Week 105: September 10, 2012

Short Last Letter

I had the best last week any missionary could ask for, and today I will have an awesome P-day. Tomorrow night Elder Romney and I will drive to East London and stay the night with a companionship there, Wednesday morning Elder Giles and I will fly to Cape Town and have our Final Interviews with President Wood. We will then spend the night at the mission home, all of Thursday we will have the opportunity of doing whatever we like in Cape Town before our flight to London on Thursday night. I am sure most Elders will want to get some curios and other little African Trinkets, I think I might as well ha.

But I want to thank you all for all the support that you have given me, I love you all and I can't wait to finally see you!

2 John 1:12, I was thinking of just writing this reference down and calling it good but Rapport rather than Report.

Love you,
Elder Nielsen

Week 100: August 9, 2012

Hello Mom

Sorry I was not able to write to you on Monday. We had a Zone Leader Council in Cape town from Monday until yesterday, and since we are in Queenstown we had a long way to travel and we started from Sunday evening and only got home at 7 o'clock last night. It was really good to be around all the other Zone Leaders in the mission as well as President and Sister Wood. We had the luxury of staying in the mission home, it reminded me of being at home when family is around because it was practically an all you can eat buffet. We had a lot of fun and received a whole lot of training on things that the mission can improve on and how we can lift the mission to higher levels. I promise that this Monday I will fill you in on everything and be more detailed but I don't have much time now.

Thank you for the photos and your letter, And good luck with preparing for seminary and visiting those inactive students of yours. I will keep you in my prayers. And about garments, I should be okay to wait and go to the distribution center when I am home.

Love you,

Elder Nielsen

Week 81: March 26, 2012

From Cape Town this week!

Happy Birthday Uncle Kirt, and congratulations on the promotion! 

This morning I flew into Cape Town with some other Elders from PE to receive some training and also new companions, I will be staying here until Wednesday. I will catch a plane back to PE with my new companion and begin working with him that night. It feels good to be back in Cape Town, and the view from the plane of Table Mountain and some of my old areas was fantastic. Right now I am with some Elders from Cape Town and I will be with them until this evening, that is when the training begins. Pretty exciting.

I don't have my camera with me or anything so I cannot send you guys photos this week. Next week I have some pretty sweet pictures that I want to send you though so look forward to that.

Yesterday we had the confirmations of the four people who were baptized the previous week, I did three of the four confirmations which was very cool. Some other investigators that we have were able to make it to church and be able to witness that so it was a very productive Sunday. I think in total we had 7 investigators at church, we are really cranking it out right now, it's too bad that Elder Vernon and I will not be companions anymore, but whoever my new one is I will make sure that we keep it up and make things happen. One family we are really excited about is a family that has been investigating the church for a very long time, they have recently showed a lot of commitment and have been able to come to church for three weeks in a row. They have a baptismal date for April 22. Hopefully they will keep that commitment they have and go through with it, that will be awesome! 

 With this new companion of mine we are really going to have to prepare ourselves for these upcoming baptism's, which means we will be doing a lot of finding. We basically need to pad our teaching pool with some promising investigators to make sure that we keep busy and productive and more baptism's will follow. Right now it seems that Elders Bangerter and Martin will stay together, they are in my district, which means that Elder Martin will be Elder Bangerter's final companion. It will be a sad day when he goes home, but each of us are out for two years and those older than us have to go home in order for us to some day. Those two are really fun to be around and serve with.

The time has really flown and what is interesting is I am sitting with my MTC companion Elder Barlow right now and this E-mail shop and we are talking about where the time has gone, we have decided that we woke up one day and became 18 months on mission. I think for both of us we can say that what we have experienced and learned so far has been more than we could ever have imagined.

Ariel- Ava looks gorgeous, cannot wait to meet her! I'm and uncle, what they heck? hah I just realized that!

Mom and Dad the house looks awesome! thank you for sending those photos. It sounds like you have things all planned out and the end of May is coming faster than the blink of an eye. 

Hey our branch is going to watch General Conference live this weekend! I am so excited, this is the first time that I have heard of it in South Africa. We might stay up really late but at least we will see it when the rest of the world does, I can't wait for it. Weird to think that this is my last General Conference on Mission.

Well I hope you all have a fantastic week,

Elder Nielsen