Florida, Week 8

Hi everyone!

Can't believe it's week 8 here already! That means it's been 14 weeks total that I've been gone, which is just over one-sixth of my mission now (cause my six weeks in the MTC counts as my first transfer). For the very first time, I understand where all of the missionaries are coming from when they say that time goes by so fast. Wow.

I had tradeoffs in Mandarin (by the St. John's River) with Sister Fonoifua this week and it was amazing. We didn't have a car or specific appointments, so we just spent the evening wandering around honing my contact approach. I have a new testimony of the Harvest Prayer, which is a particular finding tool that we use here in order to help people be more receptive to our message. Rather than just knocking a door and trying to relate something they say to the Restoration (which I'm iffy at), we tell people that we're missionaries and we're in the area, offering a special blessing of the Savior's peace and comfort on people's homes. And it WORKS. Everyone in Florida wants a little more Jesus in their life and since people can almost always feel the Spirit after the prayer, we're getting lots of unexpected opportunities and return appointments from this, which doesn't usually happen as much with door-to-door approaches. So this is great. 

Joshua feels we've made such a difference in his life that he's started telling his friends to meet with us too. The elders are teaching his friend Andrew and Sister Shumway and I are working with Jaime and Sierra (single mom and her 14-year-old daughter). Jaime and Sierra came to church yesterday (Sierra's actually been coming with Crystal and Cody for weeks) and they thought it was fabulous and cannot wait to find out more. Taught them the Plan of Salvation yesterday and committed them to baptism and the elders did the same with Andrew, so our ward now has 7 dates on for this month. Joshua will be getting baptized two weeks before Andrew and he can't wait to baptize his friend. There is just so much sincere desire from all of these people to learn and grow through this church that I feel like I can't even keep up with how fast they're progressing. I love them all so much. Also, the elders are trying to get permission from Bishop Marsh to perform Josh's baptism in the ocean and they are ever so pleased with themselves. Josh also says he has more friends he thinks would want to talk to us. We might be able to baptize the entire city of St Augustine as long as he refers them to us first. He is a stellar example of member missionary work, except that he's become a missionary before he even is a member. He's hoping he may be able to serve a full-time mission, too. Anyways, exciting times! We'll see how the next few weeks go, but they will be a wild ride for sure.

I have a newly-gained testimony of church tours, too. I never understood how it could be spiritual, but we went around and showed Jaime all of the artwork on the walls and just talking about that was an amazing experience. She had to leave halfway through, but she came back an hour later and brought Sierra as well and loved it. She had been given the elders' number, called, and asked to meet at the church, so the elders called us in a panic because they couldn't be alone in the building with a woman. And then they had to run and handed her off to us. That was the first time we met her, so it was totally on the fly. But it was perfect. That night, Naomi Collins (16, awesomest Young Woman EVER!) brought her friend Stephanie to church and we gave our second ever church tour (again, no preparation). We finished in front of the baptismal font and Naomi gave the most powerful testimony of baptism and the Holy Ghost I have ever heard from anyone. We're meeting with Stephanie this week and we're going to set a date with her, but we're pretty sure she'll say yes. She texted Naomi and asked if she gets baptized, can Naomi's dad (our 1st counselor) baptize her too? Naomi's soooo excited that her friend feels so strongly and wants to invite more people, too. The youth of this church are the most amazing youth in the world. There will be so much missionary work done by the people who aren't even called as full-time missionaries yet and their testimonies are unshakable. It's kind of like we're getting to see what was going on in Alma 16:16, where it says (cue copy/paste):

 16 And there was ^ano inequality among them; the Lord did pour out his Spirit on all the face of the land to prepare the minds of the children of men, or to prepare their ^bhearts to receive the word which should be taught among them at the time of his coming—

 17 That they might not be hardened against the word, that they might not be unbelieving, and go on to destruction, but that they might receive the word with joy, and as a ^abranch be grafted into the true vine, that they might enter into the ^brest of the Lord their God.

