October 31, 2011- What a Week!!

Hey Everyone!!

This week was soooo incredible!! The area where I am serving in, Brusque, is great becuase our branch is super strong and the city is super cool, but as for missionary work...it is pretty slow becuase everyone is German and super super Catholic. My companion Elder Emerson had never seen a baptism on his mission (he´s been out for 7 months) and we had been working so so hard to help somebody get baptized this last transfer and all of our friends who commited to be baptized all came out with marriage problems (they aren´t legally married). When we planned for this last week 2 weeks ago (if that makes any sense to you) we were determined to have a baptism so we marked that we would baptize somebody this last Sunday (yesterday) at 7pm, he only problem was that we didn´t know who we would baptize. So we just kept working super hard this week and then one of the students who attends our English Class who went to church 2 Sundays ago, let us go over and teach him and we did and invited him to be baptized and he acceptted!! We baptized him last night at 7pm just as we had planned 2 weeks earlier!! It really strengthened my testimony of how the Lord gives us trials to see how we will react and if we truly do have righteous desires and after a transfer full of hard work we were blessed! We then found out right after that my companion Elder Emerson is getting transfered this Wednesday. I LOVED serving with Elder Emerson, he is such a stud and we learned so much together this last transfer. My new companion is Elder Tomaz and he is coming straight from the MTC so this will be his first area so I´m really excited to have him here, I´m sure he will bring lots of energy and be ready to work hard. Yesterday at church they had the primary program in Sacrament meeting and the Spirit was incredibly strong, and when they sung Armies of Helaman both Elder Emerson and I were in tears. It´s so crazy to see how fast time fies by, it seems like we were just in the primary singing that song last year! Yesterday was quite a treat tho and I´m really excited to see what these next few transfers have in hold for us. Also I got a care package from the Las Flores YW this last week, that was super nice of them! It was everything that I could want from the USA haha. I hope everything is going well back home and give the little kids some loves for me!!!

Love,

Elder Michael J. Neilson