(Monday, February 24, 2014)
Hello friends and family. This week was, hmm, let me think. Everything is starting to blend together. Let's see... We had our zone conference this week. For the leadership, it was more of a review from Mission Leadership Council. It was still super cool. We did lots of role plays and President had us roaming around. That helped us get a feel for where the zone is at. In our zone, December was super cool, then January and February were pretty rough. In our whole zone, our companionship was the only one that baptized. We're not really sure what's going on. All of our district leaders are kind of in the same place. We are seeing the trend that we are needing to set more and more dates to actually get a baptism. March is looking like it will be good. We're working toward 2 baptisms in our companionship.
I think I mentioned the 87 year old guy, Jesus. He hasn't missed a single week of church since we found him. He has a baptismal date for March 9th and is on the right track. He called the sisters in the ward (pretty random) and he asked them what he needs to be doing to be able to be ready in time. As soon as he found out that he has the chance to see his wife again, he's been progressing super well. He keeps telling us how excited he is for his baptism. It's a cool story.
It looks like we might need to pass Leslie off to the English elders. She can get by in the Spanish ward but she would be way more comfortable over English ward. In our mission, since we have entire Spanish stakes, we can't teach English investigators because once they are baptized, the numbers get messed up with the way we do mission statistics. So that's kind of a bummer, but she'll be good.
The last two days I've not been feeling well. I stayed in the latter half of yesterday because of it, and Elder Perez went on splits. During that time, I was growing impatient at the fact that something was getting in the way of what I wanted to do. I started beating myself up a bit and then, for whatever reason, the recognition of all my weaknesses started to attack my brain. I started looking throughout the gospel library for any talks that had to deal with perfection. I found a few cool things, but it wasn't really helping at all. The thought then hit me, "wait, didn't Joseph Smith have some problems with being hard on himself?"
I think I mentioned the 87 year old guy, Jesus. He hasn't missed a single week of church since we found him. He has a baptismal date for March 9th and is on the right track. He called the sisters in the ward (pretty random) and he asked them what he needs to be doing to be able to be ready in time. As soon as he found out that he has the chance to see his wife again, he's been progressing super well. He keeps telling us how excited he is for his baptism. It's a cool story.
It looks like we might need to pass Leslie off to the English elders. She can get by in the Spanish ward but she would be way more comfortable over English ward. In our mission, since we have entire Spanish stakes, we can't teach English investigators because once they are baptized, the numbers get messed up with the way we do mission statistics. So that's kind of a bummer, but she'll be good.
The last two days I've not been feeling well. I stayed in the latter half of yesterday because of it, and Elder Perez went on splits. During that time, I was growing impatient at the fact that something was getting in the way of what I wanted to do. I started beating myself up a bit and then, for whatever reason, the recognition of all my weaknesses started to attack my brain. I started looking throughout the gospel library for any talks that had to deal with perfection. I found a few cool things, but it wasn't really helping at all. The thought then hit me, "wait, didn't Joseph Smith have some problems with being hard on himself?"
In JSH verse 29, Joseph Smith talks about a few youthful mistakes and that he was worried about how everything had been going. It had been about 3 years since the First Vision, and he hadn't really heard anything more regarding his assignment since then. He was starting to wonder if he had done something wrong to bring some kind of condemnation upon him. So he prayed that he "might know of [his] state and standing before him [God]."
So with all that negativity spinning around my head, I decided to do the same--offer up a vocal prayer asking of my "state and standing before God." In short, it was one of the most precious experiences of my mission. Since that prayer, I've been feeling secure, energetic, and at peace. It was a super cool experience.
Thanks for your love and concern. I love you all and hope that you all have a great week!
Elder Christensen
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