Tuesday, February 18, 2014

We Walked Away Flabbergasted!

Hello family and friends.  This week was pretty cool.  First, thanks to my family for the Valentine package. Thanks for the constant reminders that you're thinking of me.

This week, the Contreras family got confirmed.  Unfortunately, we weren't able to get in touch with them from Wednesday till Sunday.  We were a little worried that something had happened.  We tried calling and texting and nothing was working.  Then Sunday morning at 8:55, they walk up like they were already comfortable, long-time members.  It was pretty cool to see.

Our zone is struggling a little bit.  We were seeing numbers go up and up and none of it was transferring to baptisms, and we are still seeing the same problem.  We still aren't sure what the problem is, but that's okay.

So now, some more cool stories of the week.

This week was the iPad training. On Tuesday, we had Elder David F. Evans, Steve Allen, and Chris Randall (my stake president) there with us.  It was super cool to see all of them.  We talked a lot about my family. President Becerra told Elder Evans during that training of how Grandma Christensen helped President Becerra's grandpa stay active while she was on her mission in Mexico. Super cool connection!  The training went pretty well.  We ran into a few hiccups that we hadn't seen before, but luckily we were able to get past them pretty quick. President Randall said that it was the smoothest training he had seen to this point.

We started teaching a girl named Leslie.  She lives across the hall from an active family and she's going through some tough stuff with her family.  This family invited her over for Valentines so she wouldn't be alone and we were there too.  We had a pretty cool lesson.  I still don't have all the details because I was on exchanges that day. Saturday afternoon, we texted the member family saying that they should invite her to come to church. Leslie got off work at 4 a.m. and still came to church!  Super cool.  She said it was different than what she's used to, but she liked it.  We then had another lesson Sunday night and Elder Perez asked her the question, "As you have been talking with us and as you were at church, do you feel like you're heading in the right direction?"  Her answer was a quick, "ya, I think so."  Cool cool lesson.

Also on Sunday, we got stopped by a lady.  She thought that we were the English Elders that had contacted her earlier in the week.  She prefers Spanish.  She said that she thinks God is giving her a sign. So here's her back story.  Her best friend is a member in San Diego. This member couple has served a senior mission and their sons served missions.  She has been reading the Book of Mormon since the 70s, and she has read the Pearl of Great Price.  When her friend asks her, "why aren't you baptized yet?" she always responds, "I know my time will come, but not yet."  She went a long time without seeing the missionaries around.  In the last week, she has seen them three or four times.  Each time she sees us, she feels like her "heart jumps as if calling out to [us]". She is heavily active in the Catholic Church but said that she "will go where God wants her.  She won't get
baptized just to do it, but because she knows that that is what God wants her to do."  So we will be meeting with her on Wednesday and hopefully help her understand that this is what God wants for her.  We walked away from that conversation flabbergasted!

So it was a week full of little miracles.  I feel like the Hastening is, well, hastening.  We are seeing so many cool little things happening here and there.  It's cool to see that almost everybody at least has seen us or knows who we are.  Now it's just a matter of getting them where the Spirit is trying to take them.

Thanks for the love and support.

Love and kindness,
Elder Christensen

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