Sometimes I feel like there isn't a lot we do as missionaries when we find people who love to learn and grow. The members here are amazing at showing that love and support to their friends, with is incredible. It still doesn't mean that the work out here is easy, because it is not. There are tough days, for sure. But the blessings that are coming from our work are incredible. Anyway, that's about all I can think of now! Sorry about the millions of things in parentheses.

Love y'all,

Sister Nielsen

Pictures:

We went to Fort Matanzas for a P-day activity last week, so this is all of us on the ferry to the fort (not a private boat and not a beach, so we're not violating mission rules, don't worry). In order, it's Sister Shumway, me, Sister Wallentine, Sister Cline, Elder Tibbitts, Elder Andrade. Sister Wallentine really doesn't like boats, hence her expression.

There is always some sort of local wildlife on our car, which needs to be removed before we go anywhere. Especially around the church, the lizards are so thick it's hard to walk.

Our floor after any given study session (promise this wasn't posed). Well, my side of the floor; the ASL dictionary floated over from Sister Shumway's side. We felt bad enough to clean up after I took this picture.

Florida, Week 7

Hi, y'all!

First off, thanks to the ten or so concerned people who informed me that gators can jump. I hadn't known that before and I am justly chastened. But I still have all my appendages so I guess that the Lord protects His missionaries.

We spent this week talking with lots and lots of new people and it paid off: we got three new investigators through tracting alone! (Well, one was a referral from the elders but they found her by tracting.) Victor loves the Bible a ton (he can quote passages of it verbatim all the time), but he needs to overcome his doubts about organized religion so we gave him a Book of Mormon and are going through it with him. I have a ton of faith in the converting power of the Book of Mormon and the truths that are so plain in it, so I'm really excited. Janet is in her 60s and is going blind, so we go over to read the BoM with her. It's a great experience to study for someone else, because it feels like you're reading for the first time and rediscovering truth and that's when my personal study impacts me most powerfully. Jane is in her 50s and lives right by the elders, which is why they referred her. Her husband just died this year and she's looking for truth in religion, but she has the greatest faith that she'll see him again so I cannot wait to teach the Plan of Salvation tomorrow. Josh is doing great and a bit of a miracle happened this week: his parents were kind of against him taking the lessons because they thought that "the Mormon religion wasn't normal". They never really stayed to talk with us because they were always running in and out but the other night, we were on their porch and they stopped for a minute to talk. By some wild chance, I mentioned that I was an archaeology student and it turns out that they are all crazy about archaeology and have a house full of treasures they've dug up here and in Georgia and out west. So they brought out tons of their favorite stuff to show us and though we never got to talk with Josh about Alma because of curfew, he tells us that his parents now like us which is just miraculous. I think they might have us over for dinner this week.

We were cleaning out David Wood's garage this Saturday with the elders (he's a reactivated member and his kids Crystal and Cody are getting baptized November 9th!) when the elders got a call to go teach the Restoration to a member's friend who really wants to get baptized. They felt bad leaving David so they asked me and Sister Shumway to go over and teach her the Restoration. We went in our filthy work clothes and set a baptism date with Leah, who is 13 and adorable. She's been coming to church with the Hatfields for a while now and she's really decided that she wants this stability and ward family in her life. And what a blessing she will receive!

What else are we doing? We were invited to a contemporary Baptist church service Saturday night, which was a little like what I always imagined EFY to be, if they have rock bands at EFY. The bishop's wife of the other ward has an exercise class in a park three times a week so we went with the St Aug sisters today and it was very intense. I'm really reallllly out of shape, though in my defense, I haven't gained any mission weight yet. Supposedly the average weight gain for the Florida Jacksonville mission is 30 pounds... yeesh. But it was a lot of fun and made me miss the killer conditioning sessions of my lacrosse days. It was also pouring, which was a lot easier to run in than the regular humidity.

