Father's Day

What a good but challenging week this week.

We had Irish's baptism this week. It turned out very good experience and was very nice. I thought something was missing probably because I was thinking of the sisters' investigator who died the day before the baptism. It was pretty sad but it must have been God's will. He sure does work in mysterious ways.

We stayed pretty busy this week. Our key indicators are getting bigger every week so we are doing some things right but we are still struggling getting our investigators to church.

As far as investigators, Carmela is doing about the same. We got busy so we didn't make it to her this week. We will be visiting her next week. We had a great experience with Miguel Javier. We were teaching him, and he didn't read the Book of Mormon so we decided we would read with him to try to get some background of it so he would maybe be more excited about reading it. We read it and he said "This isn't the same as the Bible is it?" It gave us a great experience explaining what the Book of Mormon is. We think it is helping him to be more interested in what we are saying instead of just listening to what we are saying. He seems curious so we will see what happens this week. We started teaching April Mana-ay. She is a security guard. Her sister was baptized a couple of months ago. She has been taught before but wasn't ready to listen. We started again and was able to commit her to a baptismal date. It is still a long ways away but she wants some time to prepare. We are excited to teach her and help her to understand and accept the gospel. We also have taught her brother but it isn't the easiest to catch them home.

Manuel is doing alright. We have set up a plan for him to stop his vices so we will see what happens there. We also have been looking and have found some fellowshippers for him to help him stop his vices. We hope this will help him to see what he is doing is possible.

John Paul didn't come to church so we need to move his baptismal date. We aren't sure when because we want to make sure that he is prepared and understands what we are teaching him first.

This week in our studies we have been studying about working with members. It is so important that members are working. It is very hard if it is just us so we need all the help we can get. Members are the key to conversion because it gives us the people that are ready to listen and then they have a friend to help them on their way.

Love you lots,

Elder Nielsen

PS Happy Father's Day to all the dads.

 

A Wonderful Week

We had such a wonderful week this week. We were a little worried at first but it turned out alright.
Irish had her interview and we will be having her baptism next Saturday. We weren't sure if it was going to happen because we were waiting and about 20 minutes after the schedule timed and then he said I am on my way. We think he forgot so it was a good thing we text him.
We still aren't sure how the funeral will effect John Paul's baptism. He got back yesterday. We hope that it will continue but we still have a lot to teach him for only having 2 weeks to prepare him for his interview.
Manuel is coming. He is coming very well. We are just waiting for a few things and then he is good for baptism.
Carmela is doing well. We found out she believes that all churches she believes is true as long as they talk of Christ. We are working on finding a way to help her realize that Christ built one church and gave authority for one church. It is a working progress.
We had a miracle find this week. We have been going to a new area called Malapitan. We were looking for a less active member there that was on our member list and as we were looking we couldn't find her. We asked all the people around if they had meet her and no one new her. We were going to leave the area when we heard "hello elder." We went back and it was her!!! She works in Ilo-ilo so she only comes home about once a year. The Lord put us there for a reason. Her son is there on the weekends and hasn't been baptized yet. We will start teaching him this next week. It was a miracle.
We had a great week. The Lord truly blessed us. We found some more investigators and we will be working on them this week. We will see how that goes.
Love you all,
Elder Nielsen

Interesting but Fast Week

We had a very interesting but fast week. Everything seemed good this week so I can't say much. Let me think what was going on this week. huh. . .
Well we found out that Irish needs a special interview because of somethings that she has done in her past. We aren't sure when she will be baptized any more because of that but we are hoping it will be soon. One of President Lopez's councilors will be coming over on Thursday to do the interview with her. We hope that everything will go alright. I am sure it won't be to much of a problem. If everything goes good we might baptize her on June 14. John Paul is doing alright as well. He is coming along but his grandpa died this week so we aren't sure what will happen with that. We hope it won't effect his baptism but it might just because funerals take about 10 days here. We might have to move his baptism because of that. Manuel is doing great. We hope that he will continue. Carmela is coming very slowly but I think she is starting to realize that the church is true. We asked if she prayed if that church was not true and she said that she felt nothing but when she prays if it is true that she feels peace. We didn't have much time to teach her so we will be focusing on that next time we go to teach her. We are just hoping that she will accept that as her answer because she wants to know not just believe. The rest of this week was just trying to build some relationships with some of the people that we have taught before or that we were referred too. I hope that we can teach more this next week but it might be a little hard with school. School just started today for the elementary and high school students and then college starts next week. It will be interesting to see what happens.
We teach about the same as when I was zone leader and maybe a little less just because we have extra studies that we need to do since I am training. It is better help the new missionary to understand what missionary work is and how it is best performed. It is hard to put in the schedule but it is alright. We make it happen.
I have to agree with Elder Holland when he said missionary work was never easy because it wasn't easy for Christ when he performed the atonement.
Salvation isn't easy but it can be easier if we follow Christ.
Love you all,
Elder Nielsen

Training!!!!

