ANNNNNDDD... wait. What are you doing here??

December 14, 2015

HI fam!!!

So dudududuDA!!! I am still here in Flores. SO meaning I will have 6 months here. Lesson of the week? DON'T PREEMPT THINGS. haha I was soo convinced that I was leaving. SO convinced in fact that I said goodbye to everyone and their dog! Usually we get the signal Monday afternoon to see if there's changes or not in our area.... but they didn't call us.... and didn't call us. So I was like oh well.... It's obvious that I'm leaving. But there were tons of problems (there was a bus strike of something) sooo I said goodbye.... ¨¨aw Hermana... I'm gunna miss you so much.... aw presidente.... you have been so great. I'll make sure and leave all my dats [short for details?] with Hna Craner.¨¨ I even went to dear little old Hermana Angela. She can't really hear very well soooo we just left it at ¨¨Yes Hermana, I'm leaving and going home. Well I better go catch my flight.¨¨ Cause everything else was confusing her. SO - it was late.... AND STILL NO CALL. Soooo I wrote 30 good bye pictures with my email and all that jazz. 30. I was saying goodbye to my loved companion. Ok so there's changes [transfers] in 6 hours or so. I don't want to admit it but OBVIOUSLY I'm leaving. ANDDDDD 11:52

RING RING

Hello? Hermana Nelson?? GOOD NEWS! you don't have changes!!! After all the screams and shouts for joys were done, we close our letters and decided to leave them for the next month... and then we realized. Oh shoot. How do we explain this one?

So this week was a lot of.... yeah I know. I'm still here. Hi, yep, I know, sorry I'm still here. People would stop me in the street and ask me what happened. Everything down to the president of the rama's wife announcing how funny she thought it was in front of the whole church congregation that I said goodbye to EVERYONE and I was still there.

But the real kicker was going back to Hna Angela. ¨¨Hi hermana. Yeah looks like they uhhhh well Il'l be staying here for a bit longer.¨¨

¨¨Oh hermana Nelson I was thinking about you last night how you were probably with your family and enjoying your time¨¨ BUT I GUESS NOT! I guess they just forgot to book your flight and now you're stuck here for a bit longer!! hahahaha

So saludos from Flores!!! I'll be here for a bit longer :)

All the JOY!!!

December 7th, 2015

Hi family!! We have seen so many miracles this week!! 

So Hna Craner's goal and mine have been to have 10 good solid lessons a day. What does that mean? We are literally RUNNING from cita to cita [appointment to appointment]. But we started the week wanting to find a lot of new investigators so we went up started up in Las Mercedes. Its sooo pretty up there (I'll have to show you videos when I get home!) But on Saturday we had made a few contacts up there so we went back to them all and found their family, and let's just put it this way: The 90 year old grandpa.... had 14 kids. and they had a lot of kids.... who had a lot of kids.... annnnd a lot of them still live up there in Las Mercedes. So we just make it from one house to the next. Apparently the missionaries haven't passed by in at least 14 years to this family (actually it could be more....  we can't figure out if the ¨pastors that passed¨ were Elders or really just pastors. hahaha) 

But one of them, his name is Jose Almilkar. And dud ud dudududuDA he's married!!!! And the cutest old man ever... (well he's the son of the 90 year old grandpa sooo middle age :)) Our first meeting all he wanted to understand was the apostasy and he was so excited to receive a Book of Mormon! And the 2nd appt went something like this... ¨Hermanas... I've been thinking... I think we should just get started with the commandments. Cause if what you are telling me is true, I gotta start living them starting now! So what's the first one.... what's the most important one.... how many even are there!¨ haha we got so excited I think we just flooded his brain for informacion [information]. but then we slowed down a little and started one by one. Well first things first Hermano... You gotta pray, read and go to church. The first most important commandment is to love God. And when you love God you are literally willing to do whatever he asks of you. He told us that he was going to pray and we went back that Saturday. 

