March 26, 2012- Conference Prep

Hey Everyone!!

This week went super well!! Our friend João Pedro got baptized on Saturday and his mom who has been less-active in the church came to the baptismal service and to church on Sunday so we are hoping to be able to help her get back on track to receiving the blessings that come from activity in the gospel!! We had another lady, Ana and her son, Miguel, come to church yesterday, too and they loved it!! They want to get baptized but Ana has to work a lot on Sunday so a member in the ward is going to help her find a new job this week and perhaps she will get baptized in the coming weeks. Everybody here is getting really excited for General Conference! It seems like there has been given a lot of emphasis on preparing ourselves spiritually for this great conference. Everything is still going great and we are enjoying each day that we get to serve with all of our might!! I love you all and hope you give the little ones some loves for me!!!

Love,

Elder Michael J. Neilson

March 19, 2012- The Winter Wind Blows

Hey Everyone!!

This week went really well out here and the weather is already starting to cool down for the winter season! I always thought that a Brasilian Summer would be really brutal but it was definitely the coolest Summer I´ve ever experienced. This week we had a handful of people accept the invite to be baptized and one of them, João Pedro, will be baptized this Satruday so we are really excited for him! Our English class out here is going super well, too, it´s consistently bringing 20 people every class and a few people are gaining interest in the church. Everything else is going great and everyone here is just getting ready for Easter which means we are going to get lots of chocolate in the coming days!! I love you all and hope you ive the little ones some loves for me!!!

Love,

Elder Michael J. Neilson

March 12, 2012- Transfers

Hey everyone!!

  This week flew by, but it was another super busy and great week! I went to go and get my new companion from the mission office on Wednesday. His name is Elder Correia and he is from Rio de Janeiro (he says he doesn´t remember and Elder Neilson (Skylar) passing thru his ward tho) and he´s a great missionary full of desire to work hard and be obedient so I´m really excited to be with him! My last companion, Elder Banner, went to get his new companion on Wednesday, too, but his companion sisn´t show up and will get here this week so Pres Fernandes had him spend this last week was us here in our area. It was actually a lot of fun having 3 missionaries at all of our appointments, and whatnot but he is leaving tomorrow so we will be back to 2. In our house we have 2 other Elders who live with us and one of them is from Argentina so it´s fun to practice Spanish with him and he likes to practice his English with me. Also we have a mission conference with Elder Godoy of the 70 this week so it should be a great expereince!! I love you all and hope and pray you are all happy and safe!!! Give the little ones some loves for me!!!

Love,

Elder Michael J. Neilson

March 5, 2012- Storm Watch

Hey Everyone!!

  This was the last week of our transfer and it went really well!! We had quite an eventful week that kept us really busy which is always a blessing. I got to go on a division in one of the more ghetto areas of our mission and it was a great experience to see how humble of circumstances that some people in this world have. It was a great day and it really made me appreciate the blessings which I have in my life. Also on Wednesday night we went out to make some visits with a member. We parked his car and went to make the visits and as we were making our way back to the car, all of a sudden out of nowhere the sky fell on us! It literally just started to pour down rain without even a sprinkle of warning, I´ve never seen anything like this in my life! We had to take shelter under a bus stop but we were still getting pounded by the rain because the winds were exceeding 100 KPH. After about 10 minutes we made a dash to the members car and got completely soaked from head to toe. It was a super crazy storm to where all the cars on the road were going about 5mph due to the fact that we couldn´t see out of the windsheild! We still went and made another visit before going home and as we were going home we saw all the destruction that had taken place and nobody in the city had power. We drove to our apartment tho and our apartment and a few more houses on our street were the only places with power in the entire city!! We got inside our apartments and saw how our things got a little bit wet because we left the windows open, but it was a cool experience! We found out last night that my companion, Elder Banner, is getting transfered this week and I still don´t know who my new companion is but I´ll find out soon!! I love you all and hope to hear from you soon!! Give the little ones some loves for me!!!

Love,

Elder Michael J. Neilson

February 27, 2012- The Waters of BAPTISM

Hey Everybody!!

This week went really well out here in FLoripa!! 2  of our friends, Ana and Su (mother and daughter) were baptized this Saturday and their baptismal service was incredible! There were about 50 members there and they brought a lot of family and friends too so it was a great show up! The talks, music, and everything at the service was beautiful and the Spirit was super strong! They were super prepared to be baptized and are already sharing the gospel with everyone that they know! Funny story tho, we couldn´t get the baptismal font to drain after the baptism so the water stayed there until yesterday (SUnday). Since nobody had the key to lock the font doors we had to find a way to get the water out   so that no little kids would accidently find the water. Our bishop ended up diving into the water with regular clothes on and spent about 20 minutes trying to get the plug to come out. He finally was able to do it and he quickly changed back into his suit in time for the start of the 3rd hour of church! The members are all really excited here and are gaining lots of fire for doing missionary work!! I love you all and hope to hear from you soon!!! Give the little ones somes loves for me!!!!

Love,

Elder Michael J. Neilson

February 20, 2012- What a Week!!

Hey Everybody!!

  This week was such an incredible week of blessings!!! On Tuesday (Valentine´s Day) we went to teach our friends Ana and Su( who have come to church the last few Sundays) about the Plan of Salvation. We had a member with us who bore powerful testimony of the truthfulness of this plan and at the end of the lesson both Ana and Su gladly acceptted the invitation to be baptized!!! They are such great and strong people who have desires to always serve the Lord and we are super excited to see them enter the waters of baptism this Saturday!! Later that night we had English Class at the church. Here in this area the attendance is generally very low and the most people I had seen at a class was 7...until Tuesday night, we had 21 PEOPLE show up!!! It was so cool to see!! We got to teach them a group Plan of Salvation lesson at the end of the class, too and a lot of them really loved it!!! Then yesterday at church we, Elder Banner and I, performed a special musical number, One Voice, where he sang and I played the piano. We invited so many people to come to church and see us perform and we had 11 friends come!!! They all loved church and the Spirit was so strong after the musical number and the last talk that everybody left church just feeling filled with the Spirit! We are really excited to keep the work going here in these coming weeks and we hope and pray that we may continued to be blessed like we were this week!!! I love you all and hope you enjoy President´s Day!!! Give the little ones some loves for me!!!!

February 13, 2012- Carnival

Hey Everyone!!

  So this week we had our Family History activity on Friday, a lot more members said they´d go than the amount that actually went, but it still went well. We spent pretty much the entire week visiting every house in our area with people that we know to invite them to the activity.  Our family who went to church last Sunday had their father (grandfather for the kids) pass away so they left town and only one of the kids came to church yesterday but she really loved it again and is already making friends with the other single adults in the ward. We had some really sad happen with 2 more of our friends, too. We were teaching them about the Plan of Salvation and they told us that they don´t want to live with God and their families forever and that there is no way that the gospel of Jesus Christ is so simple like we taught it...we had to explain to them that we are here to find those people who do want to live with God and their families forever and help them acheive that goal and that we can´t poorly spend the Lord´s time talking with people who don´t have those desires. We left feeling super sad because they were great people who we really thought would progress, but everybody has their free agency and we know that God will grant us according to our desires. So Carnival has arrived here in Brazil and everybody told us that our area won´t have any parties or anything like that (they say it only happens in downtown Floripa)...I´m worried as to what Brazilians consider a ´party´ to be because we could not escape the carnival parties yesterday and carnival doesn´t even officially start until Saturday...these should be some interesting weeks. I love you all and hope that you enjoy the winter back home!!! Give the kids some loves for me!!!!

Love,

Elder Michael J. NEilson