Dia de Diamantes!!‏

Whoo..

For once in my life, I feel calm at this computer, the difference is, I prayed for help, and so far I¨m doing a pretty good job at managing my time, ha, such a simple thing, but it really just stresses me out to try to respond to your emails and share some of these awesome experiences with you all.

Okay, so I would have to say this has been one of the most Babylonic weeks of my entire life, festivas de España are intense! And that is why this week and I am MOST grateful for the safe haven of our capilla (chapel) that I was able to feel yesterday in our Sunday reunions. I love our ward so much, we had our fast and testimony meeting yesterday, and we just have these rock solid members, not a single gap at the microphone... I will always remember these people, many of them our really new members, but their faith and the way they put God first in their lives amazes me. Not to mention, our sweet little Lucia, that was baptized two Sundays ago is now serving in the Relief Society Presidency, increible, this woman is a rock, like she just gave up smoking last month and now she´s preparing for the temple with an eye single to the glory of God. And I¨m sorry, we don´t really use last names here, but there´s this family, Rosi, Carmen, Monolo, and they were the strongest catholics and now are the strongest Mormons, and they´re still waiting upon their other siblings to choose this path, but they don´t doubt. The thing that I love about these converts is that they don´t take anything for granted, they´ve been searching and preparing for this Gospel their entire lives, even though they didn´t realize it, and now that they have it, they´re never looking back!

Anyways, just a heads up, today is the first day of our new traslado (transfer) and I am extremely grateful to report that I get to be with Hermana Ross for another six weeks, she´s been in Murcia for seven months already and so we really weren´t sure if she´d be leaving or not.. And don´t tell her, but I prayed a lot of times that she could stay here in Murcia, she´s just what I need, and obviously Heavenly Father agrees, on the day of transfer calls from President, I was so nervous, ready to drop my heart at any moment if we got a call from President, but we didn´t!! Anyways,

K, sorry for the rambling.. This week! Okay, I say Babylonic, because it was another entire week of festivas! Except this time it wasn´t Easter related, Spring instead! So Tuesday, we had a bit of a forewarning, it was supposed to be some kind of a Mardi Gras, and so we planned smart and set tons of citas (appointments) to avoid being stuck in the streets with the borachos (drunk people) but guess what, everybody and fallared us (direct translation, not sure, failed, didn´t show up) and so we tried to visit members and menos activos, but our plan B was weak, and so Tuesday was kind of a rough day. There´s a not a lot of value, let me rephrase, there is NO value in trying to contact the borachos or the people around these areas, so we were taking a lot of back streets and trying to find others. It was just really sad to see, I mean this holiday, used to be a beautiful Spanish tradition, all of the girls and guys dress up in the traditional vestidos and they have, of course, a bunch of parades. BUt now it´s all about the alcohol and the jovenes (young people). Solo para que sepa, just so you know, it´s the busiest day in the hospital, and as we were contacting we overheard a couple groups rushing off to visit their unconscious friends in the hospitals.. Needless to say, kind of a dark and dreary day.

Things brightened up though! As en entire mission we had set apart this last Friday, Dia de Diamantes (Day of Diamonds) to only contact or tract for the ENTIRE day, we found out about this about 10 days in advance, so we were all pumped up, we fasted as a mission the day before so that we could have more direction in where to go finding and set goals for the numbers of futuros that we wanted to find! And as a mission, we found 1400 people, in this day, that are que tiene interes para aprender acerca del Evangelio de Jesucristo, as in 1400 people offered us their telephone number and direccion (address) , we refer to these people as futuros!! It was one of the most exciting days, our President had promised that we would see miracles and that we will baptize people that we would find on this day. It was the best, that morning when H Ross and I left the piso (apt.) we were stoked, we had fasted and prayed, and selected specific streets for each hour and we reallly did find a lot of people. It´s just a matter now of deciding who to focus on and go visit! We had so much fun though, we talked to hundreds of people, I heard my first swear words, since being set apart as a missionary, not my favorite at all.. Anyways

As far as our investigators go, we really had a lot of opposition, we´re coming up on Mari´s date for baptism, and we were only to meet with her once this week, not without a LOT of attempts, and Andrea, her daughter, we´ve set up 3 different citas to teach the Law of Chastity and the 10 commandments with them together, and they keep fallaring us, so it´s been frustrating. But we´re not giving up on em.

