Bacolod City!

Hello from Bacolod proper!!!

That is right, I am now in the Bacolod 2nd Ward in the Bacolod Stake. Just a funny fact, there is a Sister Nielsen assigned to the same ward and we have another Sister Nielson in the zone. I am still a zone leader.

Before I get started, I got your letter with Ben's. Thanks, it was really nice to get.

My new companion is Elder Paaño. He is from Marakina City, Manila. He is really good. I am looking forward to some good times with him.

This week was packing and then going to a few members before transferring. It was hard because the Lord started that area progressing while I was there. I was a great area and lots of miracles happened there. I hope that it continues to produce good results.

After that is off to the new area. I like it here in the city. I don't have to wash my laundry, there is American food, and there is so much support here in the city. Did I mention that there was American food?!!!

I don't know the people very well yet especially we haven't gone to church at our building due to stake conference but I will tell you about some of them that I do remember. We are teaching 2 kids, Aladdin and Aldrin. They are super smart and there mom and siblings are members. We gave them a date for March 22 to be baptized. We are looking towards that. They both like to call me "Good boy." Then we are teaching Mitoy. She is a house help at one of our members. She is really good and like to listen to the gospel. She is really shy but knows the gospel. We are looking at March 22 for her as well. We have a recent convert that lived in London, England for 22 years. She is really cool! It is fun to visit her and talk some English but she also helps me with my Ilonggo now that I have to learn it again. We also have a great recent convert named, Salvie Villaflor. Her husband had a stroke so he can't walk very well but she is super active. They are both good and they keep telling me that I speak Tagalog but I don't know it very well.

That is about I can tell you right now. I am looking for a great week. I am zone leader still so we have a meeting on Tuesday and will train on Wednesday. I think we can still do good. We taught about 66 lessons this week so we are going for higher this next week.

Love you lots,

Elder Nielsen

PS We have a huge apartment because we host a lot of missionaries for meetings in Bacolod. It is really good but I need to clean it up. It will take me a while to get it ship shape.

Staying Pretty Busy

We had James baptism this week. It went very well. We were surprised by their testimonies after the baptism. They were very good. We can't continue Junjun's baptism because he hasn't been to church and we don't know if his parents are ok with him being baptized yet. We haven't had any contact with him because he has been in Bonifacio for the past week. We hope to be able to continue this week.

Our next baptism is on March 15. Mary Joice is doing great. She is doing very well and listens well as long as her aunt is there to help us teach. Members really help with keeping the investigators going and progressing. After that we are looking at Jessica. She didn't make it to church probably because it rained. We are looking at March 22 for her. Then we are looking at James friend, Alejandro, on March 29. Everything looks good as long as it doesn't rain and they continue to come to church. The members are doing great as well because they are bringing investigators to church with them that we have never taught. We are hoping to contact some of those investigators and try to teach them so they can go on the list of baptisms so we can plan for them. It is great when the members help. It makes our work a lot easier and  it helps them feel the blessings of the gospel in their lives. We ended with 5 investigators at church this last Sunday.

That is about the work we did for this week. We scrambled around this week trying to meet the needs of the investigators and members and then we were trying to keep things going with being a missionary. We had to get pictures taken so that we could go home. Then this week we had a meeting with the district president. That was a great meeting talking with him and how we could move the work forward better in the Escalante District. One thing we had an idea to do was have the branch presidents work with the missionaries. One problem for them to become a stake is tithing. We are getting enough members paying tithing so working with the branch president can lead us to those that aren't paying to help them know the blessings of tithing which every Filipino needs.

That was it for the week. We stayed pretty busy. Lots of people were busy this week so we had some struggles but it worked out.

