Prov B Coming Soon!!‏

Wow okay! I feel like every week is crazy, but this one is especially so!

Okay, so Transfers happened on Tuesday, and we just got news on Saturday. I will be staying here with Hermana U------. Hermana E----- is going to Clarksville. We will be just a regular companionship (sort of), which will be so strange. The really big news is that they are splitting our area! Our area is really big. We can only literally cover a small part of it. So we are receiving two more hermanas here! One is a hermana that is almost done with her mission and was here before! And the other is a girl from Mexico who has been waiting for her visa for nine months and it will be her first transfer here. (She doesn't speak English, so...!)They will be our roommates! So now instead of three, there will be four. I'm a little worried how we will split up the area and existing investigators, but the Lord knows best. There is a lot of excitement here, and we will do
our best to execute the work. It will be an adventure for sure! I am very excited. :)

J----'s baptism did not happen on Saturday because, even though he was totally prepared, and very excited, his aunt, who is basically his mom, had to be rushed to the hospital Friday and has been in critical condition due to complications of pregnancy. So we had to postpone till next Saturday or maybe later. 
We have had a lot of appointments fall through which just allows us to see a lot of our less active friends.

Just a follow up Exchange miracle. On Exchanges, we knocked a lot of doors and talked with a lot of people. Almost a week later, on Tuesday, we saw I had put a return appointment with a address in Cochran. No idea who it was, but we went to the address at the appointed time and before we could get to the door, a lady was waiting for us and ushered us right in. She was African-American and so sweet and funny. Her name was P-------, and even though I didn't remember her, she remembered me. We taught her The Restoration (we taught in English, which is very uncommon), and it was such a amazing lesson. She was hallelujah-ing and was so interested. She was taking notes and having us repeat things so she could write it just right. She soaked it up like a sponge. When we told her the elders could bring her a Book of Mormon, she said wait and went and brought out two copies of the Book of Mormon that she had already read some of (she loved it). She even accepted a baptism date! We gave her to the elders. As we went to leave, she handed us some JW literature as she was looking for the other Book of Mormon from a box of books, and we just casually hid it behind a potted plant. He He! She was so awesome!

We are seeing so much awesomeness in the work! It's only going to multiply exponentially!
Hope everyone has a great week!

Con amor,
Hermana Nielson

P.S. This is us and J----

P.P.S  Sometimes you forget your serving in the south until you see a memorial to Rosa Parks on a bus.

Progression, Not Perfection‏

Hola!

This week was absolutely awesome! We had a little bit of a rocky week numbers-wise, but it has been one of the most productive weeks of my mission. I finally feel like we have really, truly learned how to be an effective companionship this week. Which is really unfortunate because
transfer calls come in this Saturday. The Spirit is guiding all three of us in the same direction. For example, yesterday we had a lesson with a man named O----. He is the uncle of a less active
family.  W have been teaching him, and he has been really critical and almost silly about most things. We had planned to teach the Plan of Salvation and even told our member that, but somehow it morphed into The Gospel of Jesus Christ, which ended up being exactly what he
needed. I think I might have even seen tears in his eyes saying he knows he needs to be better. I really think we can work with him to gain a testimony of the other things now. We were all in unison lead by the Spirit. We really had some awesome lessons this week!

J---- is still on date for this Saturday! Everything has been going great. He has so much faith. He just graduated high school last weekend so hopefully will have more time to read his Book of Mormon more thoroughly.

We had a ward party this last week and we had investigators come. It was for La Dia de Madres. It is celebrated on the 10th instead of the normal Mother's Day.

We had exchanges this week! They were so amazing and honestly inspired. I stayed in good old Antioch with one of the STLs, Sister Gillespie. The Spanish was hard all by my lonesome, but we made it through. We were at dinner with one of our neighbors who has been investigating with the English sisters, and she announced her baptism date! She also made corn pudding which was the bomb. 

Anyways we had a lesson with a kid named E------ who we have met a couple times. He
speaks English, and we tried to get through The Plan of Salvation and it just was not working. He has a very close relationship with the Jehovah Witnesses and had gotten a lot of info from them. Long story short, he rejected the Book of Mormon, and we dropped him, which was
hard because I'd never done. But it was so necessary. He might be ready later on. I learned so much on exchanges, and as a companionship, we came back with so much added fire for the work!