Also, this week we taught a mother and son, for the first time, Jean and Tania, they´re from English class, and they´re awesome! We set a date for baptism for the two of them, Jean is only 11 but he has sincere concern about his salvacion, I love that, we´ve seen that with several investigating families, a lot of the times it´s the children trying to push their parents along! Whatever it takes right?

Well, I gotta run, I hope you enjoy the photos!! Love you all,

Hermana Nelson

Familia!!‏

Woo..

There´s a lot, I feel like I¨ve really been neglecting to share about the Spanish and better yet Murcian culture, so I thought I´d offer a few descriptions. Murcia, is a relatively big city, H Ross and I cover the central and souther portion and the other Elders Get the Northern half and pueblos, and we also have like 4 or 5 pueblos ourselves.. Which are just smaller little towns, in the mountains or just further out of town? Today, H Ross and I visited the biggest city Cathedral and the Casino, which I don´t really understnad what it is, kind of like a super fancy, couple 100 year old country club.. Super pretty though, someday I´ll send pictures.. But the Cathedral is absolutely gorgeous! Kind of nice to get a chance to do some of those things, they were actually in the middle of misa (mass) when we were in there.

Um, so we´ve had a lot of Huelgas (strikes) recently, for who knows what.. There was actually a huge one last week, it almost felt like Newsies. It was like a parade in the street with tons of people marching along, so obviously the bus system was not intact and we just had to do a lot more walking in between appointments, so that eats up our time, but other than that, it wasn´t scary or anything. We just did our best to avoid the crowds.

This past week we got to see a lot of the Semana Santa which is basically shut everything down to have 4 ¨processions¨ a day, which are, again, a lot like a parade, but all of the people dress up and they carry statues of their Saints or Jesus carrying the cross, it´s really interesting, I don´t know if I really like the Spirit of it. I´ll be honest, it just feels sort of wicked. But that´s how they celebrate Easter here, for a whole week, and you know they say that Catholics just got to Mass twice a year, Easter and Christmas, welp, it´s more like, not, most of the people just hang around for the big Procession Sunday, and call it good. Anyways, those processions have been interesting, we only saw a minute of one. It kind of struck me as ironic, really religion is more of a tradition that a way of life, because 90% of the catholics we talk to in the streets are not practicing, but it when it comes time to do these big festivals and things, they are ¨religiously¨ participating and they take it SO seriously.

Other fun facts, Murcia is famous for her lemons and oranges I´ve never tasted such delicious oranges in my life as here? So you find that everything comes in lemon flavor, kinda fun. It´s pretty green, there´s little stretch we pass on the way to our capilla (church) that we call the jungle! It´s super pretty, but once again, we live in a big city, so it´s mostly just buildings and things. Oh, I¨ve gotten lots of questions about the food.. It´s different, nothing to crazy, they just have interesting combinations of food.. They love to just throw fried eggs onto things. I don´t know, I guess all the ¨ weird¨ food I´ve become accustomed to. Have to admit, H Ross and I got duped the other day, we ate brains without knowing it, and afterward when we looked up the name  in the dictionary we both wanted to vomit.. So, that´s different?

Okay, now for the real stuff, Oh man, ups an downsof missionary work, I thought I´d just share the highlights!!

