Busy busy week!

30 October 2012

 Hi-ya Family and Friends,

Yep it was a busy and very eventful week. But it all went well and I loved it! First off:

                Corinna's Baptism: Definitely top 5 highlights of my mission. Since it was only my second baptism I wasn't super sure what all had to go down but Sister Peterson took charge and it all came out perfect. Sean was able to baptize her and he was looking so slick. You can probably see in the pictures. He made it special for her and made her feel comfortable. So perfect. Best part was the support from all her friends and family. Both her dad and mom came and about 10 non-member friends. Some even brought her flowers. A couple are going to start coming to YSA and want to learn more. We have a lesson tonight with one of her friends. Corinna is just awesome. Her mom was able to be right by font steps off to the side and see her be baptized and she really appreciated it. She also got teary eyed. I think she has had a change of heart. Not that she will join but she is more accepting of Corinna being baptized. I did end up talking and playing the piano. I decided to do what the scriptures say and treasure up the words in my mind and heart continually and at the hour it is need the spirit will help me speak. Now you know how hard this is for me because each talk in the past was written word for word and I would just read it. It was a huge act of faith but I felt it would be more sincere to Corinna. And God did not fail me. I was still super nervous and shaking but the spirit was with me and I spoke what came to mind and it turned out to be well. I felt the spirit so strong at the baptism, especially when corinna gave her testimony at the end. This church is definitely true. The joy it brings to people's lives is not fake. It is truly from God and it is Him fulfilling His promises when we do what He asks us to do. That is why baptisms are so spiritual. God is so pleased when His children take that step in returning to Him and trusting Him. I encourage you to all go when there is one in your ward or stake. It helps the convert and it blesses you to recieve that blessing of feeling the spirit.

               Belfast Exchange: I am just briefly going to say what went on. BUt all in all it was so good. I served in belfast with Sister Olsen. She is super great! I went up thursday night and we visited a less active. Then friday morning ALL of our appointments fell through. Bit of a bummer but we went by some less actives. And our night appointments were good. Saturday all of our appointments were good also. And I left saturday afternoon. I took the train both ways. She met me in Dublin. Then sis. peterson met me in belfast. But i really learned from Sister Olsen the importance of loving the people and how to do that. She is truly a wonderful missionary. She helped me a lot and we had some really good talks that helped. I am pretty sure I need this exchange. I have another this week and I am suppose to get us around DUblin. I am sure we will get lost at least 3 times. 

Well sorry it is so short but I am needing to go because we are meeting the elders soon to go to the zoo! So excited. I will put a picture of last week's crab fishing in the Irish Sea. All of you should be jealous. It was a blast! Love you all and pray all goes well back home! Cheers!

Love,

 Sister Nicoll

Another Good Week

Hello Family and Friends,

So as mentioned in the subject line... it has been another good week. A couple of exciting things have happened. Last p-day we went with about 6 other elders to the wax museum here. It was alot of fun and I will hopefully attach some photos of it. Today we are going with Sean to Howth to do some shore crab fishing. I am pretty stoked. So that is the worldly fun side of the week, now lets get to the spiritual fun things ( a little sarcasm there). But on Tuesday we met with our investigator Raj. He is from India I believe and he doesn't know too much English  Well we decided we should let him know that baptism is important and that we are meeting with him to make that step in life. So that was our whole lesson. Baptism into Christ's church. He told us that he has already been baptized. So we tried to explain authority and that THIS church is Christ's church. He understood pretty well but still thought he was saved because of already being baptized. Which is understandable. But we asked how he felt when he went to the church. He said happy and good. And we told him he can have that feel always and show that he can show God he wants that always by being baptized into this church. He liked that idea and agreed to be baptized on Nov  23rd, his birthday :) We still need to teach him about Joseph Smith and such but definitely a good step with him :) This coming week we are doing for the first time in this mission a sister exchange. I will be going to Belfast Thursday afternoon til Saturday afternoon. Super excited. I have met the sister I will be with a couple times and she is so funny and sweet. So yep... I am excited. Okay I about covered everything besides the best news of this week. Last email I told about Corinna and her getting baptized. Which is still happening tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!! And Sean got the priesthood yesterday and will be baptizing her. Oh my goodness..... it will be so wonderful. She has asked me to talk about baptism and I will also be playing the piano (pray for me) But the biggest news was the text she sent us a couple days ago. Her mom has been totally against her being baptized and she is out of town right now and Corinna was just going to do it without her mom knowing. But she decided to tell her over skype. Her mom told her that she can be baptized if she knows it will make her happy. And then her mom is coming home tonight from vacation so she can be here for Corinna. I am sure the spirit told her mom that it will be alright and Corinna needs her support. I am so so so thankful that her mom listened to the spirit and will be there for her. That is why this was another good week. I love you all and am so thankful for all your thoughts and prayers. Keep up the missionary work in your own life. This work needs the help of us all! 

