I know God answers prayers!

Hey Family!

i love you!

Can i just say how excited i have been to email y'all this week!

We have a baptism coming up on the 30th of june and we are so excited! but before i get to far ahead of myself, i want to tell you about my week!

so on Monday night we decided to stop by a part member family home after an appointment fell through. We went over there and the wife (not yet member) answered the door. she was a bit hesitant, but she let us in! we sat and visited with her a bit and found out that she is Methodist and was actually offended by some sister missionaries... that explains the hesitation... :) anyway she felt that they were telling her that what she believed wasn't true and that it was all wrong... she said that she had received confirmation that she needed to be baptized in the Methodist church... so she did it... and she wanted to know why our church was different than hers and why she needed to be baptized again... im sure the sisters object wasn't to offend her but she took offense in their explanation... and there fore, stopped listening to them... her heart was hardened and everything after that, that they would try and explain was not getting through and was only making it worse and making her more and more angry with them....

when we went in there, we simply... (and i say we, i can't take credit, it was all by the spirit) but we went in and championed her for her strides in her religion and in her great faith in Jesus Christ... we acknowledged the similarities between hers and our church... and really just built a relationship with her based on understanding one another. she invited us back for lunch on Wednesday and she said "maybe you girls can help me understand what the other sisters tried to explain and you can tell me how our churches are different."

Wow, what a neat experience i was very pleased with how that went! i went home and prayed that we would be able to follow the spirit and help her understand with out offending her... so i excitedly waited for Wednesday!

So Tuesday came and with it we were able to teach Sunshine again! we taught her the Plan of Salvation! what an awesome lesson.. the spirit was so strong! I LOVE teaching this lesson! because every time i do my testimony grows and i see just how much our heavenly father loves us. I love being able to help others understand it too!

i am really excited for Sunshine to be baptized!

Finally the day i had been waiting for Wednesday was here!

we met with Sister Suter (the lady from Monday) for lunch... we visited a bit and then i just began asking her questions... completely by the spirit... i asked her more about her conversion the the Methodist faith and and how she knew that being baptized was what she needed to do and she explained classic signs of the spirit! it was great! now we had somethings to work with! i asked her what it was about our faith that she didn't understand and she talked about Joseph Smith and prophets... so then an simple object lesson that helped explain prophets popped into my mind that i had learned from one of my previous companions... so i quickly put it to use... i held my fist (representing god) out and told her to place her fist (representing us) under mine... then i would move mine around and instructed her to follow my fist with hers... after she tried to follow mine with no success.. she was like "ha ha right that's not gonna happen" so then i took out my pen (representing a prophet) and told her to take one end in her hand and i would take the other and then we were able to move our hands in harmony... then i explained that a prophet was a direct link between the lord and us... he receives revelation that if we choose to follow, we will be-able to move in harmony with the lords will... and after i had showed and explained to her that... her reaction, or rather the spirit that followed her reaction was incredible! She looked at us and said "wow that makes perfect sense!" and when she stated that the spirit filled the room and hit me so hard! i was amazed! we went on to tell her that we don't worship our prophets just follow them and the answered the question that she was about to ask before she even asked it! and then she asked "well how do you know if your prophet is a true prophet and not just some guy telling stories?" and we told her that we can receive our own personal revelation form the lord... and explained that it worked the same way that it did when she received the confirmation to be baptized as a Methodist... and she understood completely! Wow the spirit helped us out completely! i was so grateful that i listened really hard to the promptings i was receiving!

I know God answers prayers! He helped me to teach by the spirit and really listen to what the spirit was telling me... and he is preparing her heart too!

she told us the she was actually listening this time and that is why things were making so much sense... her heart is being softened... and we can take NO credit there either... the lord softens hearts! we really can take very little credit for the work we do out here... glory be to the Lord!

Some other neat things that happened that day was, while we were headed to another less active members house i got the prompting... " go see the opera lady!" i only knew this woman as the "opera lady" because when we met her a few months ago she was rushing out the door to an opera and told us to take her address and come back... well i got the prompting to go and see her... so before we went to our next destination we stopped at her house... she opened the door and welcomed us in and gave us water :) we visited with her and found out that she had actually met with missionaries before... in new york where she is from! she told us that she wanted us to come back and have lunch with her and meet some of her friends! so we are going back on Thursday this week! wow what a neat day it turned out to be!