Love you all,

Elder Nielsen

Miracle Sunday

We actually had a great week this week. We had lots of time to go and work this week so we really focused on the area and didn't have to do that many leadership responsibilities.
James is doing amazing. He is good to go to be baptized on Feb. 22 with his sister, Franchel. We are really excited for this baptism! We are looking at March 1 for Junjun right now. He was suppose to have his mom sign the paper so that he could be baptized this weekend. If that happened, we are good to go for March 1. After that we are looking at March 22 for a few baptisms. We got Jessica going again. She was suppose to be baptized on Christmas but it didn't happen. She came to church this week so it is looking good for her. We also have Mary Joice and her sister, Maritis, on March 22. We set these a long time so we might move Jessica up so that we can do a weekly baptism. We are also teaching two kids at one of our members houses. They are Mauren and Dieter Tapang. They are really good kids and they came to church on Sunday. In total, we had 6 investigators at church!!! That is incredible for this area. What was more impressive was that we had 8 less actives come to church on Sunday!!! We are short on priesthood and most were priesthood so we are very grateful that they came to church. We are now working to get them to stay at church so that they can be a strength to the branch.
Sunday was a really hard but good day. We ended up interviewing 9 people for baptism and still got to our area to teach 5 lessons!!! It was an amazing day for us.
There is a lot of transfers today. I am still in my area but it is kind of weird that they are happening because transfer day is next week. We will see what happens. Last week, one of the sisters in the zone went back to Tacloban. More are going to follow. All the Tacloban missionaries are getting a little trunkie now because they want to go there, most of these are new missionaries to the field. We will see when they get back.
That covers the week. It was a lot of work and we received lots of blessings. Sunday was a real miracle day.
Love you all,

Elder Nielsen

Happy Valentines Day

Sister Jorolan's baptism is really good! It was cool seeing her baptized because it was like a light came into her as she was baptized. She was definitely ready.
It is transfers for the Tacloban missionaries. I think one sister in our zone is going back but the other missionaries are still going to be here. I hear the problem is finding housing so we will see what happens. I plan to have 1 more transfer in Mabini.
Teaching was a little slow this week as far as numbers but we stayed very busy. There was a lot of trials this week that we had to go and solve within the missionaries and within the members of the branch. We had to go and work those out the last week so that the work wouldn't slow down in the future. That consumed a lot of time but we did pretty good for not having much time to teach this week.
James is doing great. He is right on tract to being baptized on Feb. 22. We are really excited about this baptism. We are teaching an 8 year old named Mary Joice. She is really good but sometimes very shy. We are getting some good progress from her. We are looking at about March 22 for her just because we have to go slow with the lessons with her. We don't know what is going on with Cleofe. Every time we go there they say they are busy. Hopefully we can teach them more in the near future. I should probably say, James brought a friend to listen to us. We hope to baptize him. We taught him on Saturday and then he went to church yesterday!!! Sister Jorolan's daughter brought a friend as well to church. We hope to start teaching her this next week as well. It is cool that we are getting referrals and friends are coming to church this week. It will help in the future to get baptisms. We also did a lot with less actives this week. We had 2 less actives at church this week. We are working on them so that they can help the work as well. Less actives are a good source of referrals.
That was about it for the week. I am doing great. Just loving the work and the people here.
Love you all,

Elder Nielsen

PS Have a happy Valentines day. There is always a lot of marriages here on Valentines day because the Catholic priest does them for free.

District Conference

We have a baptism on Saturday!!! We are excited about that. She is really good and her son is on a mission so President was more then ready to let us baptize her.

We had a very good week despite the little time that we had to work. We had the most amount of lessons in our area since I have been here. It was amazing! We got some new investigators that look pretty good and now we are moving forward. We just need to start setting up dates so that they can be baptized.

James is doing great! He came to the district conference and loved it, since he is Tagaloc anyway. Elder Ardurro was really good! He was really funny but I could only understand about half because he talked so fast and it was Tagaloc!!! We is still good for Feb 22 for James. Junjun is doing great as well. He is reading and having a great experience in the Book of Mormon. He still needs to talk to his mother if he can be baptized. The plan is March 1. Cleofe was going to come to church but we hear that her mom doesn't want her to be going to church. We will have to talk to her to see if we can continue. We hope we can because she is really great. We got some new investigators. Mary Joy went to work in Escalante so we can't teach her but we are now teaching her sisters. They are really good. They don't hide from us and they love for us to teach. The youngest is 8 and she even read our assignment!!! We are really happy for her!

We went on exchanges this week with the elders in Old Escalante. I was with Elder Sio which is from Herriman! He is Samoan but lived in Herriman before the mission. He is really great. We went and worked in Old Escalante and had a great experience. I learned a lot about how to better use the pamphlets in lessons and how to get investigators to read. It was really useful and will really help our area.

I think that is about it for the week. It was really good but it flew by. We are heading to Bacolod later so that we can go to a meeting to prepare for a training on Wednesday that we have to give. By the way, the trainings are going very well. We just have to teach the missionaries and then we go back to normal.