He was talking out side his house to his dad. But he just went straight inside to pull out a chair for us to sit down. He started off with. Hermanas.... I'm not sure if I can come to Stake conference tomorrow. My boss told me that if there's good sun I have to go harvest the beans. So hermanas just pray that there's rain and clouds!! But then he got scared.

 ¨If I don't come to church tomorrow.... will you still come back and visit me? I can't do this by myself hermanas!¨ 

Yes hermano. We´ll be here. But most importantly.... we'll see you at church tomorrow!!

So sunday morning came... AND THERE WERE ONLY CLOUDS TO BE SEEN! And since he doesn't have a phone we couldn't call him to verify but we were standing in the carretera [highway] hoping that he would come. (We were all waiting by the highway cause he were going to get on a prepaid bus to go to Comayagua to go to Stake Conference... which was awesome by the way!!) When all the sudden we see someone on their bike making their way down the side of the highway. ¨¨Hermanas! I'm here! The bus wasn't coming in time and you know what I say... you gotta be punctual!¨ Apparently he was sitting waiting for the bus (but since they aren't always that dependable) he got sacred that he was going to miss it ¨¨ SO I ran back and got my bike... and now I'm here!¨¨ Lets just say it's not that close to the building. But he felt the DESIRE to go and so he hopped on his bike and put his FAITH in God.

Stake conference was SO GOOD!!! Elder Alonzo came from the seventy! And the spirit was SO strong there! The basis was.... sharing the Gospel isn't hard work... it's not tarea (homework?) either... Sharing the gospel is a JOY.

 And I'm going to share it because I KNOW IT IS TRUE. I HAVE A TESTIMONY OF THE GOSPEL so why wouldn't I want to shout it from the rooftops? It's a blessing that each of us can have in our lives if we allow it to enter. I mean you haven't heard about the fact that a prophet of God had the awesome opportunity to uncover all the registers from all the prophets of old here in the Americas and put it all together and from that we have ANOTHER testament of Jesus Christ. A book that has ALL the answers for EVERYTHING that we could ask for. And we have this book through PROPHETS that have been called of GOD to lead and guide us in these latter days? And TODAY we have the WAY we can return to live with God again? Who would want to reject that message? Sadly.... there are people who do.... but that's why we just gotta keeping helping them realize all the JOY the Gospel of Jesus Christ brings!

I love you all!! Have the best week ever! And remember this season to GIVE THANKS for the JOY you have in your life :)

Hermana Nelson

PS - the foto below is of Hna Angela.... remember the Hermana who was so sick and we all thought that was close to death. She was the one who couldn't bear the thought of not paying her tithing one fast Sunday and it fell out of her hymnbook. She is feeling a lot better and even came to church last week. I love her so much!

And hermana Doña Lidia... we love her too :)

some more that I love!!!

some people I love here in Flores :)

some people I love here in Flores :)

some more that I love!!!

some more that I love!!!

we made PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES!!

The district!

BUGS BUGS BUGS

November 30, 2015

HELLO!!! Happy thanks giving to all! I hope you had the best time!! I'm so grateful for all of you in my life!

So this week flew by again but really though.... I don't know where the time goes! But this time I'm learning to love my fellow creatures.... As in bugs, mice, more bugs, mosquitoes, and other sorts of BUGS. They just seem to be getting in the way of things here and there! 

1 We were sitting in a big family home evening with a bunch of ward members and less actives.... when all of a sudden everyone starts yelling and my companion slaps me in the face. Apparently there was a HUGE mosquito... Like probably the size of my fist (Or so it seemed) on my cheek. So for the people that didn't see it on my face we had to try to explain in Spanish just why my lovely (other gringa) companion has just slapped me...

2 I was really getting into my personal study on Tuesday and minding my own business just to sigh... and inhale a fly.

3 We were teaching an Hermana and we were getting to a really spiritual part of the lesson when I take a breath to start sharing the first vision when.... I inhaled a bug and start choking.... El espiritu ya se fue... jaja [The spirit left - ha ha]

4 Hey dad I killed my fist rat here on the mission! It was the grossest thing ever. But we were starving casue it had eaten all of our food.... even down to the pancake mix!!