Thursday was pretty uneventful not that there weren't small miracles throughout our day, but it was a day of more appointments that fell through... but we did have lunch with one of our members and her 5 girls. watching them all play together and fight... ha ha reminded me of our family :) i loved it! and this sister kept apologizing for their fighting and being crazy, but i just told her that i totally understand... i come from a family of all girls... and she was like "oh that is awesome then you know what it's like!" ha ha she is such a sweet sister and such a good mother!

Friday came and went just as they always do... we spend most of the day planning for the upcoming week!
Saturday we planned to do a church tour for sunshine... and we couldn't get a hold of anyone with keys to the building so for half an hour we were outside the building calling everyone in the ward to find a key so we could get in the building... i just had to laugh at this little mishap... i knew that everything would turn out... and it did:) the church tour went great!
i had fried Okra for the first time! Wow that is some good stuff! also... i didn't tell you in my last email, but i finally saw FIREFLIES for the first time last week... fireflies are now my favorite insect! ha ha! and the stories are true... their guts really do glow when you squish them... you know i had to try it! ha ha no, in an attempt to catch one i injured it so i had to put it out of it's misery... i was so sad Fireflies are almost enough to make me move back here after my mission... but the humidity will keep me away!
Sunday sunshine came to church! yay! what a great accomplishment. a missionaries heart drops when their investigators don't some to church... but they soar when they see their investigator walk into that building! what a great feeling it is to have an investigator at church! The worldwide leadership broadcast was last night too... i hope yall got an oprotunity to watch it... if not watch it online it was great!
so that was my week! pretty fun stuff! so now on to the really exciting part of my email!  
In an effort to help sunshine read the book of Mormon daily, we took some coloring pages out of a coloring book that i have and we put a grid on them and made her a reading chart. we figured out that there are 239 chapters in the book of Mormon this is really exciting... why?... Because tomorrow Tuesday June 25th 2013, i will have 239 days left on my mission! i have really thought about this and i want to invite y'all to do a book of Mormon count down with me! if we read one chapter a day, we can have the book of Mormon finished by time i come home!!!! I really feel that as we do this as a family that we will grow in spirituality and love, our testimonies of this gospel will grow... and the Book of Mormon is always a good read!

So, family, WILL YOU... read one chapter from the book of Mormon as a family each night, and pray about it and ask our heavenly father if it is true?

As a representative of The Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, i promise and i am confident that the Lord will tell you of it's truth, your testimony will grow, your faith will increase and you will love your families with more love and you will be filled with His spirit! I know this with all my heart! I have seen it in the lives of those i associate with here in Georgia, and i know that the lord is no respecter of persons he will give unto all his children that ask!
"... and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost>" (Moroni 10:4) I KNOW THIS GOSPEL IS TRUE!

I am even going to start over and do this myself.

I have truly come to LOVE the book of Mormon while Ive studied it over and over and taught about it and testified of it to many people... i KNOW with all the surety of my heart that the Book of Mormon IS the word of god, and it does in fact go hand in hand with the bible... it testifies of our Savior Jesus Christ. I have explored the evidence myself, and found it to be true... no one can take this testimony from me... i know it to be true and i love it!

i love yall untill next week  

Sister Dannika Nielsen

IT IS SO GREAT TO FEEL THE SPIRIT WORK THROUGH ME!!!!!!

well This week was a pretty good week... let me take you through my week!

Monday was p-day! we ate vegetarian spaghetti... yummy! it was actually pretty good!

Tuesday we had zone training meeting and I gave a training... yay... I still hate public speaking... but oh well! I was working on an art project for E. Thompson and E. Gardner so I brought those to them before they left for transfers... they turned out really neat! it was nothing to great it was just the University of Georgia logo on a small cement bulldog mascot.... we almost didn't get to have a lesson with sunshine because she couldn't get a ride to the lesson... but we arranged for a ride to get her there! and did get to teach her a lesson! yay... so she is scheduled for june 30th for baptism. we invited sunshine to the departing missionary fireside the next night! we found out that Sunshine is the daughter of a Less active member in the ward... but sunshine never got baptized crazy! 

Wednesday... was the Departing Missionary Fireside and since we had sunshine coming with us we were able to go to it! and that is were I met up with sister galt! I LOVE that woman! and I got to say good bye to my two favorite zone leaders E Thompson and E Edmunds... I can't believe they are going home... they were my first ZL's when I first came out... im gonna miss them! But the fireside was amazing... the spirit was so strong as 12 of the lords servants bore sincere and humble testimony of the truth of his gospel... I felt the spirit differently than I usually do... instead of becoming emotional or feeling goose bumps I felt a burning with in my heart... and it stayed there till we left and when I got up the next morning I was still feeling it! It was so amazing! I was SO glad sunshine was there to hear their testimonies! I left there filled with the spirit... it was incredible!

