Ok so are you all ready for my first of (I'm assuming) many embarrassing stories?  So my companion and I are teaching an investigator named Walter - in reality he's just our teacher at the MTC, but he's a rather convincing actor and you have to think of these people as real if you want to learn from your teaching experiences.  So Walter is from Guatemala but he's been working in the United States for five years to earn money for his wife and daughter who are still living in Guatemala.  He hasn't seen them for five years because he's trying to earn enough money to go back and also support them, but his job is at a pizzeria, so it's not looking too promising.  He's very depressed and very difficult, and our teacher acts as he would expect someone from that background to act according to what we teach.  Our entire class has a hard time with Walter, but in the last lesson, Hermana McNeil and I decided we were going to ask him to pray during the lesson with us there so he would feel more comfortable about it.  So we asked him and he said no, we talked about it for a bit more and asked again and he said no again.  Then, with only a couple minutes left (I feel like I'm commentating a basketball game), we asked him a third time and he said he would try.  Now let me explain that this is a victory with Walter.  HOWEVER, our teacher mumbles and slurs his words when he talks and speaks really fast when he plays Walter, so it's very hard to understand him, so I did NOT understand him when he said he would try, so I figured we were just going to end the lesson with the prayer and move on.  So we all bow our heads and apparently he's about to make this big step forward by praying, AND THEN I START PRAYING.  Just stealing his spiritual moment and all.  I basically made a basket in the last second on the other team's side.  Which I've actually done in real life too.  ANYWHO, my companion apparently understood what he had said, but wasn't sure what to do, so she just let me pray.  Anyway, afterwards my teacher laughed and laughed at me and my class gave me consolatory handshakes, so it was all very comforting. 

OTHER than that, it's been another fantastic week.  I HOPE YOU ALL WATCHED THE MISSIONARY BROADCAST!!!!! Apparently I made a stunning cameo as the camera panned over my section in the choir.  I expect you all to find it and then pause it and stare at my face for a few seconds.  The broadcast was incredible though, I realized how much more missionary work I should have been doing before I came on a mission, and I hope you all have the same desire to help the missionaries - help them fill up those contact books!  It was also amazing to watch 11 of the 12 apostles walk out and sit on their chairs on the stage (the choir was behind them), they turned around waved at us and we all waved back.  They all looked so proud and grateful that we were there and deciding to serve a mission. 

On Tuesday we had our devotional, and the speaker was Janice Kapp Perry, the woman who wrote Sisters in Zion, Army of Helaman and essentially all the Prima   ry songs that I can still remember.  As part of the devotional she had all the missionaries sing a melody of all the Primary songs she wrote, and we didn't ever need the words.  It was incredible to see so many young men and women sing these songs many of them learned when they were young and see their faces remembering what it was like to be in Primary where believing was so much easier.  But what was even better was realizing that all these missionaries still believed enough to set aside 1.5-2 years of their lives to share those beliefs.

I love you all and I'll talk to you all again next week!  So many more insights to share! HAVE A LOVELY WEEK!

Hermana Liesl Nielsen in the Work of Salvation Missionary Broadcast!

You'd think after the second week I would semi know what's going on, but it is rather impossible to even describe one day at the MTC, let alone an entire week.  I'm still getting up around 5:45 each morning, going to sleep around 11 and studying about 10 hours a day, but incredible, miraculous and humbling things happen every day.  We just finished with our first fake investigator and have two more right now, but they're starting to feel more real.  I hope and pray that through my broken Spanish, I will somehow help them.  We also went to the TRC this week, where we speak to native speakers who are members of the church and try and teach them.  GOOD GRAVY.  That is not the language they taught me in the MTC.  I can pick up bits and pieces and very carefully piece together what I think they're saying, but sometimes I'm just lost.  Sometimes I just find myself smiling and saying Si, Si a lot. My companion is incredibly smart and seemed to be just having a natural conversation with this person who appeared to just be rolling their rrr's at me, so I generally just went off what she said.  It'll get better. 

Sunday is the best day around here because it's just a full straight day of incredible talks.  The Second Counselor in the Young Women's General Presidency came this past week for our Relief Society (all the sisters go together) and she was fantastic.  At night we watched the Testaments, and they made an announcement before we watched it not to freak out at romantic scenes. (and by romantic scenes, they mean a kiss), everyone freaked out anyway and started laughing.  Missionaries.

The Tuesday devotional was also incredible because the 1500 person choir singing this next sunday in the big broadcast (the choir i'm in) practiced one of the songs we're going to sing by doing it for the devotional, and the choir director had us stand up at certain parts of the song based on which continent we were going to, so by the end, everyone had stood up, it was incredible. 

And finally, we had another incredible and humbling lesson from my teacher, Hermano Hale, who I wrote about last week.  The first day I was here, I remember thinking and writing in my journal that he always talked with this voice that seemed like he was about to cry from the beauty and spirituality of teaching a bunch of snotty nosed missionaries.  I thought it was a bit cheesy and annoying.  Now I'm pretty sure it's just because he can feel that in everything.  Earlier in the week I had talked to him about being able to feel the Spirit and how I wasn't really sure how I could listen to it all the time.  Yesterday he gave an entire lesson about just that, and gave us each a notebook to write promptings down.  I wish there was time to express everything he did, and I wish I was as eloquent and could tell you all how much I'm learning and changing, but it is impossible.

