hour later and said she was interested. We have now taught her twice. Her name is Jessa. She knows some of the members of the church and she has felt the spirit as we teach. She wants to continue to learn. We invited her to be baptized and she accepted. Her baptismal date is on August 10. We are really looking forward for that one. We also have one more with a baptismal date. We found an investigator that has been taught for a long time. We continued to teach her and gave her a date for baptism. She agreed and will be baptized on August 3. Her name is Sister Esposo. We have a potential baptism this month. Sister Zapanta we are waiting for her to say that she will be baptized. Her husband, not married, is in Manila so she can potentially be baptized. We are waiting for her to decide. We got a new investigator on Sunday. He is going to be adopted in a members home so he came to church this week. We will start teaching him this week. His name is Lionel.

One of the greatest miracles this week was in our branch council. We talked to them about how baptisms goals for each month are now a branch thing not just a missionary deal. We talked about it and we have set up an idea for next month. But during that time, the leaders gave us 3 referrals in that meeting. They are starting to see the vision of the Bacolod Mission of having the weekly baptism. We are going to start a lot more new ideas such as having church tours and the basketball courts are now open for public use with the supervision of the members. We are visiting the members and teaching them and seeing how they are doing for sharing the gospel. If they aren't then we work with them so that will start sharing the gospel like we practice teach with them. We are going to see a big surge in Guihulngnan. We might get to the point where we can split the branch and make 2 solid branches so that it can help the district develop into a stake.

This has been a wonderful week for us. Some days were hard but we are now going to work a lot more and be a lot more effective.

I love you all,

Elder Nielsen

Ilongo to Cebuano

This was a very hard week for us. We have been walking around a lot but have few people to teach. We got to this area with a big area full of investigators but we haven't been able to find them. That is our focus for this week is to try to find some more of these people. Our week was cut short for us to teach as well because we had zone conference this week. It was amazing.

For zone conference we watched the worldwide leadership training. It involved missionary work so President Lopez thought some of us wouldn't be able to watch it so he showed it to us. We learned a lot about how to better effective missionaries and a better way in order to find people to teach. The big focus of the training was to get members involved in the work. I think Elder Bednar said that the perfect system is members are full time finders and missionaries are full time teachers. That is the goal for every area with missionaries in them. That is what President Lopez wants us to do in our areas. We are going to start with the leaders in our branch and move out from there. Our branch president is actually a new member. He was baptized in March 2012. It is good because it pulls out a lot of rules that have been made up over the years here.

As far as investigators, we have very few. One of our investigators is Norning Galanza and his wife. He was a referral from one of our former APs. Norning is Elder Galanza's grandfather. He is really cool to teach him but he is very Catholic and doesn't want to change. We are really focusing on the Book of Mormon to help him because if he gets a testimony of the Book of Mormon, he will convert. We started teaching Jessa yesterday. We contacted her trying to find a less active. We gave her a pamphlet and set up an appointment with her. She has a lot of contacts in the church. A lot of her friends are members so we hope that will help incourage her. She listens good. She says she has gone to one of the activities at the church and liked it. Then we have Yuriza Letrada. She likes the church and was referred by a friend. The problem right now is her parents don't want her to join, she is old enought to choice to join or not herself, and she is a teacher for another religion. She hasn't got a testimony yet about the Book of Mormon so we invited her to pray about it and read it. I think that is about it for the investigators.
As far as the language, it is a lot easier to change from Ilonggo to Cebuano but is is hard at the same time. You get so use to one language that you go to say something and you say it in the other language. The people understand me for the most part because some of the words they don't use in Cebuano is Tagoloc so they understand it but sometimes they don't so I have to try to explain in English. I get my point accross though. It will take some time but it will happen.

Our companionship is going good. We are getting a long and are both trying to get things rolling. Elder Ponseca is from Bataan Luzon Philippines. I hear he is the tallest Philippino in the mission. It is different to have a tall companion. It is taking some time to get use too. Before him, my tallest companion was Elder Disque and he was 5'6".