Love, 

Sister Nicoll 

 

ps last picture is a graveyard/church that we pass by as we go to a members. Neat places! 

Miracle Week!!!‏

Hello!

I think I am going to start my letters with hello every time because I am not sure how to be very creative about it. Alright I am just going to start out with all the miracles Sister Peterson and I have experienced this week. I personally believe we have been blessed with them because we both were worried how it would be going from 3 to 2 companions and the Lord of course knew our worries so he blessed us with a great start. First the definition of Miracle: An extraordinary event caused by the power of God. Miracles are an important element in the work of Jesus Christ.   So here are the blessing we experienced. On thursday we were headed out to a lady's home to visit. And before we went there we were going to stop at a store and by 30 day bus passes. Sister Peterson had the thought (from the Holy Ghost) to take some old passes that only had a day or two left on them. Lo and behold the store didn't have 30 day passes and we were able to use the other ones and didn't have to waste time and be late to our appointment by going back to the flat. As we were leaving the store another miracle occurred. A man stopped us and told us that he had met with missionaries before and that him and his girlfriend just found out they are expecting a baby and have been thinking about the church and would like to know more. AWESOME! So we set up an appointment with him, which was great, but as we were, we saw our bus that we always missed drive by without us. We knew we had to wait 20 minutes for the next bus and that we would yet again be late for this appointment. But guess what? Another miracle! We went to our stop in the pouring rain thinking it would be a 20 minute wait. But here's the amazing part! A 29a (that was our bus) popped up on the arrival board and said it would be there in 4 minutes! We were amazed. That never happens, especially on Dublin Bus. We got on the bus and found that we were the only ones on it. It's usually a very popular bus and stops at nearly every stop, but we noticed that we weren't stopping anywhere. We were flying and saw that we would be on time to this appointment. We kept looking at each other thinking, really?! We got to our stop at 10:28. When we got off the bus, the bus driver said, "Here you go ladies," as if he knew all along that that was where we'd be getting off. When we got off the bus, we saw that the route number had been zeroed out. We were basically riding a bus that was out of service, except for us. Instead of saying 29a, the bus was "0", where normally it would be "***" for out of service. We decided that the "0" was symbolic of eternity or Omega because that was definitely a bus sent from heaven. We're convinced one of the three Nephites was driving it. As I type this I can really feel that God was blessing us all day long. I am truly thankful for moments like these that you can see it is the work of the Lord. The rest of the week was great as week. Another man (slightly drunk) stopped us on the streets as we were going to city centre. He had us go to the park and talk with him and his wife. His wife had lost all faith in God and questioned His existance. We talked about how we know that He loves us and her. We told her that life may not seem fair now but we will all live again after this life and God will make sure all becomes fair. She listened but didn't talk much but I know she felt something by the way she listened. Even if we don't see her again I felt we fulfilled our call by inviting someone to come closer to Christ. It has been a great week! One last neat thing is that yesterday I was talking to our investigator Corinna at church and she committed to baptism on the 27th of Oct. and by then Sean our recent convert with have the priesthood and she wants him to baptize her. I can already feel that will be an emotional day. I am so excited. I love you all!!!

