I'm not drowning

Hi fam! Don't worry, I'm safe and okay! None of the flooding has hit our area....I actually had no idea what was going on until I read your emails.

We have been traveling all day today-4 hours in a bus just might kill me over. We went to Asuncion to do Migrations to make sure my companion can still make it home in 2 weeks. It takes us about 2 hours to get to the mission office and then we had to ride in a taxi to the migrations office and back and it's been a looooong day. We also have to ride a bus for 30 minutes every pday to email so that's why I took so long.

The past couple of days have been kind of overwhelming! It was so so fun and good to talk to everybody on Christmas-seriously it meant a lot to me to hear the voices of the people I love so much (my screen was black after the first 10 minutes but igual no mas jajaja).

After the Christmas festivities we've just tried working really hard. We've had a lot of random things going on this transfer so we haven't had a whole lot of time to work every day which is hard but we are doing the best we can! When we were in the offices today our Mission President asked if my comp and I could talk to him for a minute. Our branch is really struggling right now-the church attendance has dropped about 50 people in the last 2 months and there is no priesthood help, it's really hard! But President Wilson talked to us about things we could change and how he can help us because mission presidents are over districts and branches so it's really nice to know that he's concerned and willing to help. He asked me if I knew the area well and was going to be okay to know how to work with everything because my comp is leaving in 2 weeks, I was like "uhhhhhhh......si Presidente.....espero que si!" I was getting pretty overwhelmed with the work that we have in front of us because there's a lot in this area and sometimes it feels like we aren't even making a dent but Heavenly Father really gave me strength and comfort this week that I would be okay! I've had a lot of questions and concerns this past week and literally every single time I have opened the Book of Mormon and continued reading where I left off, the Lord answers my questions or gives me the strength I need. The Book of Mormon is amazing! 

Thank you for your love and support, I hope you all have a happy new year! I´ll be celebrating about 4 hours ahead of you all! 

Also, I have been praying this past month for guidance from Heavenly Father with the goals that I'm going to make for 2016-I usually make goals that I can just check off but I asked Heavenly Father to help me make some that are really going to help me progress and grow, I hope you'll all consider doing the same and asking Heavenly Father in prayer what you can do to make this year the best one yet! 

Ponderize: Mosiah 24:12-16 Heavenly Father really comforted me with this chapter this week! 

Love you all, 

Hermana Nielsen :)

This is where I wash my clothes when I have to!

Ypacaraí

FELIZ NAVIDAD

Did you guys know that CHRISTMAS IS THIS WEEK?!?!?! Yay!!!! I'm so excited!! We get to eat so much food this week!!!

This past week we had our Christmas Activity with the whole mission and it was so fun!! I got to see all my mission buddies and play a lot of soccer and sweat the whole day! We did a program at the beginning and I sang with the zone I'm in right now and did a Nativity play with my old zone, it was so fun!!! We've been practicing for like a month now so it was cool to watch everybody do random skits and sing a just relax and enjoy the Christmas season!

The Patiño Family is progressing really well! Their daughter wants to get baptized and they set a date to get sealed in the temple in February!!! We are working a lot with them and they are progressing so much! They have come to church 3 weeks in a row YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love missionary work and Christmas and being a missionary on Christmas!!!

Have a great week and remember that we celebrate Christmas for CHRIST....not the Virgin Mary. 

I love you all!

Hermana Nielsen

Ponderize: Mosiah 2:41

My comp and I :)

My best friends in the mission!

HI!

 Hello again! I'm just going to start off by saying that life is crazy here in Ypacaraí!! We have eaten some weird stuff and walked through the jungle and it´s seriously so great!!!! Sometimes when I am sitting under the shade of a mango tree, or eating HUGE mangos, or riding in a bus for 30 minutes to go email my family and everything around me is green, I thank my lucky stars-and Heavenly Father, of course- for this incredible opportunity I have to be in Paraguay! We are having so much fun and working so hard and it feels so gooood to be a missionary! 

We have been working on reactivating the Patiño family and they have come to church 2 weeks in a row now!! They are preparing to go through the temple and be sealed soon! I am so so so happy for them! They have 3 little girls and they are so great! We have FHE with them tonight and I am so excited! Teaching families is seriously the coolest!

We also did a random contact this week and found a girl named Pabla. SHE IS SO PREPARED TO HEAR THE GOSPEL!!! You should have heard the questions she was asking! She understands what we teach her and the why. It is so cool! It´s refreshing to hear somebody accept what we teach and not follow the traditions of their parents aka Catholic church. Hahaha

I love you guys and I´m pumped to hear about all the festivities you have going on for Christmas! Remember why we celebrate!