I am still in Bacolod 2nd Ward. Elder Paaño moved out and I stayed to train a new companion. Elder Vinoya has a great testimony and really is excited for this work. He is from Quezon City, Manila. I am excited to train because it is helping me focus more on the work. I need to train him correctly so it doesn't leave me any time to do anything else except focus on the work. I have been going home a lot more tired then any other time in my mission.
This week has been a lot of studies for us. While training we have 4 hours of study instead of the normal 3. It has been very different but has taught me a lot more. Then it has been off to the members and others so that Elder Vinoya can meet the members and we can start helping the members do missionary work. We are hoping we can do a lot more with our investigators this week. Lots of people are very busy right now because school starts next week June 2 so they are getting ready and are spending lots of time doing things. We hope they will relax this next week so we can teach them.
As for this week, Irish is doing great. Her interview should be next week so we are preparing her for that. She should be baptized on June 7. We then gave a baptismal date to Chenna's brother John Paul for June 28. He will be our next baptism. He is turning 8 on June 24 so we thought it would be good to do so. We are trying to get their mom involved so that she can listen to the discussions. We hope to convert her in the process of teaching John Paul. We didn't make it to Carmela this week because bishop's father-in-law had a stroke so we didn't go there this week. She came up to us in church and asked why we didn't go there so think that is a good sign. We also went to Eden this week.She is doing really good and she likes what we teach. We are working on getting her to read the Book of Mormon and we are still trying to get her to church. That is the hardest part. Armando went back to Cadiz so we are going to teach him. Hopefully the missionaries there will continue to teach him. Everyone else it about the same. We meet a few more people this week that are potential. We will be working to contact as many of them as we can.
Hope you all are doing well. The Lord is hastening His work. We see it everyday as we work. Lots of hearts are changing. Hope you are participating in this great work.
Love you,
Elder Nielsen

Working Progress

We had an exciting week this week. It started very good but it turned out we didn't do as good as thought we would but that is ok. We did a lot of good working with the people of the ward.
First of all, We had Chenna's baptism!!! It was so good. We ended up baptizing 3 primary aged kids that week, (2 from the sisters). It was a nice baptismal service. We are going to miss a couple of weeks before our next baptism. The next one will be on June 7. Irish will be baptized that day. She is really progressing and loving the gospel. We have seen a lot of changes in her for good. Her temper has become longer, she is a lot nicer, and she loves more to listen to the gospel rather then to us. That is true conversion. We are excited for that baptism to happen. Our next planned is on June 14 but we still aren't sure if that will happen. Armando is suppose to but we haven't talked to his sister yet to see if he can be baptized. We will have to find out this week when he goes to Cadiz to find out. We got a new investigator named Manuel. He has becoming to church for a while now and the sisters were teaching him but they didn't want to continue so we took him from them. He is very smart and has lots of potential. He has lots of problems though so we are really trying to help him with those. I hope he will progress well. Right now he is doubting if there is a God so that is something we will talk about with him this week. Carmela is doing great. Still reading and coming to church. She still isn't ready to accept her answer so we are still working on that with her. This might take us a while to do so we are hoping to know what to say.
That was about it for the investigators. We ended up spending a lot of time trying to help struggling members and working with our leaders to better help the ward to progress. It is a working progress. I hear we will get a new ward mission leader this next Sunday so we are pretty exited so that we can work with him and make more plans for the work here.
Love you lots,
Elder Nielsen
PS You might have heard there was an earthquake here. We barely felt it. Nothing happened at all with it.

No Letter, Just Talked For Mother's Day

We didn't have a letter from Jacob because we talked on his P-day for Mother's Day.

New Area President Visit

This was a great week for us. We have been so blessed this week. Our work went great and our leadership meeting was really good this time.
I will first talk about our investigators and how they are progressing.
We saw Albert as we were walking home on Tuesday so we talked to him very fast, it was almost time to be home, and he said we could talk with him on Saturday. We kept going back to him but his family says he hasn't come home for 4 days. No one seems to know where he went. We just hope he will come back some time so we can help him. Reca is good for this Saturday!!! We are excited to have a baptism again. She is so good. She has came and worked with us a couple of times even. It will be a great baptism. Next we will have Chienna. She will be on May 17. She came back from vacation so she is good to go. She came to church and that is when we found out that she was back. We are so excited. Next we should have Armando. He is with one of our recent converts. He is doing great but we need to talk to his sister if he can be baptized or not. We are hoping to talk to her soon so we can baptized him on May 24. After that we aren't sure what will happen. We had 7 investigators at church so we are expecting a lot to come. Roy was one of our investigators at church. We haven't taught him yet but we are planning this week because we have seen a great desire. His mom might be a problem but we aren't to worried about it. We haven't seen Macmac this week. He hasn't been home so maybe next week we will see him.
Our leadership meeting with Elder Ardern, the new area president, was really good. He actually didn't teach us much. He talked a little about doing great things and showed us how our mission has improved so much in one year and then he spent a lot of his time asking questions trying to figure out what other missions in the Philippines could do to improve because our mission is doing so well. The work is hastening very quickly here in Bacolod. Elder Ardern wants the whole Philippines to do the same. I learned a lot about leadership from him and being humble. Sometimes we are put in leadership positions but we also have to be able to learn from those that we are put over. He gave a great example of that. We can learn something from everyone.
Those are the big things for this week. We will be giving a training this next week and then we will have a training with President Lopez. It will be a great week.
Love you,
Elder Nielsen