Give me Mountains to Climb‏

Family! 

Give me mountains to climb! First because churrillos is super flat and I miss my mountainous ayacucho! which was pure hill. BUt im finding my own personal mountains to climb. This was a great week full of personal trials but I am so so very grateful for them! But besides the growing experiences we had a great week!

Last tuesday we had to pick up an Hna who just finished her mission and was headed home to Nasca, we live right across the street from he mission office so we are we have to do all the favors for the asistants. So she stayed the night with us then the next day we had to take her to catch her bus home. Well it took us a while to get out the house and find a ride with all her suitcases so we got there a little late and turns out her bus was leaving right as we got there... Oops.. so we called the office and they said to try and catch another bus that wasnt as nice so we hurried and took a taxi over to the other station and as we went to buy her tickets Hna Addington realized she had forgotten the money that the office gave us to buy all her tickets, so we began scrambling for money looking in all our pockets. and came up with barely enough to pay for her ticket to get there, we bought the tickets and got her on her bus finally home. She was super cute. Then afterwards we realized we needed to head back home but we didnt have squat.. like literally we had 2 soles all together. WE were way far away from our house and had no idea how the bus routes were.. So I went over to a security guard to ask about buses and just prayed thered be a way with just 2 soles... As I talked to him out of no where appeared OBISPO JUAN! He isn't our bishop, I dont even think he is from our mission but he is super good friends with Presidente and always does favors and cooks for leadership counsel meeting so we knew him. And he just asked where ya headed Hermanas. And offered us a ride. WHAAT?! Holy smokes miracle/Tender mercy! God loves us. So he gave us a ride back to our house free, it was such a huge miracle we couldnt stop thanking him! haha.

WE worked really hard this week! This area is awesome! There are some really prepared people here and the ward is super supportive! Which just makes me feel the pressure that we gotta do soo much to use it and find those people. This is a part of presidents letter to me that I really liked...

Sister Nielsen, Bolognesi is a very special part of the Lord´s vineyard. The bishop is a man of great vision and capacity. Be a supercharged missioanary to help build Bolognesi. Be at the top of your teaching, your motivating and finding to explode the faith in Bolognesi. There is huge potential there for one with great faith! Harness all you have to make a difference there. I know you can! We love you!

I'M so grateful for this new area and we gonna see tons of miracles! THis week we taught Jesus who has a date for the 11th of april! his mom and kids are members, this was the 2nd lesson with him. he is pretty much solid. HE understands and believes everything.he is still waiting for his answer but its not slowing down his progression, he knows this is what he wants

We just have to finish all his lessons and he will be ready to go! Next we are teaching Leonardo, his mom just got baptized and she is suuuuper awesome. HE doesnt beleive in God so its been a different way of teaching him but he is willing to learn  and says he wants to believe! SO we are working hard with him. Those are the only 2 really progressing right now. 

Well I love being a missionary! I feel I've lost that greenie fire or its not as strong  but its something I've been trying to find again so finish with. BUt i loove loove looove working and serving and hope i can give everything heavenly father wants from me here in this area like president said. I'M so excited for conference next week too!!! I've never been so excited in all my life!! Hope  YOu all have a great week!!!

Love,

Herman NIelsen

ps, Ive made my decision and Its offical, my date is the 16 of june... its just easier that way. 

Zealous & Fearless‏

Family!!

AHH Im so excited for Cody! This is gonna be the longest 2 weeks of my life!