This week, we focused on teaching members to decouple the invitations they extend, which basically means saying "I love you a lot and I want to share with you something very dear to me, but no matter what your response to that is, it will never affect or change our relationship." Sharing the gospel with your friends doesn't mean that you drop them as soon as they show that they're not interested in the gospel or act strangely about them forever after. The strength of your relationship (whether you know someone well or hardly at all) has little to no effect on whether or not they'll choose to accept the gospel, but the opposite is true: when an invitation is extended, regardless of whether or not it is accepted, the relationship of the two people almost always grows deeper. So decouple your invitations! Most people will feel special and loved that you chose to share something personal that makes you so happy with them, even if they aren't looking for that at the moment. In all things show love and the Lord will bless you and your friends. 

The Lord hasn't ceased to pour out His miracles on the earth. Mormon tells us that the creation of the universe and of man was a miracle and we have so many witnesses of the miracles of Christ and the apostles, so since God cannot change, He is still a God of miracles today. We're told that because of unbelief and hardened hearts, people choose not to see miracles today. Mark, the investigator who invited us to Anastasia Baptist, told us about how medical technology today is a miracle: if someone in the Bible had been able to take a heart out of one person and give it to another person so they could live, that would be one of the most amazing things ever wrought by the power of God. It still is, but people don't see the miracles around them now. I was thinking a lot about what he say and reading in Mormon 8 and I found the source of the problem:  (copy/paste from lds.org for accuracy)

 20 And the reason why he ceaseth to do miracles among the children of men is because that they dwindle in unbelief, and depart from the right way, and know not the God in whom they should trust.

Well, that's pretty scary because that's all around us now. Luckily, the solution to help us is in the very next verse:

 21 Behold, I say unto you that whoso believeth in Christ, doubting nothing, whatsoever he shall ask the Father in the name of Christ it shall be granted him; and this promise is unto all, even unto the ends of the earth.

There are miracles all around us today and they ALL come about because of Jesus Christ. His Atonement is central to everything we have and are. My job right now is testify of the blessings of His Atonement in everything I do, but that responsibility won't go away when I take off my nametag and become Anna again. I am still a disciple and a witness and the best I can do will never be enough to thank Christ for His sacrifice for us. Isn't that the greatest? Elder Holland said that if we were ever to understand the Atonement perfectly, we would lose all desire to sin. Preach My Gospel tells us that as our understanding of the Atonement grows, we gain a greater desire to share it with others. It has real power to cleanse and to change, so study it and let the Holy Ghost teach you.  Anyway, that's about all I have. Love you all!

Sister Nielsen

Pictures:

Sister Shumway used to be a clown, so she is a balloon animal expert. This princess took 6 balloons to make. She so needs to teach me.

My shoes are completely falling apart, but I think this says more about the quality of the shoes than anything else. I superglued them back together and they hold up all right, as long as it's not raining.

Not the best picture I've ever seen, but I love Sister Mazer so much. She is one of the strongest people I've ever met. She and our husband took us out to dinner last P-day to celebrate Elder Cancel's last day in the mission.

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). 

Is it week 5 now?

Hey everyone,

I guess it is week 5, because transfers are in a week. Nope, I'm not training, though I guess there's still a chance I get called beforetomorrow night. But probably not. I think all the sisters are staying but only two of the elders are. But exciting! No clue how long I'll get to stay in St. Augustine but I'll enjoy it while I can. Thanks so much for the recipes, Mom, I'll see how many of them I can do here!

My sign language is still nonexistent and I can't read the alphabet at all when people spell out words fast, so that's one of my study focuses this week. Funny story: it's a little scary to drive in the car when songs are playing that Sister Shumway knows well, because she starts driving with her knees as she signs the lyrics. But we haven't died yet!