Love you,

Elder Nielsen

Chicken Curry

This was another rainy and cold week but the sun came out at the end and dried up most of the mud. It was a decent week, a little harder than normal but it turned out alright. We will continue to get rain until about the end of February then it will turn into summer.

Elder Lapitan is a zone leader as well. In a zone there is 2 zone leaders, usually they are companions, then you have district leaders underneath. In our zone there is 4 district leaders. Then you have everyone else. We have 20 missionaries in all in the Escalante zone.

As far as investigators, we didn't do so bad getting them to church. It is now getting them baptized that is the problem. James didn't come to church because his aunt didn't come. It was a sad deal but we just moved his date to Feb. 22. We went to Cleofe last night and talked to her grandpa. They were both sick so they weren't able to make it to church as well, by the way, a lot of Filipinos get sick if it gets cold because they aren't use to it. We still need to give her a new date. Junjun and Jonnel came to church. They are really good. We are just having a problem with their mother and grandmother. They say they have to wait until they are 18 years old to be baptized. That means Jonnel will have to wait 3 more years. Junjun still has to talk to his mother to see if he can but we are planning March 1 for him. Sister Jorolan is doing great. She is living with someone but they aren't married. The husband doesn't really want to get married so President Lopez is going to interview her this week to see if we can baptize her. We are praying that she will. Puricima family is doing well. We got them to realize church is important and we are talking about it is ok to be baptized again right now. Maybe next week we will get them to church. Mary Joy is good but is sure hard to get to her. We went to try and pick her up on Sunday for church but she was washing clothes. We are trying to figure out what to do with her right now.

We are struggling a little bit getting those that can be baptized to church right now but I am sure that the Lord will provide a way for us to continue to progress and baptize. This next week will be interesting. We have a training with President Lopez then Saturday and Sunday we have district conference, like stake conference. We will see what happens with our work. We will have a lot less time this week to work.

Love you all,

Elder Nielsen

PS Here is a picture of something I cooked. It is called chicken curry.

 

Wet, Wet, Wet

This was a very cold, wet week. We haven't used the electric fan all week and have been wishing we had a heater here because it has been so cold. I even broke out the heavy blanket a few times!!! I am going to die when I get there. It fills like it is the 40's here!!!

We had Mitchelyn's baptism 2 weeks ago but still not confirmed. Its been muddy and they had a celebration at their house on Sunday so she wasn't there. We were excited to get some new investigators at church this week! We got James Dino to come to church. He is a part member who's aunt is active but parents aren't. We were excited to see him there. We also had the Alverez family came. They are doing good. We just need their mom to say it is ok for them to be baptized. That might be hard because she is working in the Middle East and she said before that they have to wait until they are 18 to be baptized. The other investigators didn't come. It was a little sad but we will work for next week. Cleofe Ondoy is really good. Her grandpa is less active but she wants to be baptized. We had some good lessons with her this last week. We hope to get her to church this next weeks so she can be baptized on Feb. 22. James is on Feb. 14. If we can convince the mother of Alverez to let them get baptized, they will be on March 1. We set up a date for Sister Maet, an ivestigator that showed up to church last week, on March. 8. We hope that continues. We also working with Mary Joy to listen to us. If we see her, then we teach but if we don't, she hides from us. She is really shy because I am American. We hope that we can get rid of that so she can be prepared for baptism. We are also working with the Pericima family. We had some great lessons with them. They went to church last year but sister got sick after and couldn't walk. She said she would return to Catholic and the next day she was good. We got them to the point so that they are willing to try again to attend church. They know that Joseph Smith is a prophet and the Book of Mormon is true. We had to work on that so they knew how important it was to attend church. They are planning to come next Sunday.

This week was good when we could teach. We just had a couple of days that we could only walk around and look for teaching opportunities. Other days we were filled with teachings. It just depended on how much rain was falling.

We had a few interviews this last Sunday. We decided that we would split on Saturday so I could interview in the north of the zone and Elder Lapitan would take the south. It was a little weird but we got them done pretty quick. Hopefully next week we can do some of Friday and the rest on Sunday so we don't have to travel as much and can teach more.

That is about it for this week. I am doing well. Just very busy.

Love,

Elder Nielsen