Hello dearest everyone, 

Last week, my companion and I saw miracles.  We led the mission in lessons with 31 lessons for the week, but it was incredible how little of that miracle was us or our work.  I cannot begin to explain how gratifying this work is.  It is the most exhausting, emotionally-challenging thing I have ever done, but I have learned more about life, about people, about myself and about the plan that God has for us in these eight months that I have been in the mission than I would have learned in eight years of life.  I have never realized so fully how much each and every one of us matters, and how much even our little actions affect the eternal destinies of many. 

This week I was doing my personal study for the day and during my prayer to end my study, I thought of a family that we´re teaching who are members but have been inactive since they moved here six months ago and they just got baptized about nine months ago.  Reactivating people here is about half, if not more of the work, and it has taught me more about testimony and conversion than I presently have time to explain.  Anyway, I thought about them, and I was thinking about how their family has started to have a lot of problems since they stopped going to church and then I thought about the Proclamation to the World about The Family.  It was a thought that I had and then I continued on with my prayer and my day.  But later that day, we finally found them in their home after weeks of not being able to find them at home.  They didn´t have much time, so I asked them if we could read part of the Proclamation really quickly.  They said yes, so we started reading as their kids continued to scream and run around the room.  After we read some paragraphs and the part about the fact that the mother and father are equal partners and need to base their relationship on forgiveness and love and faith and help each other, they stopped reading and the mom turned to me and said ´This is too big of a coincidence... we´re passing through a really difficult time.  How did you know we needed this? Do you teach the same thing to everyone each day?´ I told her that we prayed every day to know what we should teach everyone we teach and that what their family needed was to read the scriptures and pray every night together, come to church and have their family home evenings together and their family could become the family that they have always wanted.  It wasn´t a vain promise, I have seen it happen and have felt the difference in the homes.  They agreed, we set up a day to do a family home evening and yesterday they came to church for the first time in six months yesterday.  Before we left with them, the kids knelt down and prayed and said that they were so grateful that we had come because they loved to go to church but that they didn´t know why their parents hadn´t gone in so long.  Ugh why can´t we all just be like little kids.  

Also, the husband who had left his wife (who we are teaching) right after Christmas, came back and now we are teaching both of them and they are both very receptive and recognize that every time we come, we leave their house with a different spirit.  

Well my time is officially up and I haven´t even gotten in half of what I want to say, but I love you all and I want you all to know that the way to true happiness and peace in this life and eternal life in the life to come, is possible through the gospel of Jesus Christ.  I know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints is His church here on the earth.  And one of these days I´m going to be able to fit in everything that I want to say.  

BUT LAST AND NOT LEAST CONGRATULATIONS TO MY BEAUTIFUL SISTER KATE WHO JUST GOT HER MISSION CALL TO BUENOS AIRES SOUTH ARGENTINA I´M SO EXCITED I CAN´T EVEN DESCRIBE IT.

Anyway, the pictures are from a day when my companion and I went hiking with a couple in the countryside which technically still is in our sector.  He´s not a member but is some sort of Buddhist kung fu master but says that one day he´s going to be baptized.  We´re working on it.  They are awesome.  The other one is of us picking wild raspberries that grow in the grass.  We are so cool.  

Chao!!!  

Con mucho amor, Hermana Nielsen

Hello dearest everyone, 

Last week, the day before Catalina´s baptism, we had a Family Home Evening with Catalina and a young couple in the ward in their home.  It was beautiful and lovely and Catalina was really excited because her baptism was the next day.  After we had finished the message, we were all talking, and the father of the family asked Catalina if she was going to go on a mission, and she said "yes! I would really love to!"  My companion and I looked at each other and gave each other a mental high five.  We were so excited.  So now she´s been asking us a lot of questions in how she can prepare to go on a mission.  She´s going to be incredible.  

