SISTER NEILSON | SCOTLAND/IRELAND MISSION

Week 65

My week was good. we are teaching some friends right now who are very cool. We went into louise's home planning on talking to her about baptizing her daughters and i was so nervous. I love this family so much, like so much. so i was nervous to talk to louise about the option of helping her daughters prepare for baptism even though we are all so close. I want them to have these blessings in their life and to be raised in the gospel. Well i talked about it with louise and we kind of got the brakes put on us, it didnt go as planned. I was so sad. it's so hard when you really love these people and you know what can help them. i'm actually really sad about it.

We taught Grenville (who wanted to get baptised) about the word of wisdom and he got pretty upset about the whole thing. he basically said he was never going to give up tea and coffee and then proceeded to get up on his leg that is healing and hobble over to the table where his tea was and drink it in front of us. I told him to knock it off and sit down. So those were our most solid people, so it was really sad.

We met this really cool dude named steve. he lives on the orkney islands for 8 months out of the year to grow vegtables. he is 25 and literally the coolest person ever. He lives so out of the world and just has the coolest perspective on life. So spiritual.

Conference was amazing! i loved how it talked about our personal conversion. And how blunt they are. We really need it. I learned a lot and need to change a lot :) our friend sarah, alec, and ahmed came to watch as well! Sarah loved it and it answered so many of questions for her. She had a lot of questions after and we talked a lot about it and she opened up a lot. Then she went home and watched the sunday afternoon session by herself, which is 9pm here. I was making phone calls that night, but she live texted me as she was watching it and all of her questions were answered again. So cool! now its just up to her as to what she will do.

Me and sister belliston flew to dublin last week for zone conference and it was great being able to see everyone and to help in the ways we could. Tonight we are driving to aberdeen for the next zone conference.

Hey quick advice, if you are ever doubting or stuggling with the gospel, which is totally okay, just hold on to the things you do know. No matter how small, just hold on. even if it looks dark in the future, it will turn to light. Just like they talked about in general conference. I love you guys.

Peace out

flying to dublin...

In the library cafe with some missionaries where we teach our friends...

Picture on campus…

Grenville and me …

Exchanges with sis clark…

Very foggy week…

Me and sister belliston…

Week 64

this past week was the first week of the transfer (i have two more transfers after this…). So on Monday it was moves day where all the missionaries are traveling to their new areas. which is crazy here because we are all traveling to other countries but it is fun. so i was driving people around all day and then i picked up my new comapnion sister belliston!

We then went over to Louise's house as usual on Monday evening. and her whole family was home and it was so cool to have them all there. we talked about the plan of salvation again, because there oldest daughter rebecca wasn't there when we explained it last time. they all loved it but they said they couldn't come to church because they had sport on sunday. then sunday rolled around and their daughter had come to church with her grand-dad! i was so happy! she said her game got cancelled so she asked her mom if she could go to church! i sat with her and we had so much fun!

TUESDAY we were able to have all the new missionaries come in and there were 16 of them. on this day we are at the mission home the whole day helping and instructing and making sure everyone is happy. it was fun to see some of my friends and past companions who were training it was a fun day!

WEDNESDAY we had missionary leadership council, where all the leaders from the mission fly in and we council about the mission. it is an all day thing as well. my favorite part is in the morning when we all get to the mission home and we make pancakes with each other and hangout until 9 when the meeting starts. it wasnt over til about 4. This meeting was very differnt from the others because we got smart phones! it was crazy. so yes i have a smart phone now, but have no idea how to work it.

THURSDAY-SATURDAY were just normal missionary days. we taught our friend Grenville, who broke his femur. he is preparing for his baptism later this month. sad thing is though, he lives 3 stories up in his flat building so he can’t go down the stairs because he can barely walk. which means he cant go to church:( but we are workin on it! we were just finding lots of new people this week.

The smart phones are actually pretty nice. there are a lot of new rules that come with them, but we have been showing lots of new videos to people on the streets and in lessons. it is so cool.

SUNDAY we went chapping and had new leadership training, which is where us the aps and president skype all the new leaders in the mission and teach them the importance of being a leader and what they need to know and do.

it has been a crazy week but i am super excited for this transfer here with sister belliston and to be here in Edinburgh.

The streets in edinburgh...

the mission home…

chapping…

my friend at church...

mission president & his wife…

Week 63

this week was a normal week.