I got a few questions about the Jehovah's Witness church so I'll first clarify that No: I'm not going apostate or whatnot, but turns out we're allowed to attend other churches' services as long as they don't conflict with our own. It seems that often the missionaries make deals with investigators that if they come to church this Sunday, they will attend their services as well. Makes sense to me, because it's a little hypocritical if we invite the whole world to our church but then refuse to go to any other church on principle. Only rule is that we can't proselyte and I wouldn't want to. But the JWs are great fellowshippers and I met an awful lot of them. So the funny thing is that this week we've been running into Jehovah's Witnesses all over the neighborhoods where we tract and being able to say "Oh, do you go to Kingdom Hall down on Wildwood? I was there last Sunday!" has opened a lot of doors that otherwise would have been slammed in our faces. A lot of people think Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons are always at odds because our doctrines have differences and we are the two main proselyting religions but we're getting referrals from them, service opportunities, random people pulling over to talk to us and introduce their kids cause they recognized us... It's been really cool to see how the Lord works. Every Witness I've met has a really earnest desire to seek for truth, which I love and admire.

Another odd thing: more often than I would think possible, when we stop and talk to people on the street, they start telling us all about their past sins and lives of crime. And then they ask forgiveness. It's a little awkward because we have no authority to forgive sins; that's between them and God and we tell them that as soon as the conversation starts to dive that way. But it happens so often that it makes me wonder if this is a Southern thing? Because people consider us a form of clergy? No clue.

About our investigator, Josh, he's doing fantastically. He has so much desire to learn and be baptized and he loves every new thing he learns about the gospel. The elders are teaching him as well and he really hit it off with them, which is great. But it's not really us doing much at all; it's all the Spirit guiding everything. We were just the ones to extend the invitation. But he tells us that this message is the answer to his prayers, which is amazing to hear.

So for everyone who watched General Conference, wasn't it just amazing! I was kind of expecting a message about member missionary work, but I really wasn't anticipating two such energetic, ambitious talks in the same session. (Mom, I've gotta ask, are we related to S. Gifford Nielsen?) So in light of M. Russell Ballard's challenge for everyone to invite someone to hear the gospel by Christmas, I feel for ya. I'd love to help out if I can. My mission has been reading and using this amazing book called The Power of Everyday Missionaries and I challenge you ALL to find/check out/download it. I finally got my own copy on Thursday and I finished it Friday morning on a missionary schedule, so I promise you it's a fast read. It's written by Clayton M. Christensen, former Seventy, who you may recall that Elder Ballard mentioned, and this book illustrates why people often are afraid of member missionary work or do it clumsily and how missionary work can be natural and doable for ANYONE, no matter who you are/how outgoing you can be. It's inspired me to be the best member missionary ever but unfortunately, I'm a full-time missionary now, so I simply need to live vicariously through you all! So as you all work towards Elder Ballard's goal, I'll be sending you some of my favorite bits of advice and perhaps how I've seen it applied here in St. Augustine to help you out. Before, I would just be a pushy missionary trying to get busy folks involved in something uncomfortable, but I really want to help everyone fulfill the Lord's commandments. That's my only goal here, so I'll strive to be un-irritating!

The other sisters have a drainage pond near their apartment (Florida law states that there much be a certain number of cubic meters of runoff capacity for a certain square meterage of paved surface, so there are runoff ponds everywhere). Most attract all sorts of exotic animals, including flamingos, spoonbills, and in the case of the sisters' pond, an 8-foot alligator named Freddy. So the other day we went out to chuck bread to the fish in hopes of luring Freddy over and this time it worked like a charm. He scooted right up to the dock with his large pale mouth open, looking like some ancient behemoth of the deep swum right out of a fossil (apparently they look normal to Floridians who've seen them all their lives, but then again, armadillos look weird to me too when I see them out here). I was hanging right over to watch him while Sister Shumway clung to the back of my shirt, because he was less than 3 feet below us and I could have touched him. Now I know people always use crocodiles and alligators as metaphors for sin or the world's traps or whatnot, but I never knew they hunted like this. As Freddy came over, the thousands of small black fish knew he was coming and what he was and wisely swam away. But then he gets right up against the dock and freezes completely, allowing himself to drift. The fish forget he is there and start to get braver, swimming closer and around his head. If I drop a piece of bread right between Freddy's bulging eyes, some enterprising fish comes up, nibbles, and gets away safe. Still Freddy waits until suddenly there's a huge swirl and splash as he spins around and pops up again 15 feet away and there are a few fish missing completely. The fish are all agitated, especially when he comes back, but then they calm down and the whole cycle starts again. You can draw from Freddy whatever metaphors and conclusions you like, but it made me wonder: what about the missing fish? The other fish saw for sure what happened to them but they still went to repeat the mistakes that their fishy buddies made and maybe get eaten in turn, all for some chunks of bread I was tossing in. So I guess my goal from now on is to not get so excited over a piece of bread that I fail to notice that it's sitting on an alligator's head. It's a good thing I'm not a fish. But mostly I'm just excited I finally saw a gator. So anyway, sorry I can't be more powerful and inspiring in letters home but I love you all and hope you have an amazing week! 