I just want you all to know that the Book of Mormon is true, that Joseph Smith was a real prophet, and that this is the true church on the earth today.  Before, i was too timid to share that with people, faith is not a common thing in our world today.  But if I know it's true, why wasn't I sharing it?  It's become so much clearer to me how much more important it is to focus on other's and their success rather than on my own.  I'm grateful for this gospel and for the Atonement of Jesus Christ, and I wish those words didn't sound cheesy or fanciful to people today, because they're true.  If you've never read the Book of Mormon, I encourage you to do so and find out for youself. 

I'll try and think of more Lord of the Rings parallels for next time.  Adios everyone!

So remember that scene in the Hobbit where Bilbo and the dwarves get separated from each other in the big mountain? And when the dwarves meet up with Gandalf after they escape, Gandalf asks where Bilbo is and Thorin Oakenshield says that he's probably ditched because all he's thought about is his books and his armchair, and Bilbo hears all this because he's right behind them, invisible, with the ring on, and then Bilbo steps out and says, no, he's not gone.  Then Thorin Oakenshield asks him why he came back and Bilbo says that he knows he's always doubted him and that it's true, he does miss his garden and his books and his armchair, because that's home.  And that's why he came with them, becuase they don't have a home, and he will help them get it back if he can.  Well that's what I feel like.  Leaving everything behind was hard, harder than I thought it would be, I miss my family because that's home, that's where eternity is, but there's so many people who don't know that and can't know that if I don't teach them, and I'll gladly leave home for awhile if it means someone else can have a happier home. 

I had to remind myself of this about 20,000 times the first couple of days though because this is hard.  This ain't no walk in the park, people.  And I'm even learning Spanish, probably the easiest language ever AND I had already studied it for years.  AND i have a great companion, her name is Hermana McNeil (I'm Hermana Nielsen and it's been weird not hearing my first name for a week), but she's incredible.  Very friendly, down-to-earth and hard-working and easy to get along with and exactly like Elizabeth Bown (if you know who that is), but really, incredible.  But the MTC is a HUGE life style change.  It usually means getting up a bit before 6 am every morning then studying for about 10 hours throughout the day (not an exaggeration), both Spanish and how to teach the lessons and then how to do that all at the same time.  Our second full day here we were already teaching a fake investigator a half hour lesson all in Spanish.  It was rawther stressful.  We work all day, but it's the best kind of work.

But the most incredible thing about this experience is how humbling it's been, I feel like I've fit a year of personal growth into a week, and though a day seems to last a week and I fall into my bed dead tired each night, I know how incredibly worth it this is.  We have 8 elders and 4 hermanas in my district, and we're all incredibly different, but you can't share such a humbling and difficult experience with someone without growing to love them.  Yesterday our MTC teacher said we were going to do something different that day, and he said that that day we were going to speak in English so that we could all very fully comprehend what he had to tell us.  (He speaks in Spanish the entire 3 hours we are in his class, es muy dificil people).  But he began the lesson talking about unity.  About the unity of the gospel and our need to be unified in purpose.  He said that, as a district, we were not unified.  Then very bluntly but kindly and effectively told us it was because we had too much pride, each and every one of us.  Maybe it was pride in our abilities, or pride in the fear of wanting to make a mistake and not participating in class, or comparing ourselves to other people, but that we were not unified in purpose and that we needed to change.  This sounds like it should be offensive, but learning and trying to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ has fixed within me, and I think everyone else here, the desire to let go of our pride, to realize that we all have shortcomings, that this work is hard and that yes, we are going to have some incredibly hard days, but that we also have divine potential.  That there is nothing we can't do if we simply forget about ourselves and turn outwards to other people.  This lesson continued for awhile, but some experiences are occasionally too personal to put into words, but that classroom no longer looks the same to me.  Before, I dreaded going in there every day.  Going in there to sit and study for hours on end.  But I can tell you now that that classroom is where I've learned some of the most humbling and enabling lessons of my life up to this point, and I've only been here a week.

I want you all to know as well that I know this is one of the most important works on the earth today.  I'm part of a choir of about 1500 missionaries that will be singing for the prophet and all the general authorities on the 23rd for a world wide broadcast.  maybe if you watch it, you can see my face zip by (amongst the other 1499 other missionaries).  But I know that God lives, that he loves us and has a plan for each and every one of us.  He has answered several of my most urgent and heartfelt prayers

To my family: I'm going to send you guys a lot more letters this week and thank you everyone else who sent me letters. Keep it coming, it makes me look popular. 

 I wish there was more time to do everything, but alas and alack, there is literally no time in the day and we only get an hour on here AHHHHHHHH, next email my thoughts will be more organized.  Anywho, I love you all, SEND ME LETTERS! and I'll send more too! gracias and goodbye!  

Hermana Nielsen