Florida, Week 6

Hello everyone!

Sorry I sort of forgot to warn you, but since transfers are on a Wednesday, P-day is always the day before. So I haven't died. We had transfer calls last night and I will be moving to... St Augustine! I get another transfer right here! Which is great, because I'm quite growing to like it. In fact, all of the sisters are staying here so we'll be having an awesome time.

I only have a few minutes for emails so I'll try to keep this brief. In the meantime, Sister Shumway is making balloon animals and hats for all of us and fulfilling her missionary duty of talking with people on Facebook. Unfortunately, not many of them grasp that she only speaks English, so it's always really exciting. But luckily, there are a couple who are from Brazil so I have a lot of fun translating for her. Not that I'm much better than what Google Translate comes up with, though.

This week at church, we were unexpectedly called upon to teach Relief Society at the start of third hour, but we're used to that and the topic was missionary work, in the context of the teachings of Lorenzo Snow. The lesson went amazingly, all thanks to Sister Shumway. I'm really lucky to have her as my trainer.

Josh has been reading the Book of Mormon and simply loving it. He texts us all the time to tell us what he learned and how he felt while reading it, which is just amazing to hear. I know this is what we're supposed to be doing all the time as missionaries, but it's still incredible to see it happen. He has a few things to work out so we're working towards a baptism date of November 9th. 

One amazing blessing that I've noticed from missionary service is that I now incredibly have the ability to remember all sorts of people's names. I still am not perfect at it, but the fact that I remember members, people we meet on the street for a moment, potential investigators I've never met, people's children and pets, or whatever else... I wouldn't have been able to do this before. It's been a real miracle in my life. 

Because I love to irritate people about member missionary work, I have a bit of advice for you this week. Elder Ballard asked everyone to "extend an invitation" to a friend or stranger, but he left it up to all of is to decide what exactly to extend. So what is an invitation? It could be anything from church to dinner at your house to giving someone a copy of The Family: A Proclamation. So use your imaginations and the Spirit as you decide what is a natural and appropriate way to reach out to someone. The Lord knows your heart and the hearts of every person He has placed in your life and he blessed everyone who seeks to bless another's life. Remember that everyone has their agency and if they reject your invitation, they're not rejecting you. That doesn't mean you're not successful. You're always successful when you act in faith and obey the commandments of the Lord and you will always, always be blessed. Anyway, I'm out of time but I love you all and pray for you!

Tchau!

Sister Nielsen

And P.S. I'm so glad to hear that the McLean Ward got sister missionaries! There's an amazing thing we do here that I think the young women in Virginia can do as well: you can serve a mini-mission with the sisters! You spend anywhere from three days to three weeks with them, just following them around and learning everything they do. It's the greatest. 

 Pictures: for our last district meeting, Elder Andrade had the brilliant idea of building companionship unity with an eating contest. I dunno quite how that logic worked, but it was crazy fun. Thanks to years of practicing the Cheeseball Challenge with the McLean 1st Ward Young Women, I totally destroyed in the cheerio-eating portion. Lost on the jello though because I was laughing too hard (and I don't really like jello).