Merry Christmas!!

Christmas Skype

Feliz Navidad!  It's been a fun week.  A lot of Christmas related stuff has been going on.  It definitely does not feel like Christmas because of the lack of family gatherings and the lack of snow.  Thank you to Emmy, and Tara F for the letters.  And thank you to Jensens, Martins, G&G C, and G&G K for the Christmas gifts!  I'll be opening them tomorrow morning!  You all are so kind.  Thank you for the support.

So this week was kind of a tough one work wise.  I feel like we have a lot of lessons, but nobody is progressing consistently.  We have a lot of appointments fall through, and it seems like people are only around in their homes after 6:00pm.  We've also had some difficulties getting the members involved with lessons.  I think that it's probably a lack of planning on our part, so we'll fix that this week.

So the temple trip went well with Armando last week.  Unfortunately, he still has not accepted a baptism date.  And also, we found out after we were at the temple that he had already been to the temple visitor center 2 times before with other missionaries, so it wasn't a completely new experience for him.  But the Spirit was definitely there.  He's still listening to the Book of Mormon and is deep into Alma, almost to Helaman.  He has a strong desire to be baptized.  Him living with his girlfriend is the only thing getting in the way.

Another awesome lady we started teaching more this week is Angelina.  She is the mother of one of the people we have been teaching on and off.  She has had the missionaries over a few times before us.  In getting to talk to her more, she believes that she has already been baptized by giving her heart to Christ.  Also, we found out that she is worried to get baptized because she doesn't feel like she can fulfill all that is necessary after baptism.  Tithing is her main worry.  They are pretty poor.  She basically started a church, but is no longer involved with it.  She is very religious and she would be a referral gold mine if we could help her become converted.  So let's hope all goes well there.

As far recommendations for talks, I don't know if I have already recommended this one, but His Grace Is Sufficient by Brad Wilcox is awesome.  Highly recommend it.  Another really good one is The Great and Wonderful Love by Anthony Perkins from Oct 2006.  I've been studying a lot about the Doctrine of Christ as well.  Also, we have been focusing on teaching about baptism to help them receive a remission of sins.  We've really tried to help them understand what a blessing that is.  If you have any ideas, let me know.  I'd love to hear about you suggestions.  A common doubt we hear is, "There is one God and it doesn't matter what church you join as long as you are worshiping Him."  Then we go into authority and the message isn't getting across.  That's probably happened about ten times this week.  If you have any suggestions with that one as well, I'd love to hear.

We had a Christmas dinner as a ward and we were able to get a few investigators to come.  Unfortunately, it didn't convert to investigators in sacrament meeting the next day, but hopefully it planted a seed.

I love you all.  Happy Christmas Eve!  I hope that you all have a wonderful week.  God be with you till we meet again.

Elder Tanner Christensen