Thursday was awesome... ha ha! We had a service project scheduled for 12:00 we got in our car to go and I listened and something sounded funny.... yep we had a flat.... ehhhh nooooo so I pulled into a parking space and called the sister we were going to help out and told her that we had a flat. she said she would come and pick us up... so we left the car there and rode with her to her house... we did yard work... it was so much fun... but in this Georgia heat... you sweat so bad!... it's so gross! anyway after we finished there we went home and I had to change a tire... and guess what... I knew how to change a tire... wanna know how I knew... ha ha because I have a BOSS of a father who said his girls needed to know how to change a tire! so I totally saved the day! booyeah! then we sat in Pep boys for the next two hours, we had to get a whole new tire... the wire thing that I ran over was just on the edge to where it couldn't be patched... of course!

That evening an incredible thunderstorm rolled in. I LOVE the storms out here. I feel so bad because while I am enjoying every minute of the storm my comp is freaking out because she hates storms they make her uneasy. sad days!

we ate with the hyde family on Friday, they are amazing! I helped him with pointers on installing his windows in his house... I told him that I had a boss of a dad who helped us to install windows in our own rooms... and I told him how to do the caulk lines... ha ha it was great! That evening we went and met with Ed he was a jewish guy that told us if we would come back that he would write our names in Hebrew so we stopped by and he wrote our names for us then he sang form the Torrah for us and let us look at it... Hebrew is a pretty language... it was really neat to meet him... he was such a good guy. he told us that some Christians still judge him because he is jewish and "his" people killed Christ.... wow really... I think if Christ could forgive them for what they did... who are they to hold a grudge... and especially if they claim to be Christians and profess to follow Christ! it's Really sad... he was such a good man... I love him!

Saturday we taught a POWERFUL lesson to a returning member.... at the end I began to promise he blessings for reading and praying about the book of Mormon and the spirit completely took over and it promised some pretty powerful stuff... things that she specifically needed... I can not take credit for it... because I know it was all the spirit! it was so great to feel the spirit work through me... to be a powerful instrument in the lords hands... greatest feeling ever!

Sunday was incredible...I was able to get some answers to some long asked questions it was great! I loved it! I love the way heavenly father works... he really does know each of us individually of this I can testify!

well family there are a TON of other missionaries who need to get on the computer so I love you all and I hope to talk to you soon!

love you so much
Sister Dannika Nielsen

NO TRANSFER....

Well this week was pretty good!

We had our lesson with Sunshine this week. It went very well. She also brought 3 of her friends... they were really involved in the lesson, making comments and answering questions and what not. they were super awesome! we invited them all to be baptized... but the three friends said that they had already been baptized... but Sunshine accepted! so this week we will give her a date!

but we will also go into more detail on the importance of the authority and hopefully help the girls understand it!

We also taught another man, that we have tried to get in with since last transfer! We finally got in and taught him the first lesson... but im not so sure if his intent is the most sincere... but we will see with his next lesson if he has kept his commitment to read the Book of Mormon.

We also taught another man that we have been trying to teach since sister cefalo got here, he seems great! he is a true seeker and he wants a stronger relationship with his heavenly father and he wants to know the truth! I am really excited to teach him!

Then on Saturday we taught a woman who is a Baptist minister... yikes! we have talked to her onetime before and she seemed really sincere when she said she would read the Book of Mormon and then she said that she wanted to meet with us and talk about it... so on Saturday we brought the bishop with us to answer her questions... it was pretty much her and her friends picking apart our articles of faith and the book of Mormon and in the sickly sweet southern hospitality way they told us that we were wrong! and that modern revelation went against the bible... and yatta yatta yatta! she was so hung up on the tiniest details and made things way more complicated than needed... all the issues that they brought up could be clearly explained by scriptures in the bible... but we were NOT there to bash... they were closed minded... I tried to explain that the book of Mormon went hand in hand with the bible and she quickly told me it wasn't true... she said the book of Mormon does not go hand in hand with the bible... but she hadn't even read it!

Well i'm glad that Bishop was with us... he helped her to at least understand that we did believe a lot of the same things... that was interesting.

people believe some interesting things... I am so glad that we have moder day revelation and a prophet and that our doctrines are simple and easy to understand... I love this gospel...