So every morning for morning exercise we go and play frisbee for sport. This past week I brought up the idea to my companion that we should make cookies for the elders and then put laxatives in them without them knowing. so we did exactly that. so 6 elders took the cookies and one of the elders took two cookies and he was on the toilet 9 times in one day. To be honest that was his fault, he was only supposed to take one. But i am screwed because now all the elders are gonna team up and get me back and they are already planning on it. so we will see what happens lol.

Moves are this week and that means sister curtis is leaving and i am getting a new companion, i will be training her to be the new STLT. her name is sister Belliston. she is from Michigan and she is Mandarin speaking. She is great so i am excited to be serving with her :)

We were able to find a lot of cool people. we taught this one man who is from Syria and he has an 11 year old son who has lots of good questions. The dad is named Tarek and he is pretty interested in learning more it was really exciting.

We also taught this chick name Natalie. she has been taught before but was not really progressing for some time so the missionaries stopped teaching her, but still were in contact with her. we went over the other night and she brought up baptsim and said it was something that she saw in her future so we are way pumped about that.

We visited Grenville in the hospital yesterday he is the one who broke his femur and good news he is getting out of the hospital today! so we are way excited about that and we are excited to be able to teach him in his own home so he is more comfortable.

Our part member family came to church this sunday. it was so exciting! we are starting to teach her daughters so it is very exciting i love them so much! We taught their 10 year old daughter about the holy spirit and she was like "i think i felt that before, not all the time but i felt that". it was so cool! it really was a testimony builder of how much we need to humble ourselves and become like children like Christ says in the book of Matthew. We taught her and her sister the plan of salvation and they loved it!

This is a new transfer this week so it is going to be crazy with moves and everything today so we will see what is happening! Crazy week man!

Love you all so much! peace and blessins!

hot pot pictures. so yummy!…

the laxative cookies the orange "sprinkle" is the laxative...

the elders bought anti-diarrerha meds lol...

picture of me when i i slipped on the carpet and flew in the air and biffed it haha…

Week 60

yo sorry i have been the worst at emailing lately, the first three weeks of the transfer are always so crazy for us. but we finally finished with all three of the conferences. me and my companion instructed on the doctrine behind church and were asked to bring the spiritual side of it into it as well. we were able to have some of the other missionaries help us to explain some of the doctrine of church like the sacrament, atonement, worship, sabbath day, ministering, and learning. things like that. we shared the parable of the great supper in Luke and basically we just wanted them to understand that it is not us inviting them, but that it is Jesus Christ who is inviting our friends to partake of His feast that he has prepared for them. and that it is only Him who can heal our friends. So we helped them to understand that its important to teach the doctrine behind church and then invite them to come to church. make sense? i dont know but if not you can email me and ask questions. :)

Since one of the conferences was in Dublin we stayed with the sisters there. their running water wasnt working so they told us we would have go to the bathroom in the bathtub and so they all did and i was like nah, i will just pee off the balcony. so i did lol it was sick.

Our friend Grenville who we are teaching and preparing for baptism called us the other day and said he had broken his femur so he is in the hospital right now. he will be there for quite a few more weeks so he wont be getting baptised for a while. we are sad:( but he is doing well. we went to visit him the other day with the elders and we played card games with him and brought him a word search puzzle, since he literally has bothing else to do. poor guy.

We had exchanges with the dublin stls the other day. they were at our flat so i wanted to make popcorn for them. so i went into the kitchen and grabbed the bag of kernels and was trying to open them but i guess those morning workouts have been paying off because the bag straight exploded and kernels flew everywhere. haha it was funny.

We met this guy on the street named eddy the other day. we had an on the spot with him and he was so cool! he was a big time heroin addict and said that God helped him to overcome it and to stop. his dad is a member in Scotland, just south of us. we taught him the plan of salvation and he loved it. we invited him to be baptised and he accepted and he was able to come to church on sunday. the coolest thing though is he has his name tattooed on his fingers. haha he is such a cool dude and he has a tattoo on his face.

