Well we had a super stressful week! We had several missionaries in our zone go to an off limits area and when we found out we told them straight away to go and tell President Mangum. We said we didn't want to be those kind of missionaries that want to snitch on every little bad thing that other missionaries do. We said "In your weekly email to President Mangum, tell him what happened and give him every little detail." We said we didn't want any details and that we didn't really want to talk about this problem at all. All we were going to do was tell president that 8 missionaries went to this place and they were going to email you about it. I think we handled it really well because we didn't do any chastising, and most of the zone still loves us and was really sad to hear that I was going to be transferred. The one big thing that did result of that whole situation is some of the younger elders in the zone got really brave and went out and said a bunch of stuff about their companions. The whole zone exploded with problems that we didn't know about and we spent a good part of the week on the phone with President Mangum and counseling elders.
Every area in my zone had a transfer. They brought in about 8 new elders to fill in the gaps. Very sad. Very stressful. We had several elders in the zone nearly get into fist fights with their companions. President Mangum is going to have to do a lot of interviews in the next couple days...
Well anyways, I am getting transferred this week just as my second trainee comes into the zone. Elder Hapi is getting transferred here and I'm leaving! That sucks so much and came as a huge shock to me. I just finished the best transfer of my mission, in the best area of the mission, with the best companion I have yet had on my mission. I am not happy to leave this area. I thought I would have like 2 more transfers after this one with Elder Wooden but that didn't happen. We had so many great investigators and we worked so hard together. The problems we over came in this zone just over the last week were handled so well by us that everyone in our zone still likes and are still great friends with us (lets just say that a lot of really stressful crap happened in our zone over the last 7 days). Trust me, you would have been proud of what we were able to accomplish out here. Oh well, I am going to be a zone leader now in Lipa City Batangas and I get to kill my next companion Elder Aoina (this means he is going home and that Erik will be his last companion). He is super cool and I can't wait to be comps with him. He is the best Tagalog speaking foreigner in the mission by far.
We also had zone conference last week in Lipa City so I got to sleep over in my new apartment. It is pretty ugly ha-ha! Oh well. The zone conference was awesome and it was a great break from the stress. We got to watch "Meet the Mormons". I thought that the movie was really well done. I super enjoyed it! Maybe I am bias or something. We also had a great baptism on Saturday. It went really good. Justin, Joshua, and Jainyll were all baptized and so now I have had 6 baptisms in this area. Next transfer I was supposed to get about 6-7 more. Oh well, Elder Wooden can handle that one I'm sure. Well I am super sad to be leaving but that is OK I guess.
Hey Dad, that's too bad that you guys didn't just smash your way to 1st like you did last year at Basketball Provincials! It would have been really cool to get a second 1st in a row but that's OK. You guys got third and that is still incredible. And the girls got 4th! That's awesome! I actually think I have gotten better at basketball out here. I know in some places I am a lot lazier then I was but I also know that in other areas I am a lot better now. We got to play some good old 3 on 3 this morning with some Filipinos and last Friday night when I was out in Lipa for Zone Conference, we got to play some good basketball out there. Actually there is a lot of really good Polynesian elders who I think you would love to play for your team. One of which is in my zone, Elder Akroyd, my old companion Elder Tupou is also really good, and my next companion Elder Aoina is super good as well. They are all really big and super fast. When we play out here the Filipinos treat us like super stars! :)
Love you lots!
Elder Nielson
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