Well we finished our Family Home Evening and started walking her home, a little bit more rapidly than normal because we had to be in the house soon.  As we were walking we noticed, on the side of the road, a woman crying and another woman trying to help her.  Catalina stopped to see if she could help and we discovered that this woman was exceedingly drunk and had just fallen from the second floor of her house.  Her leg was hurt and her face was very bruised.  She kept saying she needed to go to the house of her friend across the street.  The woman who was trying to help her got a bit fed up and all the people around started to disappear and so we were left alone to help her. First we helped her across the street to the home where she said her friend was but there was nobody there.  She also kept trying to jump the gate, so we had to hold her back.  She started getting a bit hysterical, so we started talking to her to calm her down while Catalina decided to call the cops.  Unfortunately the cops don´t do much about drunk people here, so we decided to try and find her house.  She started telling us about the terrible depression she has and why she´s been drinking.  We went to her house and she somehow opened the door and we found out they had cut the light in her house.  It was completely dark, so we helped her onto the couch where she passed out.  She said her son was going to arrive soon, and as we had to get to the house soon, we had to leave her there and pray that her son got there quickly. 

As we were walking to the house, the look in her eyes kept coming back to me.  There was no hope and no light and it reminded me of Marina when we had started teaching her.  As she began to understand and apply the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that look in her eyes left and was replaced by peace and happiness.  And I couldn´t stop wishing that everyone could just recognize the peace they could find in the Gospel.  I have seen peace, love and confidence replace desperation and depression as the people begin to understand the love that their Savior has for them. 

Anyway, the next day was Catalina´s baptism.  As part of the program, Hermana Lethco, our zone leader, our district leader, Catalina and I sang A Donde Me Mandes Iré (I´ll Go Where You Want Me to Go) - Catalina´s favorite hymn.  Catalina had asked the bishop of the ward to baptize her.  He baptized Marina as well, but when he baptized Marina, he had accidently used his left hand instead of his right hand to baptize her.  Now there is a very specific and important way to baptize someone.  Just as important that it be by immersion by the right authority, as it was in the Bible, the person baptizing must use his right hand.  Luckily, during Marina´s baptism, one of the witnesses caught that mistake after the first time and so he redid it right then and there.  So during Catalina´s baptism my companion and I were watching for that, just in case.  However, right before, the bishop said something to one of the elders about his hand and then started with his left hand, so we thought, perhaps there was something we didn´t understand.  Well he baptized her and she left, got changed, and we finished the baptismal service.  Then, as everyone was eating refreshments, our zone leader came up and asked to talk to us.  He told us that Catalina was going to be baptized again later that night after everyone had left because they had already drained the baptismal font.  Muy bien.  Well we pulled Catalina aside and one of the elders started out with ´There was an accident in your baptism´.... Oh boy.  After some confusion, we explained to her what had happened and, to her everlasting credit, she was incredibly nice about it.  So she left with some of her friends and told us she would come back in a few hours while my companion and I and the other elders in our district (we´re the only sister missionaries in our district) cleaned up.  

Well about an hour later, Catalina, one of her friends, and the bishop showed up again.  She changed into her wet white dress one more time and got back into the half way filled font.  It was then we realized that the elders had accidently refilled it with cold water.... Muy bien.  Well the bishop baptized her again and she left the font and we were in the bathroom as she finally finished changing into her clothes for a second time when we heard...´Hermanas?´ We opened the door to two very repentant looking elders who proceeded to tell us that she had to be baptized one more time because she hadn´t been immersed completely in the water... Muy bien.  With her incredible patience, Catalina changed one more time into her wet dress and went one more time back into the cold water.  By now the water had gotten really low, but as I was sitting there, with only the other elders, my companion, her friend, and the members who were cleaning the church, I felt a powerful feeling of peace and contenment.  As she changed one more time in the bathroom she told us she felt completely relaxed and so wonderful, as if a huge weight had been taken off her shoulders.  She told us, ´Heavenly Father is just helping me prepare to do baptisms in the temple´.  Why is she so great?!  Anyway, now I know exactly how a baptism should be done.  

I love you all!!! More awesome stories for next week!! I haven´t written the half!!!

First of all, HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY FIFTH BIRTHDAY TO MY SMOOCHIE POOCHIE LITTLE LONDON!! I LOVE YOU SO MUCH AND REMEMBER THAT NOW THAT YOU´VE TURNED FIVE, YOU SHOULD START LEARNING HOW TO READ HARRY POTTER!!!! 

