We did a whole whack of travelling!

Hey There!

Selfie with Elder Lerminez

I guess I should probably write an email this week to go along with all of the pictures this week. There are also a couple of videos on the way, I hope they are able to come through! 

So yeah... Let me think up if we did anything exciting this week....

Monday: Nothing too exciting for Pday. We did lots of shopping, and stuff like that. It was pretty boring. We had a lesson with one of our investigators, and it went really well. She is doing pretty great! We are super excited for her progress! Other than that, it was a pretty quiet day.

A pig we found while doing finding

Elder Lerminez playing with the pig :D 🐖 🐷

Tuesday: We did a lot of finding, and tried to visit a whole bunch of Less-Active members. We are trying to start working with more LA's in the branch. Nobody lives close together around here, so we did a whole whack of travelling! We got to get in and see a couple of people, so that was pretty nice. Yeah... That's about all we did on Tuesday. Hunt people down, that's what we do :P

Wednesday: It was a bit of a sad day.... We started out pretty good, we had District meeting, and then had a lunch appointment with a really sweet lady. After lunch we shovelled her drive for her (We had about 20cm (8inches) of snow that day), and then headed out to a lesson. The lesson didn't go exactly how we had hoped... Our investigators decided that they no longer wanted to keep going, and don't want to meet with us any more... that was a hard "Breakup", haha! We still went out and worked afterwards. That was about all for Wednesday...

Selfie with all the Elders (And Margaret, one of our investigators. We stole her phone and were taking pictures :D)

Thursday: We did lots of finding. We tried to get back on track for the week. Snow does a pretty good job at getting you behind on everything. We had a quick meeting with the Senior Couple in our area to teach them how to use a spreadsheet for the mission. It's pretty complicated... More finding. and then we had a lesson with one of our investigators, and then took her to institute. We had a pretty good institute class this week. There were 4 YSA from Sydney there! It was pretty awesome. That was about how we finished off the night. (there is a video that goes with this part about us teaching the Chinese Girls how to play Musical chairs.)(click the link to see the video)
Musical Chairs with our investigators

Friday: Weekly planning like usual. We had to stop at 11:00 to have a Skype Call with the Sackville Missionaries and teach them how to use the spreadsheet as well. Actually Elder Lerminez teaches everyone how to use it, because over the last 18 months I have become completely computer illiterate. We then had lunch with one of the members. And then back to work. Lot's of finding. We went to a members house for a cottage meeting that was mostly for older couples, but some of our investigators wanted to go, so the Senior Couple invited us to come along and help them understand what everyone was talking about that. That was our Friday.

Saturday: We played street hockey in the morning. I am actually getting proficient at Hockey! I'm going to have to find people to play with when I get home! We did lots of finding during the day, and then had another lesson with one of our investigators. Pretty quiet day.

Sunday: We got about 2 feet of snow on Saturday night, so we spent a lot of time on Sunday morning shovelling out. We shovelled so much snow! And then we were stuck at the church for most of the day, so we had to find some way to entertain ourselves. We found a wheelchair and played around with that for a while, and then Elder Beacham and I invented the Wheelchair Snowplough! (Click the links to watch the videos)

Playing in the snow in a wheelchair

Wheelchair Snowplough!

Investigator wheelchair snowplow

Teamwork!

It's pretty great! We got to watch the World Wide Devotional from last week. President Nelson is pretty great!

so yeah.. That was pretty much our week... Nothing to exciting.

I hope you are all having a great week! Love you

Hockey hockey, Moose moose, Maple Leaf, Sorry about that, eh?

Elder Nielsen

 

 

 

 



Elder Bate stole my camera 

Wheelchair Snowplow

Looking dramatically out over the snow

Getting pushed in the wheelchair

 

 

 

 

 

Loud ties and crazy socks are my favourite thing in the world.

Well, hello there!

 

 

The first snowball of the winter!

I decided that I was going to be a good missionary today, and write this letter first, so that I don't have panic about it at the end of my time on the computer. So yeah, here you go :)

So, the information that I gave you last week about my transfer was not completely correct. There were some changes made to the transfer list after it went out. So I am still serving in Sydney, Nova Scotia, but I am not companions with Elder Holtby. My new companion is actually Elder Eneko Lerminez. He is from France, and he is super hilarious! I love the guy! Oh, and I am also not the DL here. That got changed as well. So yeah, that is what actually happened here. We basically just whitewashed all of Sydney and Eskasoni. Three new missionaries in one apartment, with only one Elder who knows what is going on. It made for an exciting weekend. 

