Week 28- Getting Caught by PMac

This week has been crazy! i flew to Edinburgh on Tuesday morning to pick up my trainee. Her name is Sister Carabott! she is from England and is the cutest girl! We had a trainers meeting and a trainee meeting as well. President Macdonald gave us great instruction. He is so great! he is super chill and cool. and when he gives instructions he is like not expecting one answer but has really taught that whatever comes into your mind is your own personal revelation. no matter what it is. he's taught me how to receive better personal revelation. and his instructions aren't so confusing. macdonald is just simple but so powerful! 

After we were paired with our trainees they send us out the rest of the day to go street finding. Edinburgh is a big city so towards the end of the night it was time to go home and we got (well I got) completely lost. we finally made it back to the mission home 30 minutes late at 9:30 and the mission home has these gates outside of the home and apparently they close at 9. so we got back and the gates were closed and my phone had died so I couldn't call anyone haha. sister carabott was like "what are we gonna do?" and i was like "well it looks like we are gonna have to climb and hop over the gate" and she was like "what?”. So i climbed over the gate in my skirt and then sister carabott threw her bag over and was about to climb over when the mission president and his wife walk out of the mission home and they were like what is going on? hahaha it was so funny! so then they opened the gate for sister carabott. We all had a good laugh.The next morning we got up and took two buses to the ferry, then took the ferry, then took two more buses after the ferry to get back to Limerick. So it took 16 hours all together to get back. my poor trainee was wrecked haha.

We have had a great week of finding and teaching, mostly teaching. we have had back to back lessons like almost everyday, which is so nice but i do miss finding. We found some great people though this week.

We met this guy named Ali. He is from Brazil and we were talking to him and he opened up to us and shared a lot of his life with us. we sat down with him and he was really interested in what we were doing. He kept saying that he really liked talking with us and it made him feel happy. but that he doesn't know if he believes in God or not and doesn't think things happen for a reason. we explained to him what the holy ghost was and how the holy ghost can make us feel. and towards the end of talking with him he was already starting to say "maybe I was supposed to meet you guys for a reason." it was so sick! We gave him a Book of Mormon and he said he wanted to meet again and learn more and asked us to write him a message in the book of mormon. so we wrote our testimonies and gave it to him. we are meeting with him tonight and i am so excited! AND GET THIS! He travels and he was talking about his dog and he said his dogs name is Salt and we were like why did you name your dog salt? and he said after the city Salt Lake City. then he continued on to say that is the one place he wants to visit! and we were like what, seriously? And he hasn't even heard of mormons or anything! He named his three dogs, Salt, Lake, and City. it was insane dude! 

Our friends Emma and Kato came to church yesterday, sad news Kato wants to get baptized but he is moving to Uganda soon so we don't think he will be able to get baptized here:( but he will in Uganda so that is good! Emma is the sweetest girl ever! she is getting baptized on the 11 of August so that is super exciting! she really enjoyed church so we are so excited for her! 

peace out guys! love ya!

1. sports

2. some random guy that we met while doing comp study that started singing to us, he was drunk of course

3. me and my trainee on the ferry

Email from Ali's Mission President

Email from Ali's mission president, sent to our Stake President, Pres. Hess.
___________________

19 June 2018

 
 

Dear President Hess,    

Sister Alexandria Doering Neilson, a missionary from your ward, has recently been called to serve as a Trainer to  Sister Carabott, a new missionary in the Scotland/Ireland Mission.  

I feel that a trainer is one of the most important of all missionary callings. As she works to teach and minister to her new companion she will have an opportunity to gain leadership skills and growth in her own life.  