5 And my personal favorite: I ate Gizzard and Chicken Foot. But one of the counselors in the stake had made it for us so he really wanted to see if we liked it. So he took a seat right in front of his to watch us eat it... And stayed not saying anything the whole time.... just watching our expressions. So we had to eat all of it... down to the very bone! But it wasn't too bad!! haha

I realized that I never really explained Flores where I'm serving. Its a small town. Like a pretty small town. Ya know that one town in the middle of the free way that's known just for their gas station? Yeah, that's us!! The middle of the town is the highway and the biggest landmark is the tool shop. The church is a little white house off of the side of the freeway. The people and the members are so good here!! But I guess the nice thing about this country is that everyone is raised with the idea if you reject the missionaries you'll be condemned so everyone lets us in (I mean not that they listen every time) but it's so nice to be able to teach all the time. Most people don't really leave their houses. I mean the only reason you need to is if you have to go to the super market that's about 30 minutes away in bus (In Comayagua)... But if not they just send their kids across the street to the closest pulperia (o sea [in other words] the little food shop that people sell out of their houses from!) I love it here so much but cambios [transfers] are next week meaning I'll most likely be leaving! but the work goes on!!

I hope you guys had the best Thanksgiving ever! I'm so lucky to be here on my mission and I love you all. Remember that God loves you and has a plan for each one of us!

Have the best week!!

Hermana Nelson

Pictures.... We saved up for like a month for that cheesecake and let me tell you it was SO WORTH IT.

And our Thanksgiving dinner (a few days late) We ate outside so we could eat with the elders who so nicely brought the meat! haha

SOY FUERTE!

November 23, 2015

Hi fam!!

This week was great! A lot of it passed a little slow. My companion got the round 2 symptoms of Chickenguya and so we had to walk a lot slower in the streets and rest a little bit more. But God has been helping us get along.

We have been putting the family home evenings in practice and they are going great!! We have already had 2 of them and people are coming!! Between this and the primary programs the asistence [attendance] went up 20 people this week!!! We're gunna see Flores blossom (heh. get it?) This Saturday was so good!! Remember that family that gave us all of their book back to us and told us that they didn't want to come back to church because of all the comments?? THEY CAME!!! We hadn't passed by for about 2 weeks but we decided to drop off an invitation to them that same morning. And later that night they made the trek all the way down to Hna Yocondas house to come!! And same with her brother and his family!! So we'll be dando un poco de seguimiento con ellos!! starting with somehow giving back their book of mormons :)

Os we have been teaching Hermanita Iris for a little over a month now. She's 17 years old and has a bunch of health problems. Everything was going great but then suddenly we weren't able to find her for a week or so. We finally found her and had a lesson with her and her primo the other day and we had found out that she was invited to a birthday party and fell into temptation. Her heart was broken and she was scared what we were going to say to her so she had been avoiding us for the last few days. But she explained the whole situation to us and at the end she just told us.... 

¨¨Hermanas. I just can't. Satan is so strong and I can't handle the temptations that keep coming.¨¨ 

  ¨¨Yeah I mean its true - Satan is strong. But ya wanna know who's stronger?? YOU ARE!... You are so much stronger than whatever Satan has in store for you. Because you have a body and he doesn't. His WHOLE GOAL is to bring you down!! So who is stronger??¨¨ 

¨¨ I AM!!¨¨ 

¨¨What are you?¨¨

¨¨ SOY FUERTE.!!¨¨  [I am strong]

And yes we are! (you could say all the years in Young Womens did me well!! WE chanted it for a couple more minutes just to make sure she got it ;)

 But yes we are strong. With God's help we can do anything and as His children we have the divine potential to do all things.

LOVE YOU! Hermana Nelson

Love your trials

November 16, 2015

Hi fam!! This week was so great!

We had intercambios [exchanges] with the hermanas in Comayagua (my old area) but this time I didn't go over there... I stayed in Flores withhhhhhh Hermana Hernandez!! She was my 3rd companion! It is so much fun to go on interchanges again to see how much we have both learned! haha When we were together she had just gotten out of her training and I had one change out of training and then I was with her! She's so cute!

