WEEK 8- Beast from the East

i'm glad to hear that katie is feeling better about school! and anna! so exciting, big things are happening in the neilson household. i'm glad me serving a mission has helped anna finally learn to braid her hair. hahaha (I gave her a few little updates on the girls and also told her we have been blessed because she is serving a mission. haha)

On p-day last week we went to Belfast and just walked around and shopped a little. Then we went to a recent converts house named Filomena. she is from Africa and i love her! We talked about the importance of reading the Book of Mormon with her and she bore her testimony about it and it was so awesome. she also had the great idea of setting up one day a week to read it with just whoever in the ward wants to come and she said she wanted to invite her non member friends so were gonna try to set that up.

We had distrcit meeting on Tuesday and it was all about having unity, it was so great. if we aren't unified with our companions we can't do anything.

On wednesday everyone was talking about this huge storm that was gonna hit our town and everyone was like you better stay inside tomorrow its going to be crazy. its called the Arctic storm (Beast from the east) and wednesday was so cold! its so cold in our flat. every morning we just sit in front of the heater and always bring our blankets down with us. haha

Thursday the beast from the east hit. we woke up to a ton of snow and it was freezing outside. and the one day we had no scheduled appointments was during this storm/blizzard! hahah we had 7 hours of straight finding people in the streets. Then we got a text from the zone leaders at about 2 pm saying that the storm was so bad that all the missionaries in Ireland had to stay indoors the rest of the day. The greatest news ever, ill tell ya that!

Friday was pretty rough. me and companion were both very tired but we still went out to find people even though almost everyone ignores us. hahah it's the best. but we had a first lesson with a guy from poland named patrick and he said he wanted to meet with us again, so that was pretty awesome. When you're tired out here you just have to suck it up and keep working. sister lough slipped and fell on the ice and so i just sat down next to her on the sidewalk and we just sat there and talked about the day and how we were feeling. hahaha everyone was just looking at us in skirts sitting in the snow. but we gave ourselves pep talks and went back to work.

Saturday sam got baptized!!! It was so amazing! Sam is a huge example to me. He speaks little to no english but still goes to church every sunday and that is how powerful the spirit is. the church got this brand new piano that plays by itself and no one in the ward knows that. at the baptism the elders were like can you be in charge of the piano? all i had to do was push one button then it would start. i just pretended like i was playing and all the members bought it. it was pretty awesome. haha

I have to go. I love and miss all you guys so much! and i miss chimi too. haha

sis neilson