Sister Nielsen

Florida, Week 4

Hi everyone,

There are only two weeks left and then it's transfers again. We have a lot of missionaries coming in so the odds of me training are really high, because there aren't enough sisters to go around and the general trend is that every sister trains after their first transfer. That's pretty scary since I'm still not done with my training and I have no clue what I'm doing, but we have 36 new missionaries coming in this transfer and someone has to do it, I guess.

This week we decided to have more of an emphasis on contacting people in the street, because we need to have more people to teach. We actually managed to find someone to teach as well! His name is Josh and in the words of the elders, he's solid. He's 24 and a chem student at St. John's. We've taught him the Restoration and part of the Plan of Salvation and he really seems to be seeking for truth, which is just fantastic. He came to church yesterday for the Primary program, which is the best day ever to come, and he agreed last night to be baptized on the 13th! It's pretty great.

Yesterday, we just ran all over the place. Besides having an investigator at church and all, we went to the Jehovah's Witness church at12:30 with the elders, which was a neat experience, and made it back in time for the ward's linger-longer, where we ate all their food, and then visited a member in the hospital before our lesson with Josh. Brother Stephens is hilarious and should be out soon, but in the meantime someone has to stay with his wife Dotty, so we did that for a few hours this morning. Also, we had the RS broadcast on Saturday, which I didn't know missionaries could go to! I've been reading old conference editions of the Ensign for studies all week, so I'm really excited to see it all next Saturday and Sunday.

I promise I haven't lost ALL my Portuguese; we have a Temple Square missionary from Brazil here and I was able to have a decent conversation with her. Sister Zanella is from a town just a couple hours south of Curitiba, so her accent is pretty much what I'll be learning and her temple is the Curitiba one. She's made me a lot less worried about having to relearn it all, for sure.

This is us at a restaurant

Here's a mission word for you that I've never heard: trunky. I dunno if it's just a Jacksonville thing or a missionary thing or both, but it means homesickness, except not for people who just came out, but for people who are about to go home. So if you're going home in two weeks and all you can think about is home, that's trunky. Yeah, I dunno. Oh, funny story: we were talking to Sister Collins in the ward, who is pretty sick, and we were telling her that we would pray for her. Sister Shumway was wearing a necklace of huge jade beads and was fingering it as she said it and Sister Collins was kind of freaked out because it looked exactly like a rosary. S. Cline and S. Wallentine have a Buddha statue in their apartment, for some reason. It holds all their loose change. We're just all heretics!

I taught a lesson on obedience in Gospel Principles and got to read this great talk by Thomas S. Monson called Obedience Brings Blessings. He talks about how Jesus Christ was a perfect example of obedience, which I guess I'd never really thought about. I know He submitted his will to the Father, but I never thought that He'd really had to make a hard choice, since He already understood His role and purpose. But I guess the biggest way in which He was obedient wasn't by never doing wrong (though He never did), but by never being prideful of His calling or disloyal to his Father. So as a missionary, as a direct representative of Jesus Christ, I need to be obedient to my calling, not just by following all the rules but also by not being annoying and stuck up. There's a real Christlike aspect to obedience that I never considered, which is never deviating, even in your mind, from what you know is right.

