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