Hola, Y'all!

So hello. It's me. 

     This week has been absolutely crazy, as you can imagine. When we arrived in Tennessee, we met President and Sister Andersen. The are really nice. And then, right away, they gave us pamphlets, and we had to place them with people. I gave mine to the woman I sat next to on the plane. Then we gather our stuff and drove to the mission home where we had training and interviews and a lot of meetings. We slept the night there, and we woke up and went to the
church and had more meetings. 

     After we had SO many meetings, we met our trainers. My trainers are really cool. Their  names are Hermana H and Hermana E! I'm in a trio which is something I didn't expect, but it is so cool. So they sent us on our way. 

     I'm serving in Antioch, Tennessee.  My MTC companion, Sister W----- went to Lebanon to be in another trio). Apparently Antioch is the greatest place for Spanish missionaries to be. We have the only Spanish Ward in the whole mission. They call it little Mexico, and it's where the majority of the Hispanics live. It's just a suburb of Nashville, and we live in a nice place. 

     The drama his week was that we almost got evicted from our one bedroom apartment because three of us can't live here. It's okay. The mission office squared it away, and we are moving to a town home very soon. 

     It has really been a good week. I feel like I learn so much everyday. We teach a lot in Spanish, and we can only do tracting in Spanish. Sometimes it's hard, but we don't knock on every door, we just knock on a door and, if they speak English, we ask if any of their neighbors speak Spanish. Then we ask them if they are interested. We take their number for the Elders in our area to call. I was so afraid that tracting in the south would be so hard. I haven't had any problems. Most people are overjoyed to speak with us. The problem is not getting into Spanish homes, the problem is getting out of them. They would love to talk your ear off all day, which is hard considering my Spanish is still a work in progress. We have Spanish-speaking people from everywhere (Honduras, Mexico, El Salvador, and Nicaragua). They all speak a little different. I usually can get most of what the Mexicans say, unless they get excited! Then all hope is lost.... Ugh!

     Sorry for the world's longest email. Just a quick a couple miracles. On Thursday we went to get a driving monitor installed on our car (not our car - we only get to use it once every other week. Other than that, we walk or ride buses). We started talking to the guy who was installing the monitor,but we weren't really being as diligent as we should in sharing the gospel. But as we
were waiting, he just came right up to us and asked us why Mormons are always so happy. So we shared some of our message and had a nice chat about his life history and invited him to
meet with the missionaries. He was so solid. He just kind of a said,"Maybe I'll join your church." So that was amazing. We gave him to the Elders though because he speaks English :( 

     Miracle #2 - Our investigator, who is truly amazing, she is 18 years old. We extended an invitation for baptism for the the end of March, and she said, "You know what? I think that's to far away. I would like to baptized on the 13th of March." She has such amazing faith. It was truly the hand of God. 

     Well this has just been a fantastic week! I really love missionary work and spreading the gospel message. It's just so amazing!

Love y'all!
Hermana Nielson

P.S. These houses are in the fanciest part of Nashville by the mission home. One of them is Taylor Swift's and one of them is Johnny Depp's.