Sister Neilson has been an outstanding missionary. Your support and prayers on behalf of her are greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Mark A. Macdonald

President
Scotland/Ireland Mission

Week 27- Here's the craic

fyi: (craic is a term they use in ireland meaning news, gossip, etc. it’s pronounced “crack”)

yooo lol so interesting moves this week. looks like i will be training again, so i will fly to Edinburgh tomorrow morning to pick up my trainee. It will be interesting. 

we were street contacting and we found this guy named mike and he was sitting on this bench. we started talking to him and he invited us to sit down with him so we did. he asked if we were missionaries and then told us he had met with missionaries in 2015. he was planning on getting baptized but then some things happened and he wasn't able to and he lost contact with the missionaries shortly after. we continued to talk and i just invited him to be baptized in the midle of the GQ and he said yes! it was amazing.

our baptism that we were supposed to have didn't happen this week :( very sad. 

1. the missionaries in Limerick

2. Dan Man a branch member that fed us dinner. he is the nicest guy

3. me unscrewing a nail with a knife

4. me and my comp

5. with our investigator calvin

week 26

This week we had another all Ireland (where all the missionaries in Ireland have a conference) and we got to meet our new mission President, President Macdonald, in Dublin. He is definitely American and very bald hahah. He for sure has a different way of doing things and is way more chill than the last mission president so it will be interesting to see what will happen. i am excited though. It was very interesting. it was weird not having President Donaldson there but i am looking forward to P Mac. We had a good conference and he and his wife gave very great instructions. The conference was on the 4 of July so me and my comp and some other people decided wear all red white and blue, it was pretty classy. There was lots of pictures taken.

We had a branch bbq this week and it was so much fun. there was a bouncy house thing and they would grill all different types of meat and then just throw it into this big pot. it was just a free for all and you could take whatever you wanted. it was fun. 

On pday last week we visited the Cliffs of Moher. it was sooo beautiful. we walked along side of it for like the longest time. the cliffs is where they filmed some of harry potter and some of the princess bride so that was sick. 

We were teaching our investigator Lisa and talking about the word of wisdom and she has cigarettes and said that she was going to finish her pack that day and start living the word of wisdom the next day. we were like haha thats funny dude. so we explained that that is not how it works but she wouldn't budge. the missionaries have been teaching her for about 3 months now. we always have the investigator say the closing prayer, but she never has. she always just says no, so on this day i was like no you are going to say the prayer. so for like 15 minutes we sat there and tried to figure out why she didnt want to say the prayer and what we could do to help her say the prayer. Then finally she said the prayer! and then right after the prayer out of nowhere she just stands up with her pack and walks over to a homeless dude and gives them away, and doesnt say anything to us. me and my comp were like whatttt and lisa said "i dont even know why i just did that." it was so amazing!

Our friend John is supposed to get baptized this weekend. please pray for him. 

This last week we had a lot of dissapointments and some of our friends not on date, but some new friends on date as well. but with the good and bad i am so grateful for all of it, it is all just a learning experience! i am grateful for everyting that i am learning. something that me and my comp have learned this week is that we get along very well and really want to be friends after the mission and for that to happen we need to be seperated as companions if we want to remain friends. lol. we are so similar in a lot of things, especially when it comes to decision making on important things in the missioanry work. we both have different opinions about things that are good on both sides, but we both don't like to budge. hahah like we are straight up homies hahhaha its confusing (and dont worry i asked her if this was okay to write) we have transfers this weekend. 

but yeah i love the work here! its great! love you all! peace!

Cliffs of Moher...

cave from harry potter!

all ireland in our red white and blue...

my district

at the branch bbq

Week 25

it was a pretty standard week this week. our friend stefan who was totally solid and was going to get baptized just completely dropped us out of nowhere so that was pretty sad.

but we have been teaching this other dude for a while now named john and he just wasnt keeping commitments and then told us that he was never gonna get baptized so then we were very sad. and so we taught him another lesson yesterday and we were either going to drop him or get him back on date, we were gonna give it everything and just throw down before we dropped him and he said that he wants to get baptized and we got him back on date an thn he said he had been keeping commitments without us even asking and so it was so exciting! so we should be having a baptism this transfer so please pray for us haha. 

us on exchanges in dublin

this super cool place that members took us to for a DA it was beautiful