Home Sweet Camarin

We had another great week this week. Sister Jocelyn was baptized last Saturday and she received the Gift of Holy Ghost on Sunday. It was a wonderful baptismal service and Sister Jocelyn bore a very strong testimony about how she knew that this church was true. We are sure that she will stay active in the church. She has great fellow-shippers and friends in the church and she also has a very strong testimony about the truthfulness of this church. Our next goal is to get her to the temple to do baptisms for the dead. Unfortunately none of our other investigators were able to attend church last Sunday. We have been struggling with getting our investigators to church. We are able to find lots of new investigators every week but we just can not get them to go to church. We have been trying to improve our commitments and our invitations these last few weeks, but we still have not seen too much of a difference. We are still trying to figure out what we can do better or improve in order to get them to go church. 

Our recent converts are doing great and still progressing. They still attend church every Sunday and are participating in the ward and youth activities. Most of our recent converts are about to finish their RC reteaching lessons. We are very happy with their progression and desire to continue to strengthen their testimonies. 

I am grateful for the opportunity to be companions with Elder Alejandro. He is a very consecrated missionary. He has taught me so much these last two transfers. He has help me immensely with my Tagalog and my teaching. He worked as hard as he could until the very end. He truly has been a wonderful example for me. 

Also, we had transfer announcements this week. ( the reason I didn't email yesterday, sorry I forgot to tell you) And of course Elder Alejandro is going home, so I will be staying in Camarin for another transfer. This will make 5 transfers or 7 1/2 months. But I don't mind, I really like this area and the time flies by anyway. But my new companion is Elder Alcala. He is a pretty young missionary ( younger than me, like 4 1/2 or 6 months I think) and he has never been a zone leader before. So I will kind of be his trainer/helper. But I have only heard good things about him, so I am very excited. I am happy he is another Filipino. I love to ask them questions about the conjugations and grammar. And also, Elder Perkins (my old kabahay) was called to be an Assistant, so he is back in the Camarin apartment. He is companions with Elder Goodwin, a Elder from Idaho Falls. He is nice and home grown. We get along really well and we love to joke around with each other, so I am excited to be their kabahays again. 

The Camarin Zone is doing well. The missionaries in our zone worked very hard this transfer and they showed a lot of improvement. We are excited to see how well they will do this upcoming transfer. Remember how I told you our zone goal was 23 baptisms? Well we ended up only getting 20 baptisms this transfer. But that is still really good because last transfer our zone only had 4 baptisms. So that is improvement! 

+Mother's Day Calls+ 

So we need to set another time and date for the Mother's Day calls. You have the options of the 8th or 9th of May. Whatever time you guys want. We can do the same time as last time, if that worked for you guys? My plan was to call on May 9th, (Monday here, Sunday for you) around 9 o'clock my time. So around 7ish p.m. for you guys. But have a family council and let me know what you guys decide. 

And to answer Mom's question if I get I get discouraged, ummm not really, I get frustrated sometimes, like when I know what to say but the words won't flow out smoothly in Tagalog, or when I lose my focus during a lesson or something, Or when our investigators don't go to church...;) But usually that only lasts for a little while. The mission is really teaching me to be a lot patient, patient with other people, myself, and patient during the hard times. Usually I just think of all I have been blessed with and the Eternal perspective and all my frustration or discouragement goes away. 

Thanks for all you do and all your prayers. Keep striving to improve everyday. I Hope Adelaide feels better! I am grateful for this opportunity to serve a mission and help other people grow and also help myself grow. Looove you all. 

Pagmamahal, 

Elder Nielsen

Ps. Sorry no pictures. Next week na lang!