 Well this past week was super crazy. I haven't slept in like 5 days.. I feel like a zombie. We worked normal in our area monday and tuesday  we were able to have a few lessons that went super well. One of our investigators Nancy, that got baptized a while ago in a different church is doing really well! SHe always has the best questions and I just feel like she understands what we teach not just listening. We explained the plan of salvation to her and when I asked her if she felt ready to meet God she quickly said noo... Then we explained that's why we must prepare and it made me think how everyone feels so unprepared and scared to meet our heavenly Father or Jesus Christ. When it should be something we can't wait for! To finally meet and thank our savior! We should be excited to meet him, not scared. But it depends on if we are prepared. We talked a little bit about that with her and she really like it. Wednesday we had our district meeting and pday then that night we left as a zone for Lima. We all went in the same bus and it was a party haha. The seats went all the way down and made a bed. It was really nice but still didn't help, I didn't sleep much, plus everyone was puking all night long so that kept us all awake. haha it was a fun bonding experience with the zone. We got to Lima and had our meeting with Elder Waddell and his wife! We got to meet him and it was super cool. He talked about a lot of different things, I got lots of notes. I was able to learn a lot. It was nice to see all the other hermanas of Lima too! I saw Hna Galo! My mom! she dies this transfer :(  The rest of the night we just hung out in the mission office as a zone with the assitants. Then headed back that night on the bus, but one that was the complete opposite of the first one. So once again no sleep. No sleep Night #2. The rest of the week went well, we had a lesson with Pilar and we mentioned I could be transfered so when she said the closing prayer she prayed that I would be able to stay in Ayacucho Forever! haha uhhh... It was supe cute though! Then after the lesson she told us she had something to ask us, then continued to explain that in her school their PE uniform is inmodest because the shorts are too short. We explained that if it wasnt something she could control it'd be okay but that we were happy she was concerned and trying to do what is right. She is so great! haha I love her! We talked the familia Machaca this week too! All their family has returned from summer break so we were able to teach the whole family again! They are slowly getting there, I know they will join someday but it might be a patient wait. I love them so much though! Then saturday we had a lesson with a family of investagatores but this time they didn't want us to teach them they wanted us to teach their brother Oskar, he is like 27 and recently ´got sick´ were not sure what really happened but he sits in a chair all day and doesn't talk. I think he might have had some kind of brain surgery... but isn't the same now.. They didn't go into much detail just said to try to get him to talk to us. We taught him. it was kind of hard cause he couldnt talk, but he was listening. It was kind of a really akward lesson and we didn't know what to do. He said a few words to us like SI and his family got super excited. Then after we finished we said all our goodbyes Hna Peña went to shake his hand and he grabbed her hand with both of his and said ´thank you for your visit.´ His family kind of freaked out that he had spoke. It was a miracle for them and now they want us to come back and keep teaching him. It was kind of an akward situation cause we came to visit them but they don't want to hear anything now. And were not sure how we can really help Oskar in his condition like this. But what would the savior do? Were gonna keep stopping by and hopefully we can help him and his family get more interested again. It was a super cool experience but super strange too. 

Then  laaaaate saturday night we got the transfer call! (no sleep night #3) I got trasnfered!! Im now in Churillos in Lima with Hna Addington from Texas. I was really surprised I'm with a gringa again but its gonna be great!

Then sunday! It was mostly just packing, i didn't realize how much stuff I have! And I said all my goodbyes! It was sad, I'll definatly miss Frine and her family and Pilar and the familia machaca. But asi es la mission. Pilar was really upset! ¨hermanita no se vaya!¨ over and over again. Im kind of akward with goodbyes so... I just kind of hugged her and said sorry. Everyone else is pretty use to changes so they just hugged and thanked me. Then I left that night for Lima (no sleep night #4) I met my new companion and we headed to our area to get to work. we had Hna tuqurres with us because she had to wait for her companion to come, Her and I were walking around like zombies yesterday. She came with me to Lima. Then last night we picked up a few more Hnas from the office until like 10pm. so we got to bed suuuper late. Then early this morning got up at 5 to get the Hnas on the road to there new areas. (no sleep night #5 ) so yeah im still DEAD tired! But its okay. I'M super excited to be here in Churillos! Its right by the beach, we can see if from our house! Our house is suuuuper nice. they just changed and I love it! we are on the 4th floor so we have a great view. Hna Addington is super great! She works really hard! I'M so grateful to have a companion who is ready to work. This cambia that's all I want to do Work. work .work. work. Oh and I'm not in Family history! My transfer then is Zealous & Fearless! Being super dillegent and getting everything done I need to here in Churillos and just not fearing to act upon anything or talk to anyone who crossed our way. Its gonna be a great last 2 transfers here! I'M super excited! I love you all lots! And hope you have a fabulous week!

Love,

Hermana Nielsen

Happy Birthday Papanwa!!‏

Hello my dear wonderful family!!

This week was mucho mejor! In my letter to president I basically told him I was so mad about our week that we were gonna take it out on our area working. So last Monday after Pday we went to visit a few investagators. They live in this secret passageway type thing, there is like a metal door so it looks like just one house, but you walk in and there is like a little hallway with a bunch of other doors. They live at the first door and they said they were busy so we asked if there were any families we could visit that they knew, they said yeah this whole passageway is full of families and started naming off all the families that lived there. WE recieved 5 different families! So we went to the next door and they let us right in! There whole family was there and the grandparents, and they told us that that never happened so we caught them at a perfect time. MIRACLE! So that night alone we taught them all and it went great! They seem like a really great family! And we had 5 new investagators to start our week out (last week we had 0) We were so happy and so pumped and basically skipped home.

    Tuesday we had our interviews with president! It was one of the most different interviews I have ever had with president. He started out by asking how my faith was and from there just asked me a bunch of questions making me answer all of them, he hardly said anything. But it was soo cool how we were guided and how much I learned being the one talking the whole time. President has been stressing the need to interact when we teach and this was a perfect example for me that it works really well. He also started talking a little about after the mission which I didn't like, but he made some really good points and told me I had great faith :) He also gave me the question, How do we help the people we teach feel the need to repent. It was really interesting for me and that has been my focus of my studies this week. And I have learned so much! President is so inspired. Afterwards he talked to us as a zone about goals and faith and not becoming discouraged everything he said was SO PERFECT! I love that man! I just felt soo good and edified after leaving the church.

