Transfers coming up!!

Hey mom, I had another pretty good week. I am getting pretty excited about this transfer. I am excited to get a new companion. I really love my companion right now but he has some health problems that are really dragging on the work out here  in the office. He is just finishing up his 9 months in the office. I can't progress or learn much with him here because he normally just does most of the stuff by himself. It will be good to get a new companion plus that will throw me out a little farther in the deep end of things. It's hard to learn how to swim really well when your feet can still touch the bottom of the pool. I am afraid that my companion may get sent home when he leaves the office though. He has been pretty sick lately and has been having a hard time doing anything physical in the office. I don't know how long he can last out in the Filipino sun. I actually don't think he can last even a full day in the field at this point. He is going to take a rest I guess at the MRC (Missionary Recovery Center) for a week and if he doesn't get better, President will just medical release him. I also really have no idea who will be my next companion. The office elder calling is literally the hardest calling to predict. I can almost always guess who will be the next AP or who will become a Zone Leader in the next transfer but predicting the office is impossible. Anyways I can't wait for my next healthy new companion to walk through the doors of the office.

Thanks for paying off my credit card. I don't need any money on my debit card. I am totally fine with just the credit card. I think I am about pretty much done with using my cards out here in the Philippines. I have bought pretty much everything I really want. The only thing I can really think of getting before I leave is a real Barong Tagalog just because it is a very traditional formal shirt out here and it might be cool to have one. My problem is I can't really see myself ever really wearing it to church or any other activity. Maybe when I bring my Filipina girlfriend home I can wear it to my wedding :P. 

Yesterday at church our bishop gave a really great talk in Sacrament Meeting about paying tithing and fast offerings. He said it really saddens him that we have this wonderfully large chapel and parking lot but there are never any cars in it. He said that the primary goal of the stake right now is to help lift the members of the stake out of poverty so that a few years from now all of the parking lots of the chapels will be filled and the fast offerings donations will exceed that which is being given out. He then quoted President Hinkley and said the only way to lift these people out of poverty is through their efforts in living the gospel and paying their tithing. Bishop also gave a wonderful experience about paying his tithing. He said that when he was newly married they had literally no money. Every month they set aside their tithing money but by the end of the month they needed to use it on milk and food for their children. He said he would just pray and ask God to just lend him this tithing money this month and that he promised to pay it back in the future. He noticed that his life really wasn't changing and that he wasn't really seeing any big blessings in life. He was living the Gospel or at least what he thought was living the Gospel and he had a calling that he was fulfilling at that time but still his situation wasn't changing. The end of the month rolled around and the same thing happened - no money. Bishop talked to his wife and they decided that they had better pay their tithing and rely on the Lord. After church that Sunday they both felt really good, even though they literally had no money. When they got to their house, they saw a large sack of rice on the front porch and their neighbor came up to them and said a man was here waiting for you while you were at church. He said that he had borrowed money from Bishop's wife's father about 20 years ago and hoped that this would serve as payment. Bishop said because of that experience he will never not pay his tithing. How cool is that?

The Mission is really focusing hard right now on finding and really improving the work. A couple of months ago the mission kind of took a bit of a nose dive (numbers wise). There was no real reason why it happened but it did. Elders and sisters became complacent with where there were and stopped striving to improve daily. We as a mission found that when that happens numbers don't remain the same, they actually go down. Just goes to prove that God is never satisfied with who you were yesterday and that he is easy to please but impossible to satisfy. That being said, one thing that I feel I have learned on my mission is to never be comfortable with complacency. The teaching pool is still pretty weak right now but we had one of our investigators come to church yesterday. The ward did an amazing job taking care of that investigator. I really feel like she felt very loved when she entered the chapel. 

Well I can't wait to see Matt's new house. I hope it runs smoothly for him haha. It is so nice that you get to see Uncle Ted and Auntie Verna so much! I hope they are doing well! Tell them hi from me!!

Hey Dad - I really love that song that you and Mike sung. I have sung it a few times with the poly elders in the mission. The polys always play the brown hymn book version. It always sounds super good when they sing it. Can't wait to hear it from you guys when I get home in 3 months haha.

Well love you all a ton. Don't get too trunky out there haha. I can assure you that I am not trunky yet out here but I am excited to get to see all the changes back at home.

Elder Nielson