Anyway, that's it! love ya! 

Anna

Florida, Week 3

Oi familia e amigos,

I promise I'm still alive and hanging in there. But these three weeks feel like three centuries (not in a bad way). There's no way that I've seen and done and learned this much so far. but I guess I have! I'm a little short on time (aren't I always) so let's see how much I can get in before Sister Shumway flips my chair or something.

We got in the minorest of minor car accidents last Monday. We got run off of a one-lane road by a large truck and ran over a stump, cracking some of the plastic pieces on the bottom of our Corolla on the right side. But it's all minor cosmetic work and won't be a big deal to fix and in the meantime our car still runs perfectly. Sister Shumway still feels really bad, though. But Melvin at the auto shop also told us that he's looking for a religious change in his life and that he loves to talk to us so I guess it was meant to happen. We'll probably go back this week both to turn in the car and to talk to him some more.

The rain here can be absolutely crazy. It's happened twice that we're driving down the road on a totally dry day and see a cloud of mist 50 yards ahead. You barely have time to think "Huh, that's odd" before suddenly it's raining so hard that you can't see out your windshield with the wipers on high going 25 mph. My companion is unperturbed but I'm gonna have to learn to drive in this eventually and that scares me. It's great! Still haven't seen a gator, though. It gets dark around 8, which is a bit of a problem because people get annoyed when we knock "in the middle of the night", even though the sun has hardly gone down. We try to prevent this by scheduling appointments as late in the evening as possible, so we can use between 5 and 8 for actual street proselyting, but the end of DST soon will make our case a little more difficult. Oh well, hopefully people think we're less threatening as two women walking in the dark rather than two men. It's funny; we live in an apartment complex with a lot of young college students, so they occasionally try to invite us to parties. But we can't actually proselyte there, sadly, since it's outside our area and we'd have to refer them to Sister Cline and Sister Wallentine. 

We had tradeoffs this week, so I went with Sister Whiting to Mandarin, a town on the St. John's River (the hugest river ever; it's more like an inland bay). It was really neat to see someone else's style of teaching and especially of contacting and door approaches, but I have SO MUCH to learn. Seriously, sometimes I get really scared by how much I don't know how to do. You would think by now I've gotten the hang of it but no such luck! Thankfully Sister Shumway prevents me from messing up too badly. We're an awful lot alike, we've discovered, so companionship inventory is usually just us saying how much we love the other, because neither of us has a single issue. It's just fantastic. And we like the same sorts of books, so we're each compiling booklists for the other to read once we get home.

We work a lot more closely with the rest of our district than I would have anticipated; perhaps it's just because there are so many missionaries in this mission and my district all live so close and all have cars, but we do a lot of projects (such as service or proselyting ideas that we come up with) together, as well as scheduled meetings. I guess I always thought missionary work was two or four people in an apartment, alone in a city, seeing other missionaries mybe once a month. But not here! It's great. We blitzed (all descended on one area) St. George Street in Old St. Augustine on Saturday in hopes that we could get people to come to a church tour on Sunday. Sadly, no luck, but we were on tradeoffs and Sister Cline spoke in ASL to a bunch of deaf teens for 20 minutes while I stood there stupidly. Sister Cline is also really pretty, so we got hit on by a few drunks and she had zero patience for anyone who was so plastered, not that she showed it. But the way she extricated us from those situations was hilarious. Funny story: we were walking along a highway last week and we saw a guy on the other side. S. Shumway shouted over and started talking to him and I was mentally like "Silly companion, you just don't talk to people across the highway". But he jaywalked four lanes to talk to us and was so aggressive to us at first (he was Baptist) that I was about to write him off completely as not a good contact. But Sister Shumway bore her testimony so powerfully that he asked more and more questions and we were able to give him the whole first lesson of the Restoration there on the street. He asked us for a copy of the Book of Mormon before we offered because he wanted to know for himself if it was true. He also said he would be in touch because he would have a lot of questions. He turned out to be an amazing guy with and amazing life story would loved talking to us and I almost missed him several times. That must be why we have companions with us because maybe they are listening to the Spirit more at that moment than you are. 