The beginning of the snow in Yarmouth 

So, lets see if I can think up anything interesting about this week to tell you. You aren't even going to be surprised when I say this, because I think I do it at the beginning of every single transfer, but I left my old planner at home, so basically I have no brain right now... So I will see what I can remember off the top of my head.

Monday: Pday. Not too much going on for Pday. We didn't even have to go food shopping, so that was nice! We went looking around the mall for Boxing Day sales. They have changed Boxing Day from just being the day after Christmas to being a whole weekend + Monday of crazy sales and what not, so we decided to see if we could find anything worth buying. I bought socks. Loud ties and crazy socks are my favourite thing in the world. I have to have something to be able to stand out as a missionary, haha! Other than that, we didn't really do too much. I started packing, and we cleaned the apartment. It was a good time.

Tuesday: It was a pretty normal Proselyting day. We went out and did the Missionary thing and talked to people and stuff. Good times all around. I packed up my desk, so basically all I had to take around with me was my scriptures. I had to use all of my bags to pack up my stuff. I have away a HUGE black garbage bag full of clothing to the Salvation Army. I went through all of my stuff and anything that I hadn't worn for more than 6 months got put in the bag. My suitcases are much lighter now! It's a beautiful thing. We had supper with an older couple in the branch. that was really nice. That was about it for Tuesday. Oh, also it snowed. A lot. That's not so much fun.

Hour 4 of it snowing.

Wednesday: Again, it was a pretty normal proselyting day. We had lunch with an older member and her Grandchildren. That was fun! Sweet people. We basically spent the rest of the day talking to people, and I finished up packing my stuff in the evening. 

Thursday: We left Yarmouth at around 9:00 in the morning. We made a little pit stop in Hammonds Plains to visit Emile and Peggy-Anne (the man I baptised in Sackville, and his wife). We had lunch with them, and got to have a little visit :) After that, we made our way to the Temple to wait for the Transfer van to show up so I could grab my companion and make our way to Sydney. The van was supposed to be in Dartmouth at 2:00, but it didn't actually show up until about 4:00, so we didn't get all put together, and get out of Dartmouth until about 4:20 ish...  It was a long drive, and we finally got to Sydney at about 8:30.  

Friday; Not much went on Friday. Being New Years Day, we weren't supposed to be out proselyting or anything, so we just worked on getting ourselves put together for the new transfer. It's going to be good!

Saturday: Our first actual work day in Sydney. It was pretty great. We played Street Hockey in the Morning (we do every Saturday) with a group of members/investigators. That was super fun! After that we went out street contacting, and found a guy who is willing to talk. We are going to be having a meeting with him in the next week. We also got to have lessons with two of our three investigators. They are both from China (there are a lot of Chinese people here because of the University). They lessons went really well, and one of them is now preparing to be baptized on January 30! That is going to be great!

Sunday: Both of our investigators that we taught on Saturday came to church! It was pretty great. We got to go to Branch Choir (It's so nice to be in a branch that has a choir again), and with the weather getting bad, and the Choir Director living so far away, I was elected to be the Stand-in choir director if she can't be there (Elder Lerminez volunteered me, haha!), so that should be fun :) We got a media referral sent to us by the Dartmouth Sisters because it had been sent to them by mistake. This guy is incredible! He taught us the restoration when we went to visit him. He has been talking to the Missionaries in Salt Lake via Mormon.org, and has been doing a lot of reading and watching all of the church videos. He says he wants to get baptized, so that is pretty great! We are going to be meeting with him again today (Monday). After our lesson with him, we had supper with some members who live on an Alpaca Farm! That was pretty awesome! Elder L. LOVES alpacas! He was super excited to see them! Overall, it was a pretty great day.

Yeah, so that was our week. Not too shabby I would say! 

Well, I hope you all had a great week as well! Don't have too much fun out there!

Hockey hockey, Moose moose, Maple Leaf, Sorry about that, Eh?

Elder Nielsen

December 28 - It was a great Christmas!

Hey there!

