2017 01 23 Excitement and Danger...and Nicknames

Muchas cosas, este es que paso,

we had an interesting week, on Tuesday we had a baptismal interview for one of our investigators who was getting baptized on Friday, and her husband brought her to it, and before we had asked him to pick a date that he would like to get baptized. after his wife's interview we asked him if he would like his interview now to get it over with. he agreed, and they both passed their interviews, and when he came out he said he was going to be baptized on Friday with his wife.🤗 Then on the day of the baptism, about an hour before, i remembered i hadn't written my talk yet, so i threw one together, and it wasn't half bad if i do say so myself. the boiler in the church doesn't work right, so we turned on the cold and were going to turn on the hot later to warm up the water, but we forgot to turn on the hot, so it was full of cold water.😒 And then, when Elder Jones and Elder Cota were moving the piano to the gym, it fell over and Elder Jones tried to catch it but couldn't and smashed half his fingers. we gave him a quick blessing and he didn't want to go to the hospital, so we finished the baptism. we had members baptize them, and everything went fine even though we had to redo one of them. they both got baptized, and confirmed, so everything is all good.

Except for my companion's fingers, they are now black and blue and very swollen. he ices them, and members have told him to soak them in hot Epsom salt water, he hasn't yet. the other day, he tried to stab his finger to let out some blood, but it didn't work because its the muscle that's swollen. i got some pretty good videos and pictures of it. since then i have been driving our car, for the first time in 4 months, so that's fun.

yesterday, our chapel had a gas leak, so we had to drive 13 miles out and back to get to Fabens capilla, and we carpooled, so the other elders wouldn't waste miles, we only had one hour of church, but more people than i thought showed up, so that was good. but only two of our non-progressing investigators showed up to church, so that's a bummer.

We had a bunch of service opportunities this week, one was with the family that gave me the tea that made me puke, we were laying down bricks for a pathway infront of his house. he was making fun of Elder Faber and I, and Elder Cota less, and Elder Jones he was treating like a son.😒 he gave the 3 of us he was making fun of nicknames. Elder Faber's  was Guero Loco, Elder Cota's was Chavalote, and mine was Minion, because aparently, i look like a minion. thats not even the first time!😤 our ward mission leader compared me to Milhouse from the Simpsons.😖

other than those things, everything is going good, we are having plenty of lessons, even though some of our investigators, have fallen of the baptism wagon, and one of our investigator's mothers hasn't let us in to teach him in almost 2 weeks. but we are getting ready for more baptisms, and more of sharing our testimonies with new investigators.

i am still having fun here, and i feel good everytime i share my testimony. thank you everyone, for supporting me in my calling.

Love you all,

Elder Nielson

2017 01 17

As usual, I am behind in posting Luke's letters. Luke is in a tripanionship, and one of his companions is from Yelm. Note in the picture that Luke is promoting Winlock, and his companion is promoting Yelm. Way to represent Washington! - Ross

feliz ano, sorry I forgot to let you know that because yesterday was a holiday, p-day was switched to today.

everything is still going here in El Paso Texas, it started to rain this week, but not a lot. there was this huge puddle that disappeared after being there for over a week, and then it rained again so the lake is back. it has been mostly warm here, until the clouds came in and made it cold and windy. its getting better, it usually ahs 2 or 3 days of rain or wind, and then a week of sun, its fun, fun, fun in the sun, sun ,sun.

we have had some trouble getting ahold of one of our investigators, brian, who is the son of a less active recent convert. he was planning on going to church this week, but his parents didn't let him. his whole family is baptized but him, and he wants to get baptized, his parents are friendly to the church but just difficult. every time we set a time to go and visit them we went and they weren't home. we will find them eventually.

this other part member family that we just started teaching gave us their phone number but we wrote it down wrong and we called someone else instead, and it was a person that pretty much skypes with the person you call, because they are deaf, and they sign with them while translating to you. that was an interesting phone call because my companion had never seen that before either.

another fun thing that happened, was we ate some bad discati at a members house, discati is a Mexican sausage cooked up with cut up hotdogs. we all had a stomachaches starting 2 days after, but elder jones for only one morning, and elder faber and I got hit hard. then elder jones and went to dinner at a members house, and we told them I was sick so I wouldn't eat a lot. so they made me a home-made tea that they said would help my stomach feel better. I ate a little bit of dinner while sipping the steaming hot tea, once it was cooled down enough, they told me to just chug half of it, I looked at elder jones and he said go for it. so I thought why not? so I took 2 big drinks and it didn't taste the best, but 10 seconds after I felt something and I thought,

oh no, so I quickly got up and went to the bathroom and started spewing what little dinner I had eaten. it didn't taste as good coming up then going down. I did feel much better after that, except for when I blew my nose after, food came out. now I know to be careful with Mexican women and home-made remedies. it worked, but it wasn't fun.

