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