Well, here we are again. Today is the day after Boxing day, so all of Canada is still shut down for the Holidays, and nothing exciting is going on. Mum and Dad would love it hear, because the Post Office Closes at 4:00 on Christmas eve, and nobody has to work again until the day after Boxing day. So basically we just don't get mail for like, a week. Oh, and I guess everyone will be wondering, I am getting transferred this week. I'm going to be going to Sydney, Cape Breton. Basically I'm moving from the most southern tip of Nova Scotia to the most northern tip of Nova Scotia. It's basically just freezing cold there all winter, and has lots of snow and lots of wind. It's going to be fun! It's like going to Newfoundland without having to get on an airplane (or at least that's what I hear). I'm going to be the District Leader for the smallest district in our mission. The District is only my companion and me, one other set of Elders (who live in the same apartment) and a senior couple. It's a pretty small district. 

Well, I guess I will see if I can think up anything super exciting for this week... And, you guys are going to laugh, but I just left my planner on the desk at home when I left, so I don't have my brain here, so It's going to be all from memory now... Oops...

Monday: Pday. We really didn't do anything terrible exciting... We went shopping, and got all ready for the week that we were going to have... Nothing to fancy..

Tuesday: It was really our only work day of the week. We went out and talked to as many people as we could. Not much luck. But we were able to meet with some less active members, so that is always good. We helped a member stack some wood in his sons basement. It's wood stacking season again. Other than that, it was just a lot of working :)

Wednesday: District meeting.... I really didn't miss having to prepare District meetings so I guess it's a bummer that I'm going to be a District Leader again, eh? No, I'm going to love it, I just need to get back into the swing of it. We got to work a little bit on Wednesday, but we were only supposed to work until 6:00 and then do our weekly planning. So our Wednesday wasn't terribly exciting. We did have a Supper Appointment with some members who fed us great food! Rappie Pie is so awesome! I loved it! That was basically our Wednesday.

Thursday: We only had to work until 4:00 on Christmas Eve, so we didn't have anything too exciting happen during the day. We spent the rest of the evening making Lemon Fudge, and other goodies, and taking them around to people (because I guess we are suddenly Sister Missionaries...). It was great. We stopped by the members who fed us on Wednesday, to pick up something that I had left behind, and to give them some goodies, and we just happened to get there right in time for them to feed us a second time! This time it was Lobster Supper! It was GREAT!!! I love lobster! I am so thankful to them! It was great!

Friday: Merry Christmas! It was a great Christmas! I loved getting to see everyone on Skype! It was so awesome! That's always a great Christmas gift :) We spent the rest of the day with a couple of members that invited us over for supper. It was great! Turkey Dinner, and getting to spend time with some great company :) Good stuff :D 

Saturday: Happy Boxing Day! We didn't have to work, we just had to spend the day planing for the new transfer, and getting everything ready for the upcoming year. Nothing too exciting. We spent some time with some more members, and ate lots of food.

Sunday: HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY FAVOURITE BROTHER, DERICK!!! Sorry I forgot to say it on the call on Friday! It was pretty much a normal day.. Nothing too exciting... Transfer Letters came out, so that's fun! Basically that was it.

So that was my week. 

Hope you all had a great week!

Love you all so much!

Hockey hockey, Moose moose, Maple Leaf, Sorry about that, Eh?

Elder Nielsen

A clip of our Skype visit with Jeff on Christmas - he demonstrates the "Nova Scotia Suck" and maybe you can hear his heavy Canadian accent we had to give him a hard time about.

December 21 (Late posting cause Mom is a slacker!)

Merry Christmas from Yarmouth!

Alright, so my weekly letter is going to have to be short again, because I forgot again! My bad!! But Hey, I get to see some people on Friday, so that will be pretty great!

This is what Elder Beckman and I made for the
 Missionary White Elephant exchange.
We found all of the bad pictures from every missionaries
 Facebook and made a collage with them.
It was pretty awesome :D

Monday: Pday, we spent a lot of time making our gift for the missionary White Elephant gift exchange. Which came out pretty great if you ask me! other than that, we did some finding, and that was about it.

Tuesday: We tried to get some finding in. We had a lot going on with service appointments (the Archives, and then we sung at a seniors home), so we didn't end up actually doing so much work... ooops... But we did have a great supper appointment with some great members :)

Wednesday: We left Yarmouth just before 6:00am so we could get to Halifax in time to practice my musical number for Zone Conference. Yeah.. I decided to sing even though I'm sick... That wasn't my best choice, but I did it anyways. It was alright, but it probably didn't sound to great! 

Thursday: Lots of work. We had to make up time after the beginning of our week.

Friday: Weekly planning and a lot of work. Again, trying to make up time.

Saturday: Lots of work. We finished up everything that we had to do though :P It was good. 

