A Crazy Roller Coaster

This week was a crazy roller coaster.  Man oh man!  We had some days full of zeros and other days where we entered every house we went to.  You can probably guess which type of days I prefer.  Thank you so much for the package, family!  Those little caramel things with Nutella are awesome.  Oh ya, I've become an even bigger fan of Nutella while being here.

Baptisms.  Last week, I described that there was potential for 4 baptisms.  Raul and Rosy's (in my old area) and two in our area.  And...drum roll please...they ALL got moved back.  Booooo, right?  The Elders wouldn't tell me why Raul and Rosy's got moved back, so that was on my mind a lot this week.  We weren't able to teach everything we needed to Christina, so we had to move that back.  Elvia was improving on her coffee consumption, but wasn't able to drop it all the way.

Now the good news about all these baptisms.  Raul and Rosy rescheduled for this upcoming Sunday.  When Elvia found out that she couldn't get baptized because of coffee, she said, "today will be my last day drinking coffee."  That was Thursday, and as of last night, she's done it!  She didn't come to church because she had a migraine and stomach pains for trying to go off of it.  Consequentially, Erik didn't receive the priesthood either.  Planning on having her baptism this weekend as well.  We had a great lesson with Christina last night and finished up everything we need to teach her.  She is so funny.  We sneakily asked her all the baptismal questions and she's all good except for her understanding of sin.  She doesn't think she sins much.  We are going to have her baptism this weekend.  Either Saturday morning so her husband can come, or Sunday afternoon with Elvia.

More good news, about 2 months ago, we started this area.  We are now just a hair short of the "standard of excellence" for the mission.  It's been so cool to be here and be a part of it.  We think our area can be its own ward.  So many latinos.  We just need to find them among all the hipsters.

We picked up a few new investigators this week.  They all seem pretty cool.  We stopped by this one inactive from El Salvador.  He's not on our ward list.  We were talking to him and he's been going to his wife's Christian church.  He was baptized as a teenager and never really read the Book of Mormon much.  He had his wife's uncle with him.  We decided to read 3 Nephi 11 with him and invited his wife's uncle, Ignacio, to join in. 

He responded, "I've already read it." 

"What?  What do you mean?" 

"I've read the Book of Mormon. With Nephi and Moroni and all of them.  I've read it."

"We're you baptized in our church in El Salvador?"
"No"

"Did you ever attend church in El Salvador?"

"No"

"Where did you get the book?"

"There was a doctor from the Church that came to El Salvador and he gave copies of the Book of Mormon to everybody he helped.  Then I read it."

How cool is that?  We'll be talking with him again on Tuesday.

This next week looks like it's going to be a stressful one.  We have two baptisms to plan and potentially two different services.  And we have the goal to beat the "standards of excellence" this upcoming week.  And we're in the car this week.

Love you all so much, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!  Sorry I didn't get the SD card to you.  My original plan was to wait for the baptism pics to be on there.  Hopefully you're okay with that.  Congrats to Emmy for being out of school.  Go golf for me.  Oh, speaking of golf: I found out there is a Par 3 course in our ward boundaries AND the bishop has golf clubs.  OH YES!  Hopefully next week!

Go read Hebrews 10.  The second half is my favorite thing ever!  "cast not away therefore your confidence....we are not are not of them who draw back...but of them that believe..." 

Hasta luego!

Elder Christensen