I love this work! What better way to become more like Christ?

Love y'all! Have a great week!

Hermana Nielson

P.S. I am almost done with training. On Tuesday I'm done.

Everyday When You're Walking Down the Street

Hola!

We have had such a crazy week! But first happy Mother's Day! 

The fair came to Antioch this week, so we did some fair contacting! We helped a less active family replaster their ceiling (it got us all nasty), and we got in a car crash. We celebrated Cinco de Mayo this week! Fun fact: Hispanics don't celebrate Cinco de Mayo aside from one tiny city in Mexico. 

This week was really busy. We were running all over the place. We met with a girl named A---- this week. We met her 2 weeks ago knocking doors, she is 15 and just as spunky as they come. She is home all the time with just her two little brothers. We never have met the parents. The time before we taught about the Restoration and she got so excited you would've thought her mind had literally been blown. We gave her a Book of Mormon and said she would read it in a day... maybe a
week because she wanted to soak it in. We returned and asked how reading went. She said she fought with her parents about us, and they eventually said she could still see us but not to read the book. She told us her plan to take back the book. We told her to honor her father and mother, but she insisted. Her and her siblings understand so much and want to learn. We are so excited to teach them!

J----- is still on date for the 21st! We are so excited for him. He understood the commandments and everything really well. We can just see the work going so fast here. We see people all the time who call out to us because we are members.

Today for P-day, we went back downtown again with P----, our recent convert! We were walking around when we heard a lot of screaming. We turned the corner into a swarm of people. We had accidentally walked into a open air Keith Urban concert!! We are really unsure what was happening, or why but Keith Urban was giving a free concert randomly on the street. It was awesome! But to be good obedient missionaries, we took just a couple pictures and were on way, wading through the crowds to our original destination! It was an answer to my companions
prayer! The biggest Keith urban fan ever. But that is what's great about Nashville. You can run into just about any famous person just walking around.

That was my week, it was pretty great! Lots of blessings! Hope everyone has a great week!

Love,

Hermana Nielson

P.S. We didn't listen to the concert.

P.P.S. The second is an actual literal representation of my mission.

Just Roll With It

This week was pretty awesome. We have seen all sorts of weather! Tornado warnings, crazy rain, crazy heat, humidity. Gotta love the south though.

We are doing great in Antioch. Today we were going to visit the zoo, but it was closed due to heavy rain. We were only 15 minutes from downtown, so we took to downtown on foot and explored around. It was a really fun p-day!

But now for the actually exciting news of the week! We have a baptism date! It was the most amazing thing. His name is J-----, he is 5 months in this country, and 18 years old. He is the nephew of a less active member, and he came to church last Sunday. Our first lesson with him was The Restoration. He accepted an invitation for baptism. We gave him a Book a Mormon, and when we came back on Thursday, he had read a good chunk of it. That day we taught The Plan of Salvation. He was so relieved that this life wasn't just a punishment for Adam's transgression. He asked a lot of questions just make sure he understood. We had a baptism calendar we had received the day before at Zone Conference. We set that before him and prayed to set the date. He opened his eyes and pointed at the 21st of May. We are so excited for him!

A funny experience from this week was when we were visiting A-------. Visits with her are always interesting. After one of the most difficult lessons we ever taught (i.e., eggs flying off table, her two

year old screaming for a hour and just throwing yogurt and pop and silverware everywhere, etc.), we were getting ready to leave when a lady from her church started knocking and kept
knocking and demanded to come in. So we ending up hiding in the bathroom with our ward member for 15 minutes while the anxious parishioner assessed the damage in her soul. This is my definition of opposition. It's crazy sometimes, but you just have to roll with it.

We taught a lot of formers, less actives, and a lot of people we hadn't seen for a while. It hard to see people who were once strong fall away because of a principle or two. I definitely love this work and seeing how these changes can be made through the atonement. I love seeing the miracle and the look in peoples' eyes when they figure it and and feel the Spirit. I hope everyone has a
great week!

Love,

Hermana Nielson

P.S. It was raining hard and I was posed like this.

P.P.S. We like gumbo real good