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