Ponderize: Moroni 7:48 True disciples of Christ have Charity!

Love, Hermana Nielsen

My camera won't connect so this is another week without pics...I'm sorry!

Welcome to the Jungle

What a week!! I forgot to tell you guys last week that we would be having transfers....I left Reducto!!! I had a feeling that I was going to but we got the call on Tuesday so we spent all of Tuesday night packing and getting ready to go to the terminal. We got there at 6 on Wednesday morning and I found out who my new companion is.........HERMANA AUSTIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! She's from Springville and she was my Hermana Leader before and we already love each other so so much! It's been such a crazy week!!! We were going crazy in the terminal when we found out we were companions! She's going home after this transfer and it's so weird to think that she'll be able to eat good Mexican food and walk on carpet in 5 weeks!

Our area is Ypacaraí and it's sooooo cool!!!! It is so huge and we just have the mountains all over in our area! We went to part of our area the other day and it was an hour and a half walk....we were literally hiking up into the mountains hahahahaha I love it so much here!

Here's a fun story of the week:

There was a HUGE rainstorm on Thursday night and the next day nobody had power or water but then we got power back on Friday night but we haven't had water since Thursday......so we walked a mile yesterday to a member's house to take a shower using water from their well. We had a couple buckets of water and a cup :)

Then there's this thing called the Virgin of Caacupe...Caacupe is a city right by us and people come from all over to celebrate the Virgin Mary...there's a lot of fanatics and drunks a crazy people so the missionaries that are in Caacupe have to leave every year and go to other areas but this year, since we are close, we have to stay in our house all day today and allllll day tomorrow.......we are going to have some goooood times!!!! I'm just really pumped about everything that is happening in my life right now!!!! I love being a missionary!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's my ponderize for the week: Ether 12:6 #Faith

Love, Hermana Nielsen! 

Hola!!!

Hiiiiiii!!! Okay, first of all, I forgot to tell you all to go look up the Mormon Message "In the Spirit of Thanksgiving". Please pretend like it's still Thanksgiving and go watch it, it's sooo funny!!!!

This week was so great! Raul and Johana got married on Saturday night in the church and it was a FIESTA!!!! The ward members helped us so much and we seriously had so much fun!

But I'm lame and forgot my camera cord so I'll send pics next week! Raul got baptized yesterday morning before church and he is so so so happy! We are seriously just loving every minute of being missionaries!

Thanksgiving was good but so weird to not be home! I don't like holidays away from my family!! But I cooked us chicken, mashed potatoes (Thanks Betty Crocker and the expensive American section in the grocery store), rice with corn, and cooked carrots!!! Also we found Heinz BBQ Sauce and now my companion thinks I’m a good cook so life is good down here in South America! We also heard our neighbor playing Footloose this morning so I'm very content with life!

Have an amazing week!!!

Ponderize: Matthew 18:20

DÍA DE GRACIAS

Holllaaaaaa amigos! ¿¿¿Como están??? Bueno. I´m sorry that I am terrible at this weekly email thing. I always forget to tell you guys what's going on in the missionary life! Sorry....but I am repenting and changing my ways! Here are some good things that have happened in the past couple of weeks:

-We had a Zone Conference with our President and a bunch of missionaries and being with other missionaries always gets me way pumped about life! I always see other missionaries with their nametags and I get so excited because I'm with missionaries and then I remember that I am a missionary too! It's really a good time. 

-It's getting a lot hotter here.....ahhhhhh!!!!! It gets really hot and humid and then it rains a ton after and cools down a little bit #blessings but everybody here talks about December like it's the plague because it's so hot so we'll see if I'm fit to survive or not.

-Last week we helped some Hermana's in our district move and it was so fun and so hot and we ate BURGER KING after and it was sooooo good!!!!!!!! I used to hate Burger King but we had hamburgers and fries and it was amazing! Definitely a highlight of my week/life.

-Raul (our investigator) and his girlfriend (member) are getting married this Saturday and he's getting baptized on Sunday!!!!!!!!!! He's seriously so pumped and we're full with wedding planning and everything! I never thought I'd be a wedding planner in my life but maybe I know what I'm going to study when I get home.....