Well, everthing is good here.

Love you lots,

Elder Nielsen

Transferred!

Hello from Negros Oriental!!! I transferred on Wednesday! I am now in a place called Guihulngan branch (pronounced ge-hul-gan) in the Canlaon district in the San Carlos Zone. If you look at where I am, I am no longer speaking Ilonggo. I am now in a Cebuano area! It is really different but good. I am now the senior companion and we whitewashed the area because one missionary finished his mission and the other was transferred! It is a very exciting time. We are seeing a lot of changes right now. I have to readjust my language now. It will be alright because part of it is the same so it won't be as hard of a change. I just hope it comes a lot quicker then Ilonggo did. Guihulngan is a branch because San Carlos is a district. I hear that it is getting close to becoming a stake. We have a high enough attendance to be a ward so we are waiting for the district to become a stake.

My new companion's name is Elder Ponseca. He is by far my tallest companion. Before my tallest companion was 5'4" but he is 6'. It makes things a little bit different because we attract a lot more attention when we walk the streets because we are both very tall. We are trying right now to figure out the area. Elder Ponseca knows the area a little bit because he has had exchanges in this area a few times so it helps us a lot. We are trying to find the investigators. It is a little bit hard but we get a lot of help from our branch missionaries. It is a working progress to whitewash an area. One thing I have had to get use to is bucket showers. In Manapla they have a shower but here we have a bucket. It is alright. It doesn't take long.

We have visited a lot of members these past few days trying to find out about the area. We are hoping to start getting to the investigators more this week. Our area is rather big so we are taking it one small area at a time.

As far as weather, it was starting to get very rainy in Manapla but here the mountains brake up most of the storms (I forgot to mention our area is very mountainous and we can see Cebu from our area). It hasn't rained yet here but we thought it would a couple of times.

In order to get to our area from Bacolod we had to go through a canyon. It was very pretty. I took some pictures which I will try to send next week. It had a ton of turns and it was very small. We went through it in a bus. It was probably worse then going through Ogden canyon. The road was about the same size but we were doing it with buses. It was fun especially when two buses passed each other. Then the buses were stopping to drop people off during the travel. It was very fun.

Well I will be able to tell you more about the area next week. I don't know it very well. Maybe next week.

I love you all,

Elder Nielsen

Me and my companion

Happy Father's Day!

This was a great week for us. We got 35 teachings this week! That hasn't happened in a while. We hope to do more these coming weeks.

 

So Uzi's baptism is on Wednesday. He had his interview on Sunday. The zone leader said that he is a funny boy. He says some funny things and tries to explain things in a long way but it seems like he gets himself confused while doing so. He's baptism is on transfer day. I might not be there to see it because of transfers. Oh well, we don't know what will happen this week. I think there is a good chance that I will transfer because I have been in Manapla for a long time.

 

As far as our other investigators, Jay-r is doing great. He is still progressing well. His interview for baptism should be on Sunday. He has a firm testimony. It is hard to teach him right now because of school. We can only teach on Saturdays and Sundays. It is alright though because the lessons are almost done. We started teaching a new investigator this week. Her name is Leah. She is a housemaid for our landowner so we have visited her a few times. We started teaching her this week and introduced the gospel to her. She doesn't really understand me because of my accent so Elder Nunez is doing most of the teaching but it gives me something to work on. She attended church this Sunday. We are hoping to help her. We went back to a family this week that are less active. The Nopeto family is really big and has a lot of members. We were referred to them. We went to visit and picked up a new investigator there. Apparently there could be a lot more investigators for us to teach there because most of the daughters married nonmember husbands. We are finding a lot of new investigators right now. We went to Sister Taperan this week. She wants to be baptized but has to take care of her mother-in-law. She will come to church when her mother-in-law is good but right now it doesn't seem very good. We are just waiting until she can come to church so that she can be baptized. We have a lot more investigators that we go to but they aren't progressing. We are trying to help them but it is hard sometimes because they don't want the help. 