We also met this guy named Avi. he is amazing and from India! he is 19 years old and come from a hindu background but not practicing but he is so cool! he loved everything about the restoration that we taught him and he accepted to be baptised for later this month as well. he totally understood everything.

for pday today we are going to costco! we are taking the big mission van, packing all the missionaries in, and president and his wife, and we are gonna go party. we are all so excited haha.

sister macdonald took some cheeky pics of me sleeping during the Scotland south conference, to my defense it was my third conference and i had heard this instruction three times haha

me when i spilled popcorn kernels

on exchanges with one of the sister teams in dublin

us being idiots after a meeting with the zone leaders

Week 58

Hey hey everyone!! This week has been a crazy one as the first week of the transfer always is! We said goodbye to the departing missionaries on monday. It is great serving in Edinburgh cause we get to see everyone, but it is so sad saying bye to my best friends every six weeks. But then the next day we get a new batch of missionaries! We had a training for them and their trainers the whole day. Then the wednesday was MLC (mission leadership council), where we meet with the mission leadership for a few hours and make some plans and talk together. Then the next day we instructed at ZLC (Zone leadership council). Then Sunday night had a New leadership training meeting over google hangouts. hahah So It has been a pretty crazy time with lots of instructions and spiritual highs!

us the assistants and president and his wife...

mlc pics, i was supossed to be holding up sister macanmara but i bailed and she fell...

a game we played with the trainers at the trainers meeting...

Week 57

me and sister curtis went to urban outifitters and she came up to me with glitter on her fingers and i told her to put it on my eyes...

this is also a lit hat...

Week 56

well this was such a long week not going to lie. haha

On pday last week we went into the petlands and there are sheep everywhere. so we went sheep hunting. not where we hurt them or anything but we like try to corale these sheep and then run after them to catch them. it was pretty sick to be honest. we were scaling mountains to try to catch the sheep. We didn't catch any. the elders were upset so we are going back today to try to do it again. in the petlands there are little rivers going through and we were trying to catch this sheep. so one of the elders told me i had to jump over the river and i was nah man there is no way i can jump over this river (the river had some ice on top of it). so im like i will just try to walk across. so i put one foot on the ice and to my surprise the ice broke and my foot went completely in the river. i saw the dissapointment on the elders face, so i had a freezing cold foot the rest of the day. so then i decided to just send it and jump across the river and i barely made it but i made it.

On Tuesday we traveled to Dundee for their dictrict council and it is starting to snow. i am not a fan haha. but the disctrict council was so good and so inspired it got me way pumped. We taught our friend caroline from denmark as well. she is so cool and so prepared. She was suppossed to be baptised this week but i think we are going push it back to next week. she loves the book of mormon and it was so cool. we taught her a lot in this lesson and she was like i have a lot to pray about with God this week haha. so cool man! we had our flat inspection by the senior couple and then they took us out to dinner at china red and it was amazing. it is a buffet.

on Wednesday we had exchanges with the Aberdeen sisters which was lit because i have been both of their companions. so it was way fun! but we just had finding all day that day so that was chill. But we straight got bodied not gonna lie. finding has been a lil bit rough lately esepcially in the cold but we had fun while doing it haha.

Thursday was a normal day of teaching and finding, nothing too crazy. except for this one dude named Issei. he is from Japan. he just had question after question to the point where we coudn't even finish answering one question before he started the next. it was exhausting but it was chill.

Friday we had exchanges with the Dublin sisters and they were way fun as well! I was with sister jessop who is from Montana. we were able to teach our friend Yiquing and abby together. I met Yiquing on the street and she said she wasnt too interested in what we had to say and then i asked if any of her friends would and she actually yes my friend has said she is interested to learn more the other day. it was so cool! we taught them and abby has a total christian background which is not what we were expecting and yiquing does not have any christian background. they're both from China. interestingly enough Abby wasn't a huge fan in what we taught but Yiquing took a liking to it and wants to meet again. Oh how the turn tables.

Sunday was sister Curtis birthday. i made her breakfast. she loves fruits and vegtables... we were able to visit this part member family that we chapped into a couple weeks ago and we showed up and the grandma was like guess what i did and we were like what and she said i read some of the book of mormon! i was like holy crap dude, yes lets go! they havent been to church in years. they are the scott family and they have 9 kids and a ton of grandkids. some of the family are memebrs and some are not. we were able to talk about the plan of salvation through the book of mormon and the bible because the grandpa loves the bible. so it was cool to talk with him about it and how they help each other out and teach the same things. and we talked about temples and everything. way cool. God is good, man. then we all threw sister curtis a birthday dinner at the church and it was lit.

me and some of my companions...