       Later that day we were walking to the church for a meeting and when I got there  I realized my plaque had fallen off. we had to wait til after the meeting and it was dark out so we tried looking but we didn't see anything. I was praying soooo hard! I know its just a plaque but it had all my stickers that each mean something or a memory of a companion and Its just something really important to me! I prayed all night and in the morning we went and ran where we walked to look for it and nothin... I was super sad. but..... Heavenly Father is so good and hears EVERY WORD! 2 days later after walking that route about 5 times looking for it everytime, my district leader called and said he had found it! 2 days later! And where he said he had found it was an area we walked past soo many times! But who cares I was just soo happy! Prayer is so real! And he DOES answer them!! Im so happy to be reunited with my plaque :)

   So back to that secret passage, we went back later this week to visit the others and turns out this secret passage is super huge! it had a corner so we couldnt really see how far it actually went! We were able to contact all 5 families and had a lesson with one of them! which went really well. We met Pavel (27) and Vanessa (20), they are sibblings and are super awesome! there house is soooo nice! It was really suprising to walk into, we haven't been able to meet there parents but they are married!! So we are teaching 3 out of the 6 families that live there! And have return appiontments with the other 3! WE call it our ´Passaje escogido´ WE are really excited to teach these families!!! so it total we had 7 new investagators! We were very happy!

     This week we are headed to Lima because Elder Waddell is coming from the 70 to talk to us. Im super excited for that! Then saturday is cambios!! I'm really not sure if I'll be going or not.. but the next time youll hear from me will be next tuesday! 

    Also I loooooove my pedometer! Its the best! Its so fun to see how much we walk and run. We walked/ran 38.6 miles this week. And 9 of those I ran. I run about 2.5 miles everyday six times per week. This week we got jipped a few excersizing days for interviews and intercambios. But yeah we walk alllot! My calves are starting to look like moms! (haha but not my pathos as adelaide would say ;) )

   WEll I love being a missionary! Its seriously the best! I love learning everyday and becoming closer to my savior and understanding what he did for me. I felt this week every time I bore my testimony I was just kept saying it over and over to them pleading them to just try it out for themselves. I LOVE THIS GOSPEL!! so so so much! its hard not to just suffocate people with my testimony of it! They gotta plant the seed themselves... but I absolutely love what I do! Hope Papanwa has a FABULOUS day!! Eat lots of ice cream for me! I LOVE YOU SO MUCH DAD! Thanks for teaching me how to be a missionary! Hope you all have the best week ever!! We´ll see where I'm at the next time I talk to you! LOVE YOU GUYS!!

Love,

Hermana Nielsen

   

FEAR NO MAN!‏

FAmily!!!!

Im sooo glad you got to meet Hna Botts family!! That makes me soo happy! Arent they just the best! I'm so jealous you got to meet them for real! I only met them through skype but I feel like I know them very well already! Thats soo fun!! We´ll all have to go back in July for Hna Botts homecoming :) And Im glad you enjoyed the package! I put a lot of time and effort squeezing everything in. I hope everyone liked what they got! That was soo nice of the Botts to bring that back for you guys :) Now I'll have to find the picture of Hna Bott and I wearing the jerseys of the countries where our Dads served that I've been saving to send. ha. And I got your package too! It was perfect! definitely a sugar feast but I've shared it with everyone!

Well on a different note, this last week easily could have been one of the worst weeks of my entire mission. But as Amber always tells me there is no such things as a bad week just a growing week. So lets just say I grew a TON this week. Especially emotionally. and I had to look a little deeper to see all the good that happened too.