Love,

Sister Nicoll

Conference was bomb!‏

Hello everyone,

 So conference was FANTASTIC!!! Before I go on about it I will let you know how it works over here:

Saturday

  1-3pm  We watched the Relief Society session

  5-7pm  We watched Saturday morning Session Live

Sunday

   1-3pm  We watched Saturday evenings session not live

   5-7pm  We watched Sunday mornings session Live

We were not able to watch sunday evenings and we wont get the sunday evenings session talks til we get our ensign in January. A bit of a wait but all that i watched was fabulous. Then mission age was such a shock! That is super exciting and means more sisters will be coming out here in the up coming months. So great!!!! My favorite talk I think was about the 'first observe, then serve'. It seems that we seem to wait til  someone has a baby or a death in the family to serve. Don't get me wrong people need service at that time but everyday there is definitely someone around us that needs maybe just a small act of service. Maybe just a call or help with cleaning. If we just look around us, God will open our eyes to see what is need to help one of His children's burdens be lighten through us. Which brings me to what seems to be the theme of conference. The Lord CAN use us but we have to open ourselves up to it. We need to pray for opportunities to bring the blessings of the Lord to people. But when we pray for that we need to be willing to act on the promptings. I feel like it was mentioned at least in 4 talks. I just loved conference!! We watched it at the Church building and quite a bit of members showed up. Also 2 investigators came and sean was able to make it too priesthood. 

Alright one cool story about one of the investigators that came. Last week we went to city centre with the Elders and did some general conference finding. We had a table set up and told people about general conference and prophets. One lady that one of the elders talked to and invited that I met also in City Centre came to conference. That is neat but the super neat thing that happened was.... Before the morning session on saturday, Sister Harris and I were sitting by her and she was expressing the concerns of the immorality that is going on in the world and asked our stance on it. We briefly went over it and we put our trust in the Lord and told her that she will most likely hear a talk today about it. Lo and behold Elder Cooks talk! AND Sister Dibbs. She was very pleased and so was I. God truly knows what ALL His children need. It was a sweet experience to see how it all tied together. She said it went a bit long and didn't come sunday but said she will come to institute on thursday and church next sunday! AWESOME!!! 

Well my last bit of info to share with you all is about moves.... Which I will not be doing. I will be staying here with Sister Peterson. I sure will miss Sister Harris alot! She was a huge blessing to serve with! I love her lots but she will do well in Scotland. 

Well I love you all and hope your week is grand!

Love, Sister Nicoll

First Baptism

Mon 1 October 2012
Hello,

So basically only 2 stories for this week. One that is not so exciting and one that is very exciting. Not so exciting: is our visit with this man named Samuel. Not sure if I have mentioned him before but if so just bare with me. He is a born again Christian and the two times we have met with him, it ends up him talking about his religion more so then us talking about ours. He knows is bible verses pretty darn well and interprets them to his own liking pretty well too. So this last time he was going on and on about the trinity. Which he explained it more clearly then I have heard before, so that was a plus. But finally at the end we asked him a question about the spirit and it totally stumped him. To long to explain the question and all but it just testified to me that we really do have the fullness of the gospel. We may not know all the answers but we can search them out and find them out. I love that about the scriptures. God wants us to know the truth and return to him and it is through the restored gospel that we do that. 

Next story: SEAN GOT BAPTIZED!!!!! Such a beautiful experience. He was nervous but after his baptism he bore his testimony and it was wonderful. He was nervous to tell his mom and brother about. He told his brother 2 days before and mom a few weeks earlier. They both came and his mom even came to his confirmation on sunday. We could all tell she felt really good coming. Sean even said she was fighting the spirit of church. :) He really is a fantastic guy and loves the gospel. Believe it or not I helped sing in the musical number at the baptism. Against my will but it was fun to be apart of it. It was us 3 sisters and 2 guys from ysa he knows. Then sean did his own musical number with a flute type thing and it was beautiful. So glad i was here in Dublin to be apart of it. 

I will explain next week what we do for conference. Because I still not for sure how it will all go down because of the time difference.

Well that about covers this week. Sorry it was so short and not too much excitement but just know I enjoyed my week. I love you all and hope your week is grand.

Love, Sister Nicoll

We like to take pictures of ourselves while we wait
                  for Samuel to show up for the appointment.                      

Cheesy gag gift we gave sean for his baptism 

Sean and the Trio (Sisters Peterson, Harris & Nicoll)

Sean, his brother and mother

Sean and I after his baptism