 

Anyways, I love you all. Happy father's day to all the fathers there.

 

Elder Nielsen

Focus on Retention

This was a pretty good week for us. We worked a lot harder and we are seeing some of our investigators really start to accept the gospel.

Nixie's baptism was great! It was very spiritual. We had everyone dress up and tried to make it a good experience for her. She was really happy. We are looking forward to more baptisms in Manapla.

Uzi is doing great. He doesn't understand a lot of what we teach so we focus on the questions for baptism to help him understand the commandments of God. He is on track to be baptized right before I transfer and before his sister leaves for the mission. It will be her leaving on a mission gift. Jay-r is a pretty common name here. Jay-r is doing great. His family told us he really likes to read the Book of Mormon. He will go to read and he will see that his sister is reading something else and he will go talk to her and ask why she is reading the other book and not the Book of Mormon. It was funny but he has a sincere testimony of the truth. He is already looking forward to going on a mission and preaching the word. He says he has a friend he would like us to teach so we are hoping to start teaching his friend this week. We are also starting to teach a relative of Nixie. His name is Jernel. He of the boyfriend of one of our less active members. He came to her baptism and we are told he is asking questions about the gospel. He came to church on Sunday. We are excited to continue to teach him and help him be baptized. We need to help them be married first but once he hears the gospel that is an easy step to take.

We are continuing working with other investigators and part member families. It is work all the time. Sometimes it feels like there is nothing we can do but we still try to find people to teach. The retention here is hard because we work with a lot of part members that are less active. They don't understand enduring to the end so they will come to church just to be baptized and then they will go less active. We try to focus on that when we teach the people here. The Negad's haven't been to church for a couple of weeks but they have been traveling a bit. I hope they will come again next week. They were visiting family. School just started here so they will probably have time now.

This week I was able to go back to Punta Salong with Elder Evans. I visited Tabligan again. He is the same. We helped him to realize that he needs to pray about the Book of Mormon. He would just believe it before. We hope he will read now. I also went to Baldos. He knows it is true but wants his wife to accept it as well before he joins the church. It was nice going back to that area.

I love you all. Be happy.

Elder Nielsen

Hide and Seek

This week was pretty good for us. We actually have a baptism on Saturday!!! I didn't think we would be we do. We are looking forward to Nixie's baptism. It is pretty exciting. She loves the gospel. She is a little bit shy but we were able to teach her.

This week we taught a lot more than normal. We started to go through are former investigators and we saw some names of less actives with the names of the former investigators. We have started to visit both of them and we are hoping to see more investigators come out of this work. This week was mainly focused on preparing people with baptismal dates and searching with maybe a little game of hide and seek. Some times the less actives hide from us so we have to find them a different time and then we can start to work on their problem that has been stopping them from going to church. Sometimes it is hard but some people we just visit them once and then they come back. We have been working with the ward and have been really working on getting home teaching and visit teaching happening. A lot of these less actives won't have gone less active if their was home and visiting teaching happening. We can't change the past so we are starting now. They are now going to the less actives and we are starting to see a lot of less actives coming back to church. This is exciting. We are getting close so that Punta Salong can split from the Manapla Ward. It is still a ways away but it will happen one day.

Right now we are working with Jay-r Villariaz. He was close to baptism but missed some Sundays so we have to start over with him. He made it to church this Sunday. He really wants to be baptized. He are looking forward to that baptism on June 29. We also got a new investigator this week. His name is Uzi. He is 9 years old. He is part member. We were told to teach him. His sister is about to go on a mission so we are hoping to do his baptism right before she goes and before transfer day, June 19. That is about it for those baptisms coming up. We look forward to a lot more to come this week.

It is rainy season right now. My umbrella is my hair. It is brand new and very useful. My house is really nice so we don't get rained on. It is pretty close to what houses are like in the US just a lot smaller. I get to clean the house every week. I also get to do laundry by hand every week. Man life is rough!!! jokes.

I love you all,

Elder Nielsen