This week we got the Ensign and there's an article in there that everyone should read, because it's just so awesome. I felt like the magazine was levitating off the desk as I read it. It's called "His Grace Is Sufficient" and talks about the grace of God, which I guess is something I never really understood. Some people believe that the grace of God is all they need to be saved and that they have to do nothing, with isn't true. But it also isn't a booster rocket that kicks in once we have exhausted our own fuel supply. Jesus's atonement pays for our debt in full. It is finished. But we need the power of grace to transform ourselves so that we can feel comfortable returning and living with God. If there is no change in ourselves, we won't want to do it. Brother Wilcox compares this to a piano teacher, a child, and a mother. The mother pays the piano teacher and then encourages the child to practice. The child's practicing doesn't pay for the lessons or repay the mother, but it shows that the gift is appreciated. Sometimes the child complains about practicing or doesn't see why he has to (sorry, mom) but the mother sees how it transforms the child and his talents so he can live his life on a higher plane. And often when practicing, the child makes mistakes and hits wrong notes. But that NEVER means that the child is unworthy to keep practicing! We don't have just two options: perfection or failure! We just keep going and over time, we are transformed and changed by the process of grace and the pattern of repepntance in our lives. The grace of Christ is sufficient: sufficient to transform us and help us for as long as the process takes. I don't do the article justice, but I encourage you all to read it because it helped me so much. Anyway, I'm out of time but I love you all!

Sister Nielsen

Pics:

Sister Shumway randomly put on her running shoes one morning. When I asked why, she just stared blankly at her feet and said "It seemed right in my head!"

Me with my prideful owl

Sister Shumway during planning (ain't she cute?)

Week 2 in Florida

Hey everybody!

This week has been pretty long and crazy, but the upside of that is that I feel I've been here for months, rather than just two weeks. I feel like I can barely remember a time before I arrived here; I've learned so much since then. Probably two weeks from now, I will look back on this letter and laugh at my ignorance.

We've been able to do some teaching this week, despite having appointments fall through, which is fantastic because I need all the practice teaching in English I can get. Just last night we met a really awesome family who were simply full of questions about our church and I was able to teach the whole first lesson for the first time not in Portuguese, which was an adventure. But I think it went fairly well. We visited a recent convert, Kevin, and gave him a lesson in sign which I was sort of able to follow. He can speak fairly well and I could handle extremely basic conversation in ASL, so it was all right, though there were a few times where I had to nudge Sister Shumway and ask her to translate something Kevin had said for me. I'm still really rough on gospel vocab, but I was able to talk to him about his dogs and the triathlon he's training for at the moment. We were also able to meet with one of our current investigators, Amanda, and give her the third lesson while her son Mikey chewed on my nametag. It's the strangest thing: small children and animals are attracted to me like never before. Anyway, Amanda was entirely out of food and called us in desperation with the last few minutes on her phone. Luckily, there had been a zone meeting that morning and some elders dropped off cans and boxes of pasta they didn't want, so we just went to the church and grabbed some boxes of food for her. There's a great disparity between rich and poor here in Jacksonville: lots of gated communities and beachy resorts interspersed with really humble homes and some people in positions so dire it would make you cry. It makes you stop and think about what you have or want to have and if it really matters. 

We stopped by one of our recent converts, Derek, last Monday to see how he was doing. He's 9 and is this adorable little redhead who loves to run around and experiment with things to see if they work. He lives with his dad, Stephen, and a less active member who is their landlord, which is how the missionaries found Derek. Stephen didn't mind his son getting baptized, but at first when the missionaries began teaching, he wouldn't even talk to them. This time he stayed for the lesson and the prayer and then thanked me and and Sister Shumway in a really heartfelt way for the blessing we've been in his life and in the life of his son. First, it's astonishing when anyone considers your presence a blessing and second, it's amazing to see so much of a change in someone's heart. It's a real miracle.