  So this week I learned that Satan works really really really really really hard to make sure people do not get to the temple. I won't go into a ton of details but it was scary how literally I could feel satan working against us. That power is real. And my companion woke up one night and told me about a scary dream she had about him just laughing at us. But my testimony of the temple was 10x strengthened just from the burden I could literally feel trying to get everyone there. We had 16 people as of wednesday who were ready to go to the temple, we were having contact daily with them to make sure everything was good and they were excited. So that night we called and we lost 13. Almost all due to not passing their interview to recieve a recomend. So there is nothin we can do about that. It was call after call and everyone just dropped. So I was kind of getting really stressed. Then thursday morning Pilar called and said her parents said she had to work with them this weekend. They were all for it and had given her money for it and everything up until this point. I wasnt too worried because this ALWAYS happens, something always comes up but we always make it work out. We did our stop drop and pray, believing everything would work out. Then that same morning the Elders called us and said they had 4 more who could go that weren't orginally on our list. SO we were super excited! That night they got their interviews and passed, we figured everything out with the money and they were set! We went to bed very peaceful. Then friday came. We first went to buy the tickets for them but one was only 16 and we didnt realize she had to have a paper noterized that she could travel alone with her sister. So we called the Elders and they said they take care of it. Meanwhile we were calling Pilar every 5 minutes trying to find new ideas so she could go. At about 6pm (our bus left at 9) the elders called us and said the two sisters wouldn't be able to go, the mom was working and there was no one else. AND that the other two, her husband changed his mind at the last minute and said she couldn't go. And Pilar wasn't looking too great either. So we only had 1 who would be able to go at this point. I didn't even know what to do. I was so frustrated. we got on the bus to head to our house to get our stuff, I had been praying basically all day long just for some kind of miracle with all of them but nothin. My throat was burning so bad, I didn't cry but I was so upset I wanted too. My companion was. We were both just so upset and disapointed. we road back in pure silence cause we didn't want to say anything. On the bus I just kept thinking what did we do wrong, what more could we have done, why didn't it all work out like all the other times? why did satan win? I was sooo upset. More then my entire mission. I was embarrassed to even go. I just wanted to cancel the whole thing. But then I got thinking and I told Hna Peña we had to be grateful for the one person we had. When we got her numbers I realized she had 11 names to bring so that also made me very happy. It may have only been one person but it was 11 souls, 12 including hers that it would benifit. So before we left the house to head to the bus we said a prayer and just thanked Heavenly Father for  the one person we did have and the 11 names she would do. Oh and the one person was Diana Roa. I dont know if I explained this all that much from the last trip but she was the one that fell through 5 minutes before we left and we already bought her ticket. I'm sure Hna Bott is just laughing at the irony of it all. haha yes Diana was the only one who didn't fall through this time. 

But it ended up being a great experience. Lima was able to bring a lot because all our spots were open so I just had to tell myself heavenly father sees the big picture. maybe he had to let satan win this time because he sees the big picture of what needed to happen that we won't ever see. I'm just trying to trust that I did all that I could and that this was his plan. Diana had a great experience and I was really happy for her. I got to know her a lot better. And that night after everything we got to go through a session in the temple and it was exactly what I needed. I felt peace about everything and I really needed that. This week I studied a lot about not fearing. I don't have time to share more but FEAR NO MAN! not even satan. I felt very protected in the temple. He can't reach us there. But we also can never fear him. We are on the team that WINS!! in the end.

I love you all soo much! See the good in everything!! 

Love

Hermana Nielsen

Missionary March MADDNESS!‏

FAmily!!

Well I honestly only have a few things on my list of things to tell ya this week, so this may be a little short. It was honestly just a normal week. We worked hard, and found 3 new investagators! One of which is a family and she is MARRIED!! Her name is Nancy. She had just been baptised in another church 2 weeks earlier but said she did not feel good about it and cried but not from being happy. She mentioned how she really wants to find the truth and has been to alot of different churchs and doesnt really like any of them. She kind of told us she had given up and just didnt want to be apart of any of them. All of this just made us sooo excited because we have allll her answers!! Im really excited to go back and teach her this week with her whole family. She is soo prepared! Whether she knows it or not. 

Saturday we had an Unizona with President. It was really good. He talked alot about teaching lesson 1 but it was so interesting in all the practices we did no one could really stick to that because we kept going off thier needs. Which always lead to the doctrine of christ. So then he talked alot about that. It was sooo good! Its like I understand and know the doctrine but everytime I study it or learn about it there is always room for it to sink just a little bit deeper. I love it. Its sooo true. Faith, Repentance, baptism, the holy ghost and enduring to the end are key to EVERYTHING! How lucky that I am that that happens to be my purpose as a missionary! :)

Next PILAR GOT BAPTIZED!! It actually ended up being Sunday because of stake conference but it was so great! She was soo happy. and we had tons of support from the ward. It was just the best day ever! The spirit was really strong throughout the entire baptism. And we did the thing like Whitneys baptism where everyone wrote a note to her while she was changing she really liked that :) I LOVE HER SOO MUCH! She is just sooo great!!

Well I cant believe its already march! Yikes! This is gonna be a crazy month of miracles!! Annnd this saturday we have our temple trip so we are gonna be crazy busy all week getting everything ready. These weeks stress me out soo much. ha But its gonna be great. and Pilar is going!!! Im so excited for her!! 

Well I love you alll lots lots! Im sorry about the loss Cody, but its okay. There are better things to win in life :) Hope you all have a great week! I LOOOOVE BEING A MISSIONARY!!  

Love,

Hermana Nielsen