Hey! This week is Thanksgiving!!! I've got some big plans for our lunch on Thursday but I'll let you know how my cooking skills go next Monday....I've been thinking this week about what I'm grateful for and these are what came to my mind first:

-My family

-My friends at home and on missions

-My friend's families

-The Book of Mormon

-The Atonement 

-Paraguay

It's a pretty obvious list but I've received so much love and support from my family, friends, and their families and it's made all the difference in my mission. I also LOVE LOVE LOVE the Book of Mormon! Greatest book ever. The Atonement has helped me in more ways than I thought possible and has helped me change and learn and grow so so so much! And obviously, PARAGUAY! I'm going to be one of those missionaries that comes home and is obsessed with the country they served in and talk about it all the time #sorrynotsorry

Anyways, life is good here in Paraguay! Hermana Espinoza and I are doing good and she is helping me improve my Spanish so much! It's been a good transfer! I love you all and please eat an extra plate of delicious Thanksgiving food for me, okay?

Ponderize: Last week-2Nephi 2:6-8 This week: Alma 34:38

Love, Hermana Nielsen 

Compañeras 4 life!

We've eaten a lot of cow heart lately...

Missionary Work and the Atonement

Alright fam and friends, sorry I didn´t email last week. Things got a little crazy because MY SISTER IS ENGAGED!!! LIKE WHAT?!?! Feliz Navidad Hermana Nielsen!!! Anyways, today I´m just gonna throw out all of my thoughts from the past two weeks...I hope you enjoy!

Tomorrow I hit my 5 month mark....AHHHHHH time is flying. I can´t believe it! I also still cannot believe that I am in Paraguay teaching the gospel with a lil Peruvian...life is cray cray. I´ve been thinking a lot about what I´ve learned in the last 5 months and everything has been so central on the Atonement.

You guys! The Atonement is the most incredible thing ever!! As a missionary I have had to use the Atonement every single day. I´ve learned more about my Savior than I thought possible in such a short amount of time. One thing I´ve learned is that even though we are commanded by our Heavenly Father to be perfect, He does not expect us to be perfect in this lifetime....like, what?? That's what I had in my head. That we have to be perfect to be righteous...no no no. That is so wrong! Righteousness means that you keep on trying and doing your best. That is all Heavenly Father asks of us-that we try our best! My testimony has been strengthened so much and I know that I would not have been able to make it through these last 5 months without our Savior. We are #blessed!!! Here's a solid quote from Elder Holland that I want to share with you guys:

"Anyone who does any kind of missionary work will have occasion to ask, Why is this so hard? Why can’t our success be more rapid? Why aren’t there more people joining the Church? Why isn’t the only risk in         missionary work that of pneumonia from being soaking wet all day and all night in the baptismal font?”

I have thought about this a great deal. I offer this as my personal feeling. I am convinced that missionary work  is not easy because salvation is not a cheap experience. Salvation never was easy. We are The Church of Jesus Christ, this is the truth, and He is our Great Eternal Head. How could we believe it would be easy for us when it was never, ever easy for Him? It seems to me that missionaries and mission leaders have to spend at least a few moments in Gethsemane. Missionary’s and mission leaders have to take at least a step or two toward the summit of Calvary.

Now, please don’t misunderstand. I’m not talking about anything anywhere near what Christ experienced. That would be presumptuous and sacrilegious. But I believe that missionaries and investigators, to come to the truth, to come to salvation, to know something of this price that has been paid, will have to pay a token of  that same price.

For that reason I don’t believe missionary work has    ever been easy, nor that conversion is, nor that retention  is,nor that continued faithfulness is. I believe it is supposed to require some effort, something from the depths of our soul.

If He could come forward in the night, kneel down, fallon His face, bleed from every pore, and cry, “Abba, Father (Papa), if this cup can pass, let it pass,” 11  then little wonder that salvation is not an easy thing for  us. If you wonder if there isn’t an easier way, you should remember you are not the first one to ask that. Someone a lot greater and a lot grander asked a long time ago if there wasn’t an easier way.

When you struggle, when you are rejected, when you are spit upon and cast out, you are standing with the best life this world has ever known, the only pure and perfect life ever lived. You have reason to stand tall and be grateful that the Living Son of the Living God knows all about your sorrows and afflictions. The only way to salvation is through Gethsemane and on to Calvary. The only way to eternity is through Him—the Way, the Truth, and the Life."

I´m so grateful for the hard days and weeks in the mission because they bring me closer to Christ and I have been able to change myself in a way that would have never been possible if I didn´t come on my mission. I know that Jesus Christ lives and because of this knowledge I can do anything! Don´t run from hard things, push forward with faith in Jesus Christ and you will find that "The hardest as well as the easiest times in life can be a blessing." (Elder Eyring)

I love you all! Thank you for every letter, email, prayer, thought….they have blessed my life every day!

Love, Hermana Nielsen