I¨m most grateful that Heavenly Father hears and answers our prayers.. We´ve been working with Mari and Andrea, mother and daughter from Ecuador. They have a whole family, but the brothers and father aren´t interested in the gospel, that´ll change. But anyways, Mari, was a golden find, total miracle, how H Ross encountered her, the week before I got to Murcia. But anyways, we´ve been teaching them, and Andrea has just been really lukewarm about everything, however, she listens to all of the lessons, follows her mom to church and to our english classes.. But just hásn´t really opened her heart. Well, in the last few weeks or so, she´s been faced with this super big decision, she would never tell us what it was, but she and Mari kept asking us to pray for her. So we did, and let me tell you, we´ve prayed and prayed, and we´ve just been wanting for her so bad to take this to the Lord, seek his guidance right. Well, something in there clicked, obviously she showed a little bit of faith, because she got this miracle answer, at the eleventh hour in the crossroads of this huge decision, and the night she told us about it was actually just after English class. They just so happened to be the only ones that came (thank goodness, else we woudln´t have had the chance to talk). But she finally told us what it was she was deciding between, and she told us how God had answered her prayer, and that she is pregnant!!! So, I guess that kind of gives away her big decision, but she´s really open about it, or at least now she is.. Anways, the trick now is helping her realize how she needs to act on what she´s been given, we´ve invited her to baptism, a few times now, and she´s praying now to decide whether to be baptized this month with her MOm!! Anyways, really neat.

We also, set a baptismal date with an old investigator, James, and then he didn´t show up for church or answer our calls, gotta love that. I have SO much more I want to share, seriously though, everyday, when I put my heart into this work and we do our best, we see so many miracles. Numbers of miracles, there are NO coincidences in the work of the Lord, it´s all just a matter of HIs timing. It´s been a good week, tough for me, if I¨m being honest, but good, I know that Heavenly Father loves all of His children, and he answers all of our prayers, but there really is only one way to return to Him and that is through our Savior Jesus Christ. And the only way we can accept his sacrifice is through our faith, repentance and baptism with the authority of God. These simple truths are powerful and the most important!

Love, Hermana Nelson

I Believe in Miracles!!

Family

I hope one day I can learn to manage 60 minutes of time, to write Pres Clegg, my 15 family members personally, read their emails as well, write this letter and upload pictures...Yep, we´ll write that down for a Mission Goal.

Anyways, first off, Lucia got baptized yesterday!! As of the last week, we didn´t even have a fecha (date). It was the coolest thing, Lucia is one of a few of what we call ëternigators¨or eternal investigators that we have, she´s been taking charlas (lessons) and working with missionaries and attending church every week for over a year, and within the last few weeks she´d finally been able to meet the requirements for baptism.. But then there was this gap of not having the faith to take that next step!! She was just waiting on the shores like the Brother of Jared and his family (See Ether 2, they wasted 4 years) anyways, we had this Noche de Hogar (family night) planned with her and this other family in our ward that are super close with her. And in our nightly planning, H Ross and I received the lesson from heaven, it´s not like it was spectacular, but it was exactly what she needed to hear, which was quite obvious, because we left their home witha  baptismal date for Lucia the following weekend. Lucia was baptized and confirmed  yesterday right before Conference. Now, I don´t know everything about Lucia, I haven´t been there every step of the way like the other missionaries, but I can tell you how precious it was to see her make this decision and follow through with it. It was one of the most powerful baptisms I have ever witnessed, when she came up out of the water, she just burst out in tears and embraced Neri for a good 10 or 15 seconds, it was like everything she´s been fighting and all of the pressure and weight of all of whatever just released and was gone in that moment. So tender.

I don´t really have any more time, because I´m awesome and took too long with other things, but I just wanted to kind of share that this week I´ve had a couple experiences, where I¨ve just been knocked off my socks with gratitude. I truly feel blessed, I have everything I could ever want or need in this life, I know my purpose here, I know my Heavenly Father lives, and that I can communicate with him through prayer, and I´ve got all of the tools to return to live with Him again with my family FOREVER!

I really loved Conference, I learned so much, and can´t wait to start applying some of the personal revelation I received to be a better missionary and representative of my Savior, Jesus Christ.

Love you all,

Hermana Nelson