Second of all, all I have to say is I got incredibly lucky to be called to a Spanish speaking country.  I read the emails from my cousin who is in Poland and whenever she writes a word in Polish, it looks like she smashed her head against the keyboard.  Luckily, she is very intelligent, but with the intelligence that I have, I feel very blessed that I´m learning Spanish where, if I don´t know a word, I can say the word in English in a Spanish accent and about 35% of the time, they can guess what I´m trying to say.  UNFORTUNATELY, Chilenos do not speak Spanish and I find out every day that a word or phrase that I thought was actually Spanish is actually only used in Chile.  For example, if you want to say that we´re going to all put in a bit of money to buy something, you´ll say: hagamos una vaca.  Which literally means: we make a cow.
What is with the meat here?  Anyway, nada que ver.  

Also, Catalina is going to be baptized this coming week!! She is one of the most prepared people I´ve ever taught on my mission.  She truly recognizes what this decision means and she says that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has completely changed her perspective of life and, even though she has to leave some things behind, she is completely ready to do it.  We left her a Liahona to read one talk, and she read the whole thing, and then we left her True to the Faith to read one page and she read the whole thing as well, and she´s reading the Book of Mormon every day.  I have loved teaching her because it is the first time I´ve truly taught someone my own age.  I have loved every single person I´ve taught, but with her it´s like teaching a friend that I could have met in school or something.  She says that in a year after her baptism, she´s going to come visit my companion and I in California and we can all go through the temple together for the first time.  That would be incredible.  She´s the first member in her family, her mom is very supportive because she has seen a huge change in her daughter and is really happy that her daughter is so much happier, but her dad thinks us missionaries are spies from the United States.  Yay!! I´ve always wanted to be a spy.  

What with the new years, there are, occasionally, more inebriated people in the streets than normal.  One drunk man stopped us in the street and told us he knew we were people of God and wanted to change his life and stop drinking.  Unfortunately his other drunk friends started making fun of him so he felt too embarrassed to give us his direction and his name, but my companion and I decided we´re going to find him anyway.  Somehow.  Yay!!! 

I love seeing the change in people and their lives when they discover the hope that exists in the gospel of Jesus Christ.  This week we also found a single mother of four children whose husband just left her right after Christmas.  The youngest of her kids is ten months old.  We found her about two days after her husband left, and now we pass by almost every day.  She started crying in the first lesson and told us that we were an answer to a prayer that she hadn´t even had the courage to say.  Now we´re visiting her family almost every day and her two oldest daughters are going to our piano class.  

I love you all and I hope you all had a wonderful new years, the attached picture is my obligatory end of the world picture that I had to take. Bakan cierto?  

I love you all!! Also, PS, I cut all of my hair off, it´s really short now.  Don´t be mad mom, I shower much more quickly now and it will all grow back before I come home.  Also it´s not TOO SHORT.  Also PUnta Arenas is impossible with long hair.  It is summer and right now it´s raining and hailing.  Yay! Love you all!!!

There is nothing more rewarding than serving the Lord! 

¡Feliz Navidad y Prospero Año Nuevo! (casi)

Hello dearest everyone, 

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!!! If Chileans have one constant tradition for whatever sort of holiday they celebrate, it is that you must eat.  And if you are eating, you MUST eat meat.  It is tradition and necessary and it is blasphemous to not do it.  Anyway, since the members here are very wonderful, my companion and I got a lot of invitations to Christmas dinner.  One less active family invited us, about two months back, for Christmas dinner, and then another family in the ward invited us to eat dinner on the 24th.  What we were unaware of is that, the 24th IS Christmas here.  Christmas Eve is when they have the big dinner and then wait until midnight to open all the presents.  The 25th is when they all leave for the countryside to kill and cook more meat.  Obviously.  Anyway, we were unaware of this, so we accepted the invitations of both.  Only the day of did we figure out that they both meant the 24th.  So this day we went to "lunch" where we ate chicken and mashed potatoes, then first dinner where we ate chicken and ham and pork (and all the other things) and then second dinner where we ate lamb and beef (and all the other things. And it is extremely offensive to refuse seconds.  My companion and I decided we are never eating again.  Ever.  