This week was also Zone Meeting so we were in charge of a portion of the meeting so Hermana Craner and I joined our capcitations [?] together and just made it one big one! When elder Duncan was here he talked alot about our vision and our potential as missionaries. How many people we can really teach and encourages us to be teaching shorter more powerful lessons. Get there, feel the spirit, then get out. So Hermana Craner and I have been trying that a lot this week and our lessons have changed completely! It's the coolest thing! So we capacitated on how really we can use our time better and get the spirit in our lesson right away. It was super cool. There's about 12 companionships in our zone so we did a practice when the missionaries who were teaching had to close their eyes and hold their hand out. Every time they felt the marker on their hand they needed to talk and teach and once it left their hand they had to stop and their companion had to pick up where they were. So there were 2 people teaching, 1 missionary changing the marker from hand to hand every 10 seconds and the other missionary was an investigator. We really needed to focus on what our companion was saying and what the spirit was testifying for us to teach. 

If we can focus on what we do every half hour of the day our day will change... we will be able to see more miracles. and with more miracles on a day to day basis... we start to see things changing in our area and all the fruits to come out! Our mission is made up of our everyday decisions.

This week we presented a plan to the ward council in how to help the branch better. We did something similar to this in Talanga when I was there. What we're going to do is start family home evenings in each area of the branch. We split the area into 3 different sectors (with leaders in each sector) and each Wednesday and Saturday we're going to have FHE in the houses of the members. But we really want to focus on the less actives so they can get animated [excited] to come back to church. So like 2 days before each FHE were going to do divisions with the members to hit up every single less active (trust me... there's a lot) to personally invite them! Then once they come to FHE there's going to be a member in charge of inviting them to church and then going to go pick them up on Sunday morning! Hopefully it works! We have a big vision for this!!

This week we went to a menos activos [less active] house really far away. It is so sad to see people that you know had such strong testimonies of the gospel to fall away. Aunque [even though] they still know that it is all true they can't see past the day to day trials. We talked with a family all the way out in San Nicholas and the hermano was just angry with God. He had so many challenges but he was so mad that God had given all of them to him. He couldn't get past the fact that, well... trials are the only way that we grow. We won't just wake up in 3 years and be a different person if you didn't try and put your effort in each day. We have to be tried. But then with all the difficulty it blinds us from our vision of who God wants us to be. So love the trials. Its just God helping us :)

TRIP TO TEGUC!

November 9, 2015

HI FAM!!!! This wee as soooo good!!

Soooo this week was a bit of an adventure. We had a big meeting with Elder Duncan from the Central America Presidency it was soooo good!! So the first day on thursday was with the whole mission and theon friday we had consejo de leaders with him!! Soooo drum roll.... I sepnt my very first night in the City! I guess you could call me a pueblo (or smaller than pueblo) girl! haha but they didnt wasnt us traveling all the way back to our areas and then waking up bright and early in the morning again so we stayed over in the house in Roble oeste... the Sister training leaders house. It as so NICE!! And had a hot shower.... so heres to changes to the city one day ;) haha no but it was so great! We did know what to do on thursdaynight.... there was too many of us too go on splits so we went out to dinner... and still contacted people! haha 

But it was seriously soooo good!! We learned so much from Elder Duncan! He made us be able to see our vision better in what we could do and the things we could accomplish! The mission isnt for us... its for the Lord.