Transfers are this week... and ill be staying in Lilburn since im training... anyway, have a good week Y'all
Sister Dannika Nielsen

Look for the tender mercies in you life...

Well i really didn't know if i was going to have anything great to write about this week because, i feel like everything is the same all the time... i do the same thing over and over, just in a different part of this town... Visit less actives that are never home, knock on doors that are never receptive, schedule appointments that always fall through. When that phone rings and it's the investigator on the other end my mind automatically goes to... "well there goes that appointment" and sure enough.... they cancel. I guess maybe i need to hope that maybe they are just calling to confirm the appointment... ha ha right! it's hard to have hope when everyone of them turns out to be the same! Rejection after rejection! I realized this wasn't going to be easy... but week after week of what seems to be failure really starts to ware on me! That is how this week started, and...well... ended too, but Heavenly Father showed me some tender mercies for not giving up and calling it quits at night when our appointments fall through. 

Story time!

So to set the back ground for this story...Sis. Reese and i contacted into this 19 yr old girl named Sunshine (very unique name) super sweet and super soft spoken she said that her mom had learned from the missionaries but told them not to come back after awhile but Sunshine still wanted to learn but she didn't know how to get a hold of the missionaries... we were so excited! we invited her to conference that weekend, but when we called her again, her phone was disconnected... we tried for a couple weeks after that and didn't get anything, so we let it go for a while. So on Tuesday night we were visiting teaching with some of the ladies in the ward, they went over to visit with one of their less active ladies that they teach. We got to know this lady and she is so neat i just love her, then she told us that she had a god-daughter that wants to get baptized but she didn't know how to go about it!  So she told her that she needed to talk to the missionaries and learn about baptism and what it means to be baptized etc... so she already wants to get baptized, she just needs the lessons... But the story gets better! So we are talking and i ask, "what is her name" and she says "Sunshine, she is 19" My mouth about dropped open... she said "yes that is her real name" i agreed that it was a unique name, but a name i had heard before! "I know your god-daughter!" i said. "is she super soft spoken"  "yes"  OH MY WHAT! how awesome is that! Wow tender mercy of the lord... not only has he prepared someone for us to teach, but he he has given us another chance with sunshine! We are meeting with her tomorrow! i can hardly wait to meet her again and marvel  in the awesomeness of the circumstance! Ha Ha

Next experience....

So we are working with an excommunicated member (on the road back) and she is married to a non member that has some very strong feelings about Mormons. we were talking with her at church on Sunday and I had been afraid to ask before, but i finally asked her " so... do you have to retake the missionary lessons, and when can you start taking them?" she was like.... "ya know... im not really sure!" we finished talking to her and she took off... we met up with her again about 30 mins later and she cam walking over with the bishop and she said "bishop said we are good to go with the missionary lessons!" HOW GREAT IS THAT! I am so proud of her she wants this so bad and she is working so hard to get there despite her husbands opinions! I think her husband will come around eventually though. We went over there and he sat in  the room the entire time we were talking to her, he was on  the computer the whole time, but i know he was listening. he is a great guy though ive talked with him and he is friendly! he just doesn't agree with the the Joseph Smith story...  

How bout another....

We were tracting and we came to the end of the street and i looked at one house and said lets knock that one... and sister cefalo picked one to... a bright turquoise one with black shutters... she said... i like the color of that one... lest knock it... so we knocked her pick first... i told her since it was her pick that she was gonna take the lead at the door....the lady answered the door and s. cefalo froze... ha ha oh i remember those days, so i stepped in... i asked the lady if we could come in and pray with her and leave the saviors peace and blessing on her home... she was right in the middle of a timed test, but she still let us in and i surprised s. cefalo and told her that she was going to say the prayer.. and she did awesome! the spirit was so strong, i know the lady felt something. i bore a quick but powerful testimony about prophets and then we asked if we could come back and she said YES! it was one of those appointments that fell through, but it was still a neat miracle! :) 

We finally got in with one of the LA (less active) families that we have been trying to get in with for the past 3 months! and they are such a neat family. we are going to invite their oldest daughter to come with us on a team up with sunshine! yay

Well family it's been a pretty good week when i stop to think about it... sometimes it is hard to see  the lords hand in our lives, but if we really stop and look... we will ALWAYS find that he does indeed have his hand in every aspect of our lives. I continue to find reasons to love this work...

family i love y'all so much i hop yalls week is going well...

Look for the tender mercies in you life... 

have a blessed week

love,     

Sister Dannika Nielsen