Week 75: Taking out the Trash

Buenos Dias a Todos!!!

This week was a great week and definitely a turning point in my mission! I have been doing contacts for almost my whole mission but there was always a little bit of fear, almost no faith, and not too much effort unless they were golden. But this week I lost all fear in my contacts, I put my faith to the test, I gave it my all, and we planted the seeds.

My companion taught me a valuable lesson about contacts, he taught me that they work. My companion has almost the same amount of time as me, and about half as many baptisms, but as always I asked how he found them. And unlike every other missionary, he has the majority of his baptisms from contacts. It was a living testimony that they work, so I decided to make them work.

Every day this week we worked as hard as we could to contact and talk to 20 people a day, and we saw the miracles. This week we have 13 appointments with future investigators and many of them are families, so we will see if they are willing to take the next step in the path of conversion. 

I finally feel like a missionary that is proud to say that he has a good amount of time in the mission because I finally feel like I enjoy doing every part of the mission work, including contacts.

This week we contacted a lady named J who was pretty interested in God and his teachings. We didn't have much time with her but we gave her a Book of Mormon and made an appointment for Thursday. On Thursday we passed by and started teaching and she started crying because she was passing for lots of pain and stress in her family because her parents are old and sick and dying. We had a very spiritual lesson and it was wonderful. Today we have another lesson with her. She is the best hope we have of a baptism this month so if you could pray for her that would be awesome.

This week I had a Deja-Vu of my Valparaiso days because a group of 7 men were drinking and relaxing in a plaza. When we passed  by they started making comments and my Valparaiso instinct turned on and we went of to say hi to them. They invited us to sit by them so we did. Then they started asking us the typical questions of "How long are you in Chile, how much money do they pay you to be here, why do you come, why do you adore John Smith?" and the other typical questions. When we answered they were pretty astounded that we don't get paid to be here. They were also a little bit confused they we don't worship "John Smith" (Joseph smith) and i more than eagerly taught lesson 1. It was so cool because as I was teaching they were all paying close attention and wanted to know more. One of the guys kept asking questions that had nothing to do with anything and the others would yell at him to hush so that I could keep talking about Joseph Smith. In the end I had the lesson1 pamphlet out showing the picture of the first vision like a elementary school teacher would to her class of Kindergartners. They were all in awe and they started asking really good questions. They invited us back the next Sunday to teach more. 

Another example of why we don't sleep in the mission ha ha.
Last night I went to bed at 11:30 like normal and was sleeping pretty well until the phone rang. I looked at the clock and it was 2 in the morning. Our District leader was calling because his companion was really sick and had been throwing up all night and was really dehydrated and was hyperventilating because he was scared because he felt so sick. He had a fever of 103 degrees and was in really bad shape. To make it worse, the District leader was throwing up as well. Needless to say with lots of calls, prayers, soothing remarks, and trying to remember all my first aid training through the fog of late night sleep we managed to fix the situation at about 3:30 in the morning. Then like normal we woke up at 7. The elders are okay now and are sleeping to get better. Sleepless in Coquimbo ha ha :)

That was my week!

I love you all!

Stay Golden!

Love,

Elder Nielson :)