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

February 6, 2012- A Stellar Week

Hey Everyone!!

  This week went super well! We made tons of visits and at the majority of the lessons we had members there to teach with us (it´s pretty rare for that to happen here in Brasil) We taught a new family on Tuesday and they loved the message about the Restoration and came to church yesterday!! Hopefully we see some good progress from them in the coming days. We also helped our ward establish a Ward Mission Plan and everyone in our ward is super excited about it! I´ve yet to hear of a ward down here that has a Ward Mission Plan so everybody feels pretty good knowing that our ward actually has one and it should definitely help us out with our missionary work. We have a missionary activity this Friday night, it´s a Ward Family Night where we are going to teach everyone how to use the site Familysearch and then afterwards we are going to have a bunch of games and food so it should be great!! The weather is pretty similar to an oven out here right now, hot and humid but luckily it´s not unbearable! I love you all and hope this week goes great!! Hopefully the little ones feel better, give them some loves for me!!!!!

Love,

Elder Michael J. Neilson

January 30, 2012

Hey Everyone!!

  Things have been pretty slow out here in Floripa. EVERYBODY is at the beach, all day, every day so finding people at home seems nearly impossible right now. We had a really cool experience this week tho. We have a friend named Iago who is 17 years old and is atheist (he says he is but I don´t think he knows what being an atheist really means) and we taught him a few weeks back about the Restoration and the Book of Mormon and we found out this week that he hasn´t been reading the Book of Mormon because his mom took it from him and reads it all the time. So we gave him another copy and then last night we finally got to meet his mom and she told us how much she loves the book!! She says that she just can´t put the book down and that she stays up all night reading! Her husband gets mad at her for not going to sleep but we told her to keep on reading! She is really cool so we hope to see some progress from her here in the new future. Hope all is swell back home!!! Give the little ones some loves for me!!!

Love,

Elder Michael J. Neilson

January 23, 2012

Hey Everybody!!

  This week was a really good week for us out here in Florianópolis! We had a few meetings with the ward leaders and are starting to put in a Ward Mission Plan and everybody is pretty excited about it. Last Monday night we had a really good Family Night in the home of a really cool and rich family who invited another family. The message, game and food all went super well so hopefully we see some progress from that family. We also went and taught one of our friends who is going to get baptized, Evaldo. He is 76 and his grandkids were spending some time at his house so we taught them too. At the end of the lesson his 9 year old granddaughter said her first prayer and it was incredible! It was such a great spiritual experience. Hope all is well back home!!! Love you all so much and give the little ones some loves for me!!!

Love,

Elder Michael J. Neilson

January 16, 2012

  Sorry, I totally ran out of time last week to send anymore emails. Things have been pretty slow out here these last few weeks tho. When nobody is in their house it´s kind of hard to teach them the gospel. European people are pretty prideful tho, they tell us some pretty ridiculous things and we just have to smile and walk away haha I thought the US was bad about killing new songs on the radio but out here it is OVER THE TOP. A new song comes out and it plays non-stop in every place that you go, it´s soooo annoying. The little ones look like so much fun!! People out here tell me to tell mom and dad to bring them with them in August and I just laugh. SOunds like life for you guys is going pretty great tho, that´s good. I love hearing from you and getting pictures!!!

Love,

Elder Michael J. NEilson

ps. I got your Christmas card Tiersha! legit stuff