Week 98: July 23, 2012

Hey everyone

This picture attached is a district lunch from this week, we had Pap and fish. Yum!

Wow I didn't expect to see my flight plans today that's pretty cool, it's getting closer and closer! Apparently since I came into the mission Elders from America fly from Cape Town to London and then from London to either Atlanta or Dallas and then they connect to get to their destination. It is much less expensive so that is why they do it. It looks like I will have a long wait in London, I think some of the other Elders in my transfer will want to go and see some of the sights there before flying to the states, we will see haha. That will be directly after the Olympics too. Unfortunately a lot of the Elders in my transfer will be going home on Aug 16 in order to go to school in the fall, so I won't be able to see them all before they go out. I am glad I decided to wait and go to school in January, it seems better that way.

Well we had another good week here in Queenstown, we were really happy with our most recent convert named Lubabalo Mahlinza, he is a stud. I was privileged enough to confirm him yesterday and he was so happy afterwards, the Spirit was so strong during the confirmation, it was an awesome experience. I love teaching him, he is like a sponge soaking up all of the things we teach him. Another cool thing happened this week, I think we found a pretty good investigator, he is a young guy about twenty one years old and he seemed really receptive to the gospel. I am hoping that we will be able to teach him a couple of times this week and get him to church this Sunday. This week will be Elder Musangu's last full week on mission, so planning on working him hard and then next week getting my last companion and finishing the mission with a bang by working hard and using all of these skills I Have obtained throughout my mission. For now I will focus on the work, I only get the opportunity to serve the Lord full time for two years of my life and I want to improve every minute of it. It is a dead sprint to the finish line for me.

Mowing the yard takes six hours dang that's a chore and a half! haha that's awesome though I bet I would love that for the first couple of times. If I remember correctly that Georgia grass turns brown for 8 or nine months of the year so that's not too big of a deal. I look forward to seeing those pictures next week.

Love you all, have an awesome week!

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

Week 38: May 30, 2011

Hello everybody,

My weekend wasn't so eventful as all of yours but during the week there were some pretty cool things happen. We had a Zone training in Somerset west, and amazingly there were a couple of Elders that I know from back home, Elder Cooney and Elder Rogers. It was really cool to see them and chat with them and also receive some very inspired instruction from President Probst, which was probably his last Zone Training until President Wood comes in next transfer.

Also on Saturday I actually got to spend some more time with Elder Cooney, we had to have the Assistants come down here to Fish Hoek in order to do an interview, so he came down and we were planning to do some proselyting. As it turns out while his companion was doing the interview for one of our investigators we went and put on their spare tire because they had a flat. It was really cool spending time with him and talking a little about mission and a little about home, we had a lot of fun for that short period of time.

Yesterday we had two people be confirmed, and next week we will be having two more baptism's so basically we are just doing work. The work just continues to roll on and it's really exciting, I'm having a lot of fun and just learning lots.

It's getting a little bit more chilly, and what makes things worse is all the homes here don't have a central heating system in their homes so everyone just huddles around a small heater to try and stay warm. I guess that's why they say Cape Town is so cold during the winter, I guess I'll find out about that in the coming months.

Wow Ariel & Brian I can't believe you are just 5 weeks away from the due date that is incredible! That time will fly by exceedingly fast.

Love you all,
Elder Nielsen