Monday, December 17, 2012

Christmas Dream: toothpaste and deodorant

Dear family,

           I love being a missionary so very much and it saddens me to see it coming closer to an end and it seems to just come faster and faster.  I do miss all of you and know that there are very important things for me to do at home but I do love this stage of my life and I know that the church is true and that the teachings are perfect but not the people.  I love working with so many people though.  In my new area we work with just white people and it is a lot different but the process for conversion is the same and the members are AWESOME!  They work so hard and we are seeing a ton of success.  We should be having some baptisms here with in the month.

            Being an assistant is a VERY busy life but I love it.  I take nothing on myself but am just very happy to serve and it is SERVICE.  A ton of service and I love it.  I as well love getting to be around President much more and I love him so much.  He is like another parent to me (NEVER to replace you both, of course).  I absolutely love him and the missionaries that are here in the mission.  I love the assignment for that too, that I get to see all the missionaries in the whole mission periodically for conferences and such.  We do a lot of planning and preparation for meetings and all the behind the scenes work so everything runs smoothly.  We also have to do lots of different training and reports and work with missionaries as well.  Elder Riboldi has been an assistant for 2 transfers or 3 months now and he is a great missionary.  His father is from Argentina and that is where the name comes from although Argentina was mainly occupied by lots of Europeans so they are usually more white.  So I would imagine if you trace back far enough, it is Italian.  He goes home one transfer before me in April.

             If you would like to send me something, a watch would be great cause I gave my other one to a recent convert of 10 years and a cheap one is fine but just classy prefferably, like metal but not expensive at all.  But what ever you get is fine with me, I will not complain one bit.  Maybe some more toothpaste and deoderant just so I don't have to keep buying it.  Not a ton cause I don't have that much longer left but some more.  Other than that what ever is fine.

             We are teaching a family of 11 people and half of them got baptized before I got here but 3 got home from college and are now there for a little more than a month so we are working with them and they are great.  They have had 7 children that they adopted and half their family is black and I just feel like I am home haha.  I love working with them and the 3 older girls are really interested and are most likely going to be baptized this month.

               I love you all so much and am greatful for all your love and prayers and letters and gifts that you have been sending me.  Please share the Gospel, especially in this time of year when we have so much to be greatful to are Heavenly Father for.  I love being a missionary and know again that this church is lead by Jesus Christ and is His only true church on the face of the earth not as discrimination at all but as invitation to all to come and drink from the fountain that has no cost but gives forth life eternal and happiness.

-Love Elder Neeley

"You won't need that anymore..."

Dear family,

                This week has been great and very exciting.  We just had 2 baptisms on Saturday of the 10 and 12 year old brother and sister named Rodolfo and Claudia.  Their mom was just so happy and pleased to see her children baptized and confirmed and she will be soon too.  She is needing to fix up some worthiness issues but she wants to be baptized.

                 I did get transferred and now I am in Fresno and I am one of the assistants to the President with my new companion Elder Riboldi.  I am really excited and happy to be here right now.  The first thing that the assistants did was they looked at my bike and said "you won't need that anymore".  Well we are short on time and I got to go but I will send pictures from the baptism next week.  Tell Quintin that I am excited to welcome him off the plane.

             I love you all so much and hope you are being missionaries every day.  LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!

-Love Elder Neeley

Sunday, December 2, 2012

2 baptisms this week!

November 26th, 2012
Dear family,
           Thank you so much for understanding my desires and for giving me your cooperation to let me extend.  I love being a missionary and I know that the Lord has very important things to be done with me in that time I will be here.  I will give you the exact date as I let President know that I will be able to extend.  SOMETHING REALLY IMPORTANT will be to change my defferal.  You will need to call the register office and they will tell you how to do it and there is no resistance or anything with it.  You just have to make the call and let them know that I will be moving to my defferal to Fall instead of Summer because of my mission and they will be fine with it.

            I am really excited to talk to all of you for Christmas!  I hope that all is going well and I can't wait to hear all your voices.  Grandma some tiger fudge and rasberry tarts would be great but really anything will be good.  I love all your baked goods!

            We had 2 baptisms this past weekend and it was a great baptism.  We had to fight really hard though cause things kept coming up and then the day before the baptism the daughter was talking the mom out of the baptism and we had to step in and remind her of the Spirit she felt and the testimony that she recieved already and she looked at us and told us that she knew it was true and that this was what she wanted for her and her family.  It was a relieving and powerful moment.

           I will send pictures this next monday with my email cause I forgot the cable this week.  Sorry!  I love you all so much and hope that all is well in the ward and at home.  Keep being a missionary every single day.  LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH!!!!
-Love Elder Neeley 

Attention! Extension Ahead! :)

November 19th, 2012
Dear family,
            This past Sunday I got to confirm the girl who got baptized the Sunday previous and as well I got to bless the sacrament for the first time in spanish because we were a little short on priesthood when the meeting started so they asked me to help and it was a great experience.  It was interesting to really think about what I was doing where as when I was a priest I would just tear the bread as fast as I could and almost race the other priest.  As I thought about the Saviour dying and suffering I really felt the Spirit strongly and it was one of the best experiences I have ever had in sacrament meeting.

            This Saturday we should be having 2 baptisms and 2 more on Sunday so we are very excited about that.  We will send pictures and all the goods.

            We taught this one family about not worshipping saints and we read in Mosiah about the 10 commandments and told them we only pray to God.  They later told us that other people had come before and any time they told them that the saints were bad they had just tossed them out but since we read from the Book of Mormon about it and they felt the Spirit and accepted it completely.  They then followed by throwing down on their own catholic religion and they think it is apostate now by their own doing.  It was just neat to see how the Book of Mormon softened their heart and allowed them to accept something they had rejected so many times before only cause they felt the Spirit through the Lord's scriptures.

            Ok now for some different thoughts.  I would like to extend my mission and I want you to move my defferal for BYU til the fall instead of the summer so that I can extend for a month, get home at the end of June and then have 2 more months to spend with you all.  That way we would have a little more time together and I could extend my mission for a little longer that I may help the Lord.  I have prayed and talked to my mission President and I know this is what the Lord wants.  I know that I can change even more lives and help a lot more people by helping missionaries become who they should be.  A missionary recently extended and from the reports of the mission Presiendent, he saved that missionary's mission and life.  He was able to be an instrument in the Lord's hands to change that missinaries life.  I want to serve the Lord that way.  I will have all my life to go to school and do those other things which are important but I will only have this time to be a fully consecrated missionary and representative of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Please let me do this.  I love you and ask you to pray about this and let me know for next monday.  I love you all so much!!!
-Love Elder Neeley  ps i will make an email for the ward next week.  LOVE YOU!