I am still working a lot on my Spanish, I can usually understand what words people use, but I still need to work on understanding the words, its coming slowly but surely. I learn a lot from my companion, he teaches me what to use in certain instances and what is better to use in others. we have fun doing it too.

con amor de me,

Elder Nielson

Service project, Yay!

2017/01/09 and more pictures

Here is the latest from Elder Nielson:

buenos dias familia de mio,

estoy bien, siempre estoy bien. this week has been good, we haven't gotten many new investigators recently because we are trying to prepare our other investigators for baptisms, so this month we should have a bunch of baptisms. one of our investigators is really funny, we were teaching him about the word of wisdom, or in spanish, la paladra de sabiduria. he was telling us about this dog he had that hated everyone, but respected him. he was telling us about when he would smoke weed, and he would give some to his dog too. we had a member going on visits with us, and we were all cracking up laughing by now. he wasn't really meaning his story to be funny, but  it was hilarious, he is great, and he is one of the investigators we have on baptismal date. he has some more stories like these,and most of them are funny, or just the way he tells them are funny.

we are having transfers tuesday, for those who don't know yet, transfers are every six weeks. i have been in a trio for the last half transfer, we have had two areas, but now they are being split again back to how they were. now that elder faber is done training, he is still in san elizario, and his new companion is elder cota. elder jones and i are staying in ysleta. we are getting new zone leaders, and a new district leader. we have a lot of good missionaries coming in and a lot of good missionaries leaving.

one of my favorite experiences this week, was with a couple we are teaching and are on baptismal date. they have a son and are living together but aren't married. they were planning on him moving out so they could get baptised, but we dont really want that. they said the only thing they have in common is their son, so we advised them to keep having lessons with us, and to try praying together everyday. they have been doing this and they said that they are getting along better and that its actually working😁 so they are actually thinking about getting married instead.

andele pues from the land of enchantment,

elder nirleoc

whoops, i spelled my name wrong, i just started typing and this is how it appeared, so i left it.

this is a picture of a recent convert who baptized his daughter this week, and she is shy so she was trying to hide. its funny, she isn't this shy when go to teach the recent convert lessons.

2017/01/03 and Pictures

Here is Elder Nielson's letter from 1/3/2017. Sorry so late. 

Here are pictures from my first zone conference, and a cool picture my companion took of the moon.

hola, estoy bien. the holidays were great, other than the fact that most of our investigators are or were in Juarez for the holidays. we still had a bunch of lessons with investigators, less actives and members alike.

one of the few investigator families that didnt go to Juarez, we went to go give them blessings because they were all sick or around someone who was sick. we gave almost a dozen blessings, our arms were tired from holding them up for so long. afterwards, we had a lesson with all of them. there were 15 peolpe there not including us missionaries, and only five of them were members. it was a good lessons, we got the kids involved with the ten commandments, it was fun.

we found out mexicans, when they saw "happy new year" they instead say "happy year", in spanish it is "feliz ano", but i dont know why. on new years eve, my companions, a couple other elders and i, popped open a bottle of bubbly (dont worry mom, the non-alcoholic kind) and said some toasts for the new year.

our mission did this activity called, "A Day With the Lord" it started saturday because we had to be home by 6 pm because of the drunk and crazy people. we were given 9 separate letters, the first one told us to clean our apartment, and really how dirty can it be?😷 the next couple had some talks that we read and they had some soul searching questions we were to answer as well. the next one we opened was yesterday, and we all were told to get a brand new copy of the Book of Mormon, so we started at 6:30 am and started reading, marking references to Jesus Christ and the Atonement (separate colors) and we read until about 11:30 pm, me and elder Faber didn't finish all the way, but elder jones stayed up until 2 am to finish. after that we had one more talk to read and some more soul searching questions. it was all great, i felt the spirit a lot while reading BofM and the talks. and the questions made me realize more some things i need to work on, as a person and as a missionary.

i had a great time this holiday, we had fun teaching and some challenges with everyone being in Juarez.

until next time on "The Elder Luke Nielson Chronicles"

Elder Nielson

here is a picture of the border, the wall. It isn't building very quickly,