Sunday: Relax. Happy Sabbath. It was good! We had a couple of lessons with some less active members, so that is always fun. It was a good day.

Sorry I'm a worm, but I will try to do better next week!

Love you all!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Alright... confession time... I am a Twenty year old male, and I still have a bunch of stuffed animals... and the are all named....  Starting from the Far Right: The big Moose is Toby, The Dragon is Bruce, The smaller darker Moose is Pierre. In the front: The smaller moose is Keith, and the Lobster is Jaques :)

Hey look, I got a haircut after that Christmas picture :D

Hey there! I'm a worm....

Hey there!

Cape Forchu 

I'm a worm, and I always forget to write this letter, and then I remember right when I have no time left!... Sorry about that... But, I guess I will see if I can remember any fun stories for you this week! 

Monday: It was a pretty average Pday... Nothing overly exciting. We went out to the Cape Forchu lighthouse. That's always fun. Took a couple of good pictures for posterity :P I'm not the best at remembering to take pictures, but I try! After that we went back to work. We were supposed to have a lesson at 8:00, but it ended up falling through... That was a bit of a bummer..

Tuesday: We did a lot of finding on Tuesday. Not too many results, but that is okay, it's going to happen! We finally went back to doing service at the Archives. It's been quite a while since we've gone and done that, so It was nice to go back. After that it was a lot of finding again. We had a supper appointment with a couple from the branch, and to finish up the night we had a lesson with a less active family. Good stuff.

Organizing the Donations for the Refugees

Wednesday: We had District Meeting for the first time in a while. I gave the Doctrinal Discussion this week. I talked about the names of Christ. It went pretty well. We spent a lot of time traveling, so that was most of our day. We tried to get in a little bit of finding in the evening before Branch Council. Not a lot got done... oops...

Thursday: We spent the morning at Beacon United Church helping sort some stuff for the Syrian Refugees that are coming into Yarmouth this week. We have been helping out with that for a little while. We had a bunch of lessons fall through on us, so that's no fun... but we kept going out and talking to people, we will find people to teach! We helped Joey move the last of his stuff out of his old place into his new house. He is officially moved out! So, yeah, that was pretty much our day.

Our little Christmas tree.

Friday: Weekly Planning. Lots of fun :D We did lots of finding again. We went and had a not-lesson with a really cool guy. We aren't going to teach him, but he is a cool guy all the same. after that it was a lot more finding. The Branch Christmas Activity was that night, and, like usual, I totally forgot to take pictures... My bad. But it was fun. The kids really enjoyed it! We had a really weird thing happen. We went out to look at some lights in a park, and this little dog started following us around, and wouldn't leave us alone. It followed us for probably half a kilometer back to our car, so we ended up taking it with us and giving it to some members until the SPCA could come and pick it up. It was almost like having a pet for like 30 seconds, haha!

Christmas tree made of Lobster Traps

Saturday: Again, lots of finding. We took the new couple in our area to meet some less active members. That was fun! They all got along swimmingly! Such fun people. We had a lesson fall through on us again, so bummer, but we survived. 

Sunday: Happy Sabbath! Church was pretty great. Elder Beckman spoke in church and gave a great talk about Fasting and Prayer. Good stuff. We took the sacrament to an old lady that cant get out, and then had a really long lesson with a less active member. The rest of the night was pretty quiet. 

The lights in the park

Yeah so that was pretty much our week. Nothing too exciting. 

Oh, I guess a minor tack-on... Due to some craziness in the District, I am now the District Leader here.  That's interesting. Not a very long break, haha!

I'm pretty sure that is everything. 

Love your guts, and I hope you have a great week!

Hockey hockey, Moose moose, Maple Leaf, Sorry about that, Eh?

Elder Nielsen

Sunset at the lighthouse

 

 

 

 

 

In case you are wondering, we have talked to 1/9 of the town of Yarmouth

With my comp Elder Beckman

Hey there, Sorry I kinda forgot to write a letter! I will see what I can whip up really quick
I am just going to give you the basic overview of this week, because basically all we did was finding. We had what my mission president called "Le Tour de Faith" and basically all of our contacting standards got bumped up (from 10 hours of finding and 140 contacts to 30 hours of finding and 300 contacts) it was insane. We decided that we were going to win, so my companion and I went ham and ended up with 46.5 proselyting hours and 801 contacts. It was crazy! 
Each day of Le Tour de Faith had a specific challenge or specific goal for the day. I will tell you all about it.


