Humility or Humidity?

Hola y'all!!

The answer to the question is both, but one we need and the other we don'tand both are very hard to have. If you can't tell, it has been a very humid week! I hear it will only get more humid, I can't imagine
it cause I already feel constantly wet, and the windows of our apartment fog up from the outside. Other than the humidity, we had a great week! We had some really great lessons. We also met with lots of less actives. Recently, we missionaries (the 6 of us in our ward) have been working on a ward mission plan for the ward. It involves lots of different things, but one leg of it is less actives and member visits. We really feel as the whole ward works together, we can reach our goals. We pitched it and try to re-implement other things that have worked in the past for the ward. We hope to excite the ward members. If we can, we can accomplish so much!

Life as a missionary is always exciting and never boring. We find people, hear stories, help people, introduce our members to chili dogs. I couldn't even tell you all that happens in one week. The internet isn't big enough to send an email that large.

I do want to share a story from this week. After we visited a member who just had a baby, we didn't have anything to do and we prayed. We then decided to visit less actives. I remembered a lady whose door we had knocked on my very first day but never spoke to. We some how found this house and knocked on the door and she was home. We talked with her and found out she had been less active since she came here. The elders found her knocking doors like 6 months ago, and we found her again this week. Her three boys and husband were there, and they know absolutely nothing about the church. We helped them download the gospel library app and gave a lesson and a Book of Mormon to her 13 yr old son. We set up an FHE for 2 weeks.

We are teaching some really wonderful people. My spiritual thought is something I learned this week about progression. Spiritual progression is the essence of happiness. As we live the gospel righteously, we will always have progression. We are spiritual beings and should be able to progress to feel the Spirit more and more each day. This is why the celestial kingdom will be so wonderful because there will always be opportunities to progress further. As we are humble, we let the progression happen in the Lord's way if we accept his will!

I sure do love y'all!
Tengan un buen Semana!

Con amor,
Hermana Nielson

P.S. Our favorite members got married!

Exchanges

Hola familia!

Hope everyone is doing well! We had a very crazy week this week. We extended 6 brand new baptism invites and re-extended others. We don't have any dates yet, but we are getting really close. 

Hope Father's Day was great! Father's Day in our ward had very few people in church on Sunday and between all three sets of missionaries we had 0 investigators :(. But big news! K------ and G------- have been coming to church every week since girl's camp, They are officially active members! Their mom is in the process of finding a new job with the help of the Stake, and the whole family came to church yesterday. I love them so much!  

We have been doing really well. J----'s aunt had her baby 2 months early, but the baby is doing well, so that was a huge blessing.  We have a lesson tonight with P----- and O------. Hopefully we will set a baptism date. We met them knocking on trailer doors at night. They have a lot of questions and a lot of faith. I am so excited to be here at this time. 

We are working a lot with the Ward Council for more missionary focused activities. We met with J--- and K----- twice this week. We have met with them since I've been here, but we weren't able to see him for a month because he was having marriage problems and wanting to quit. This time, when we met with them, it was completely turned around! They looked completely in love. The only thing that's changed is their prayers
together. It's such a turn! They are progressing so well. We invited them to a ward activity last Saturday. They said they couldn't go so we didn't go. Well, they ended up going and the theme of the activity was based around carne asada. They are vegatarians...... So it wasn't super fun for them, but they drank horchata and had some fun talking with people. I just feel like everyone is progressing. Providencia has big things in store for it!

Also, we went on exchanges this week! I went to Green Hills and spoke English! It was so crazy fun! We had a lesson with a man named Boomer. He is working in a doctorate in philosophy. He had some very awesome
questions, and we felt he really wanted to know the answers. We taught a lot of people in English so that was awesome! 

Not a lot of news this week, but things are moving!

I love you all so much!
Hermana Nielson


P.S. These are last week's P-Day adventures.

Piggly Wiggly

This week has been super awesome! We received a lot of guidance this week! We have a couple new investigators, and lots of people said they would come to church with our regulars. It looked like we would have 7 investigators. Well, we only had two regulars come which was disheartening. This next week, we will more fully help them prepare to come! 

One of our investigators, L---, who is just so shy, said he got all the way to church and got too scared to call us and have us come outside and get him. So he called us on his way home to tell us he was scared. They all have so much potential, it's just the digging to get to the potential. 

Also it was the CMA awards this week, so everything has been a little crazy and loco because there were so many  people in the Nashville area. Riding the bus through downtown took more time than usual. 
We went knocking in a part our new area and after knocking and meeting some nice people for like three hours, we ran into some members who attend a different ward. Then, we found out we had mistakenly been given a part of another zones area.... We then decided to hike about 2 miles back to the bus, and we saw two piggly wiggly's which is a southern grocery store chain which is pretty old fashioned. The whole area was pretty depressed; pretty red light.  It was a long trek back home. 