We wanted to get more clothes last P-day so we (the four sisters) went thrift shopping at the local Goodwill and had a blast. I got a few more skirts that are really long (but not quite maxi; you can see my ankles so they're allowed!) I'm not used to really long skirts so I kind of feel like a nun but I really like them. (Actually, my companion keeps calling me a Jedi because I like to wrap myself up in a really long blanket and trail it around the house during studies and apparently I look like Darth Sidious?) Sister Cline and Sister Wallentine bought some really ridiculous suspenders for Elder Coleman and Elder Jenkins (our zone leaders who are also in our district) and forced them to wear them. We might go again today to search out more goofiness and get Sister Shumway some more clothes.

Little-known fact: the Florida Jacksonville mission is one of the few missions that is an authorized Facebook mission! Right now, we're testing the pilot program before it gets sent out to all the missions and Sister Shumway just got called as a Facebook missionary! So she gets to spend an hour a day on the internet chatting with investigators and converts. Before you ask, odds are extremely slim that I will ever be recommended as a Facebook missionary, because they have no clue how long I'll be here and they won't want to go to the effort of training someone who could up and leave at any moment. I'm quite relieved by that, though it's cool to see this program in action. I'm just going to do language study when she's on the computer to use time more efficiently. 

There was a really big Mumford and Sons concert in St. Augustine last week and thousands descended on the downtown area, so we avoided it like the plague. We've still got to visit the ancient part of the city and the forts sometime and being a history geek, I'm really excited for that.

I keep running into this problem where people are really surprised to see me instead of Sister Lewis, Sister Shumway's former companion. We don't really look alike at all, but since I suppose I sort of look blond, people confuse us a lot. That's sort of my nickname at the moment, I guess, though some of the members call me "farm girl" because we helped the Collins family move the other day and apparently I can lift more furniture and boxes than they expected. Oh, and apparently (according to our district leader) I have issues with pride, because I refuse to let him and Elder Cancel carry things for me or lend us their car when ours was in the show. So my nickname and ASL name since is Sister Pride, but just to him. Mostly me and Sister Shumway roll our eyes and pray for charity.

So I've been reading in the epistles of Paul this last week and in his first epistle to the Corinthians, he encounters a problem where the saints in that city are dividing into churches based on who baptized them and saying that they're better because they're the people of Paul or Apollos or whoever else. Paul explains to them that a missionary is just a person and not necessarily a great, noble, or powerful person, because God works by using weak and simple things to spread his work. 1 Cor 1:26-27, he says that "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty". in the next chapter, verses 4 and 5, he says that "my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God". This sort of hit me like an anvil as I was just doing my morning reading, because as a missionary, I am becoming increasingly aware of my many, many weaknesses and flaws. My desire to change and improve is good, but I need to remember that this is the way that God works to bring about his purposes. That's actually the whole point of sending me as a missionary, because I'm certainly not perfect, so if people listen to our message, it's because of the Spirit, not because of anything I do. This is a pretty marvelous promise to have. Anyway, that's about it for this week!

Love you!

Anna

P.S. Mom, I did get the pictures and the Nosy Notes; thanks so much! I may lend them to Sister Wallentine if she wants them. Also, can you send me some of the family recipes that we use the most? Especially cookie ones? I'd love the one for Fresh Apple cookies but other than that, surprise me. Thanks!

PPS. Pictures are me beating Sister Pecchia's rugs, the most attractive picture I could find of both me and Sister Shumway, and us boxing the elders in at the church parking lot today. They always try to do this to us, so justice is served. I promise we're usually grownups

PPPS. One more thing, I totally forgot again!

Our mission has a blog, so you can stalk our pictures at http://floridajacksonvillemissionnews.blogspot.com/

And my address, if anyone wants it, is as follows:

420 Villa San Marco #201

St. Augustine, FL 32086

Love you all!