Monday: We had our Pday, and then Le Tour de Faith began. The Monday Challenge was to get as many Family Home Evenings set up with Less Active Members, Investigators, and Members as possible. We had a bunch set up, but only one actually played out... Bummer. 


Tuesday: The goal for Tuesday was to invite as may people to baptism as possible. We talked to about 120 people that day, and invited 43 of them to be baptized. We won the challenge for that day.


Wednesday: The challenge for Wednesday was to come up with the most creative finding idea possible. We decided to tie a whole bunch of Christmas Pass-Along cards to balloons and hand them out to people on the street. It was awesome! People thought it was hilarious and loved it!


Thursday: The challenge was to teach as many ten minute restoration lessons to people as you could. We started to run into a slight issue... after the Tuesday challenge, people started running away from us on the streets... Like, literally dropping whatever they were doing and running. It was actually pretty funny. But it made talking to people a lot harder... We talked to about 160 people, but we were only able to teach 10 lessons... 


Friday: The goal was to hand out 5 copies of The book of Mormon. (We were only able to pass out 5 because the mission is running low right now.) We did that in about an hour, and then kept on going. We talked to about 206 some people that day. 


Saturday: The goal on Saturday was to invite as may people to church as possible. We were so tired after the week we had been having, but we just kept on going. We talked to about 130 people, and invited 61 of them to church. It was pretty great.


Sunday: We went to church, and rested.


Overall it was a pretty great week, and, like I said we ended up with 46.5 hours of finding and 801 contacts. (In case you are wondering, that means we have talked to 1/9 of the town of Yarmouth.)


Yupp, so that was my week. I hope you guys had a great week! 


Love ya!
Hockey hockey, Moose moose, Maple Leaf, Sorry about that, eh?
Elder Nieslen

It's great to be teaching people again!

Hello hello! Another week as come and gone in the Canada, Halifax Mission! It's already that time of week again, can you believe it?

So, I will see if I can think up some fun stories for this week!

Monday: It was pretty normal. Had Pday. We fixed the computer here at the church, so it doesn't take a total of for hours to email, so we actually get to have a Pday again! It's pretty awesome! After Pday was over, we went and knocked on some doors, and tried to get in contact with some former investigators. We finished up with a lesson with some less active members.

Tuesday: It was actually a pretty awesome day! We were supposed to drive up to Greenwood to stay the night with the District leader before Zone Conference in Dartmouth on Wednesday, but we really felt like we needed to stay in our area, and work here, and just drive up to Dartmouth Wednesday morning. So we called the DL and told him, and he told us to stay here, so we did. That night (at exactly the time we would have been driving to Greenwood), we knocked into someone who let us right in and we are now teaching him! It was pretty great!

Elder Beckman and I decided to take a picture before we left Halifax the other night, because we never actually get to see the temple at night!

Wednesday: We left Yarmouth at 5:50 so that we could get to Dartmouth at 9:00 so I could practice with the group for a musical number. Zone Conference was pretty great, it always is! This is going to be a crazy transfer! Lots of changes happening in the mission! After Zone Conference we had interviews with President Pratt. Good stuff. We had supper in Dartmouth at a SOLID seafood place, and then drove the 3.5 hours back to Yarmouth.

Thursday: We basically just worked out butts off trying to play catch up after losing a day to Zone Conference. Yeah, that's about it, tons and tons of work.

This is from when I saw Emile at Transfers. I promise he is happy,
 just not great at smiling, haha!

Friday: Yeah, so last week when we went shopping, we started talking to this guy in the check-out line that was from Jamaica, and had met with JW's over there. We had a really awesome conversation with him, and got his phone number. This week we were able to set up another appointment with him, and, we are now teaching him! It's pretty awesome! It's great to be teaching people again!

Saturday: Yeah, another day of just pounding the pavement. It was pretty crazy! Lots and lots of work. 

Sunday: Happy Sabbath! We spent the whole day meeting with shut-ins and less active members. I would call that a good day :D

 

So yeah, that was pretty much our week!

I hope you are all doing fantastic! I love your guts!

Have a great week!

Hockey hockey, Moose moose, Maple Leaf, Sorry about that, eh?

Elder Nielsen

 

P.S.Oh Yeah! And Before I forget to tell you, because I have forgotten every week for like, two transfers now, Gina Eves sister is serving here with her husband. Elder and Sister Excell are the Branch President and wife in the Halifax YSA branch. It was an interesting little connection that Bishops Sister in law was here in the mission.