But anyway, apart from that, Christmas Eve was lovely.  The member family that invited us also invited Marina, who just got baptized, She lives alone and doesn´t really have anyone to celebrate with.  And before dinner we all read the Christmas story together and watched a Christmas Mormon Message and she began crying because it was the first Christmas in awhile that she had felt loved.  She´s divorced and her daughter who lives here in Punta Arenas doesn´t really spend much time with her.  I was so glad that we had found her and had continued teaching her (because it was really difficult at first).  She is so much happier and I felt an incredible love for her, and was so grateful that that now she truly feels the love of other people and of her Savior Jesus Christ.  

This week as well, all of the missionaries in Punta Arenas got together in the main plaza where there is a huge sculpture and a Central Park sort of thing, and we all drew the Plan of Salvation with chalk on the ground, but HUGE, and then we gave people tours of it.  It was really quite cool, and there were actually a ton of people who came to see it.  And we wrote in Spanish and English because there are a LOT of tourists.  It was EXTREMELY difficult to explain in English.  Only through divine intervention did get through that.  

Well I accidently turned on italics and I don´t know how to turn it off, so I think that´s a sign that I better go.  But Catalina accepted a baptismal date for the 11th of January too, that story next time!! That was the best Chrsitmas present! Still just way too much!!

Anyway, I love you all, and I know the gospel of Jesus Christ is the way to find true and lasting happiness in this life and forever.  That the family is central to the plan that God has for us and that it is forever.  I love my family so much and I love my Savior.  There is nothing better in life but to serve Him.  It brings a peace that nothing else does.  Anyway, these italics are starting to get on my nerves, so until next week!! I love you all!!!! 

I´ll leave you with one of my favorite stories: 

"Years ago there was little one-room schoolhouse in the mountains of Virginia where the boys were so rough that no teacher had been able to handle them. A young, inexperienced teacher applied, and the old director scanned him and asked: 'Young fellow, do you know that you are in for an awful beating? Every teacher that we have had here for years has had to take one.' 'I will risk it,' he replied. The first day of school came, and the teacher appeared for duty. One big fellow named Tom whispered, 'I won't need any help with this one. I can lick him myself.' The teacher said, 'Good Morning, boys, we have come to conduct school.' They yelled and made fun at the top of their voices. 'Now, I want a good school, but I confess that I do not know how unless you help me. Suppose we have a few rules. You tell me, and I will write them on the blackboard.' One fellow yelled, 'No stealing!' Another yelled, 'On time!' Finally, ten rules appeared on the blackboard. 'Now,' said the teacher, 'a law is not good unless there is a penalty attached. What shall we do with one who breaks the rules?' 'Beat him across the back ten times without his coat on,' came the response from the class. 'That is pretty severe, boys. Are you sure that you are ready to stand by it?' Another yelled, 'I second the motion,' and the teacher said, 'Alright, we will live by them! Class, come to order.' In a day or so, 'Big Tom' found that his lunch had been stolen. The thief was located- a little hungry fellow, about ten years old. 'We have found the thief and he must be punished according to your rule- ten stripes across the back. Jim, come up here!' the teacher said. The little fellow, trembling, came up slowly with a big coat fastened around his neck and pleaded, 'Teacher, you can lick me as hard as you like, but please, don't take my coat off!' 'Take your coat off,' the teacher said. 'You helped make the rules.' 'Oh teacher, don't make me!' He began to unbutton, and what did the teacher see? The boy had no shirt on, and revealed a bony little crippled body. 'How can I whip this child?' he thought. 'But I must, if I am to keep this school.' Everything was quiet as death. 'How come you aren't wearing a shirt, Jim?' He replied, 'My father died and my mother is very poor. I have only one shirt and she is washing it today, and I wore my brother's coat to keep me warm.' The teacher, with rod in hand, hesitated. Just then 'Big Tom' jumped to his feet and said, 'Teacher, if you don't object, I will take Jim's licking for him.' 'Very well, there is a certain law that one can become a substitute for another. Are you all agreed?' 'Off came Tom's coat, and after five strokes the rod broke! The teacher bowed his head and thought, 'How can I finish this awful task?' Then he heard the class sobbing and what did he see? Little Jim had reached up and caught Tom with both arms around his neck. 'Tom, I'm sorry that I stole your lunch, but I was awful hungry. Tom, I will love you forever for taking my licking for me! Yes, I will love you forever!'" 

The Savior does this for us.  Love you all!