We also met a lady named M---- this week. D----, a young recent convert in our ward (who wants to serve a mission), was out knocking doors with us, and she charged up to this lady and introduced herself. We got invited in and had an awesome lesson! D---- is so ready for a mission. 

Also, another awesome thing is that M---- stopped drinking coffee! She hasn't had any for 6 days, and she says she doesn't need it anymore! This is her last main (physical) obstacle, and she is ready for baptism. But she must choose her own dates because she won't keep any of ours. 

Slow steady wins the race. We are really working! We have exchanges this week and we are very excited! I love y'all so much!

Les quiero!!!!
Hermana Nielson

Understanding

We had a great week this week! We reached almost everyone of our goals. Still struggling with having people commit to baptism, but we have some people praying about dates and we are too!  We are still working with J----- but there still are family problems there. We met with a lot of people this week! We ran into some less actives knocking doors! We knocked a lot this week, and met some awesome people because of it! 
It's starting to heat up here, with the humidity. Eww.

Here is a picture of our Zone: 

We had some really amazing lessons this week too. One was after Zone Conference with a man named D----- who was a referral from a month ago and finally got back to us. We had a awesome lesson; very in depth. He has a lot of beliefs that correspond with LDS doctrine. And the best part of the lesson was when we were talking about Jesus' life on earth and the Holy Ghost and receiving revelation. He was telling us about a recurring dream he has which is the only dream he's had that hasn't come true. In the dream, he said Jesus comes to him in a shaft of light and teaches him how everything can be okay in the end. Sounds familiar, right? So right after that, we share The First Vison with him, and he just grabbed the pamphlet and got so excited because this is what was in his dream. It was very amazing seeing how the Lord prepares people. I have such a
testimony of that, that the Lord prepares people in his time, not in ours. 

Kind of like a father/son pair we are teaching named F------ and A-----. F----- just got here from El Salvador a week ago. He met missionaries there but didn't have to much interest and was referred by his sister-in-law who is a less active member. He has been prepared to receive the gospel now. He is amazing! People are appearing everywhere. We are doing our best to help them progress!

Nothing to exciting has happened other than that, but really everyday is something different. Something I noticed is a lot of people tell us their personal feelings about a piece of doctrine, and it's what we believe. When people are close to God they receive revelation!

Oh yes, and the lady I met on exchanges that we taught the restoration too and referred to the elders? She is getting baptized very soon! Yay!

I love y'all! Hope y'all have a great week!

Love,
Hermana Nielson

P.S. These are the new hermanas who live with us (we keep them in the back seat! :)).

Miracles Come in Twos

It is a beautiful in Nashville Tennessee! This transfer has been a interesting change, but I think it will be pretty good. Hermana U------ have been working really hard, and we did a lot of finding! J----- is still on target for baptism. His aunt is still in the hospital, but after a long trial the baby is doing better and the doctor thinks she should be out in a few days!

We now have two roommates! Hermana S----- is from Coahuila, Mexico, and she is just the cutest thing! Hermana L------ is from Utah, and she is so kind and thoughtful. I had some apprehension about how we might divide the area. But I was able to see the hand of the Lord work through a Christ-centered council. So gathered with the elders, the bishop, and ward mission leader and had a council. The bishop began with a analogy about rolling dice. I was astounded he would even consider that (but then I realized it was a analogy that was hard to catch in Spanish). We prayed and started discussing. Just like we had rolled dice, everything fell right into place. It was truly amazing.

We have been doing pretty good this week! We had a lot of appointments fall through, but that just made us very available to find more people. On Wednesday, I had my first experience riding bikes. I got my skirt caught in the spokes and almost flew over the handle bars, but all in all it went well. 
On Wednesday, we were on the other side of town at about 8:45pm, and the bus schedule was all messed up. We missed the final bus of the night, and we were worried. But we were on bikes and decided we would just ride all the way home. It might take us a while, but we could make it. We decided to pray. And as started to prepare to ride home,  another bus showed up. It was awesome. We have had so many things like that is week. Tender mercies of the Lord. We have been really busy. We have met some amazing people!

Something I've been thinking about lately is following the Spirit. Even some of the closest friend of President Monson say he follows the Spirit when he gets a prompting. I think that is a wonderful compliment for such a devoted prophet of the Lord. I want to live in such a way someone could say that about me someday. I love missionary work. I honestly cannot think of anything so sweet than to follow where the Spirit leads. Words of one of my favorite hymns perfectly illustrates this:

Lead, kindly Light, amid th’encircling gloom;

Lead thou me on!

The night is dark, and I am far from home;

Lead thou me on!

Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see

The distant scene--one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor pray’d that thou

Shouldst lead me on.

I loved to choose and see my path; but now,

Lead thou me on!

I hope everyone has a great week!

Love,
Hermana Nielson