This week I learned a lot about conversion but really true conversion. There is a little old lady in our brach that we usually try to visit every week but this last little bit she has been sick. She lives a lone and the branch presidente went over this last week to find her super sick and rushed her to the hospital. A few days later we wont over to make sure that she was ok but this time she didnt have any energy to greet us and could barely crack a smile. Her daughter said that she was really happy to see us (which she always is... she is always waving her hands in her air and telling us how much she loves us) but this time was a little different. She hasnt been eating and she cant hear very well so we just took the time to sing her a few songs. In the middle of How great thou art... a little tithing slip fell out of the hymn book. I asked what it was and she told me that it was Hermana Angelas tithing. She couldnt quite make it to church (cause she cant even get out of her bed) But it was fast sunday. She couldnt even miss one months worth of tithing cause she knows the blessing it brings. The week before she was weeping casue she could muster enough energy to get out of bed so she couldnt make the ward temple trip. This lady is seriously my hero. She gets it. She understands ALL the blessings that are in store for us if we just obey. I couldnt stop crying the rest of the time we were singing casue were not sure when shell be going to the other side... but she still has her faith to pay her tithing.

Love you all.

Hermana Nelson

All the Sister training leaders at consejo!!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

November 2, 2015

HI FAMILY!!!!

This week is great!! the first week of changes and...... drumroll.... Im still here in flores and my companion is HERMANA CRANER!!! We miss Hermana Niu BUT We LOVE hermana Craner a whole lot. She has a change more than me and this week we have already seen so many great things happen!!

This week Iris came to church. she is a 17 year old girl... the cousin of a less active (who is now coming back to shurch woo!!) When we frist contacted her all she wanted to say was how she doesnt think taht it is the true chruch and that she doesnt really want to ¨change her religion¨ but God works in mysterious ways. the nex time we came back she was the one that asked US for a Book of Mormon and she asked US if she could be baptized! Then she came to english class and the to Church! She loved it and spent the rest of our sunday lesson telling us everything that she learned and how she is going to study for next week!! And drumroll.... how much she wants to go on a mission. We love her :)

This week we learned a lot about agency. We have to remember that agency is a gift from God and to be able to choose, whteher it be good or evil, it is our right. So when the people welcome us in they are choosing to Love God and come unto Christ and welcome the light back into their lives. but sadly enough, that also means that a lot of poeple use their agency to reject us. Ya know. As much as we preach and follow the spirit.... if the people reallllly dont want to be a mormon.... they will find a way... well, to not become Mormon. Its as simple as that. Do we love them? Yes. A lot. And we hope that one day they will use thier agency to follow chirst and so that one day they can live with God.

So this week our golden family that we had started working on getting baptized handed back every book and pamphlet that we had ever given them about the gospel. They had started hearing a lot of comments from people and about 2 weeks ago... the comments were nothing to them. The hermano would jsut look at his wife and be like...¨¨ Honey. We gotta be strong. We cant listen to these comments. Satan jsut wants to get to us.¨¨ but sometimes... becasue God has given us weaknesses, we fall a little bit. On thursday they announced that they had just dropped coffee and jamas are going to drink it. he had called the lawyer so they could get started on thier papers and they were starting to memorize scripture masteries. she as even tell me about what she was going to wear to church that sunday. But Satan sometimes just sneaks his way in without us even realizing it. We show up to their house on Saturday night. We had planned a huge FHE with the block in their house with all their family memebers that lived near but when we walked in there was just a stack of books and the hermano wasnt there... he was hiding in the back room. She started telling us about all the comments taht she had heard and that she didnt feel good at all so couldnt keep going. It was very contenious at first but we started with a prayer.... and this is how it went....

I can tell you that the spirit is real. and when we follow the spirit it will lead up to say exactly what we need to say. We started talking about true conversion and about tesimonies. I shared my personal experience on how I knew and I came to know. We shared all about how we came to know... and reminded them of how they felt at the moment they knew. Hermana.... it was never easy for Christ either..... he asked God to pass this cup from him... but what did he end with? Not my will... but thine be done. If Chirst paid for ALL of our sins and overcame death so that we can live with God, I can tell you. That was not easy for Him. But he did it. casue it was Gods will. If he can do that, we can do whatever trials that come in our path. cAsue were not here to do what we want. Were here to follow Chirst and do everything according to the will of the the Father.

There was a silence for a moment or two and she just looked at us and handed all the books back and told us to have a good night.

So my invitation is to do God´s will. He can always see the bigger picture so sometimes we may not understand. but we do it anyway because we love him.

I hope you have the best week!!

Hermana neslon