Monday, June 23, 2014

Member Friends for the Win!

Hello family and friends.  So this week was a little bit tough.  We continue to have lots of interesting situations with all our investigators.  I'm not sure if I've mentioned this previously, but I feel like the investigator situations that are most difficult to work with have been here. They are a lot more complex than the other areas I've been in.

Santiago has his baptismal date for this week, but we'll need to move that.  He fell this week.  He missed church last week, and we think that losing that momentum a bit made this past week harder to get through.  We'll push it back into July.  We have been having a hard time getting a hold of him, and we feel like he's been avoiding us a bit, but last night the Elders Quorum President texted us saying that Santiago wants to meet with us later today. MEMBER FRIENDS FOR THE WIN!!

Nancy has her date for this week as well.  We aren't sure if she is ready or not.  The last lesson we had she said that she feels like God is telling her that this is the path that she should be heading in, but we aren't 100% sure if she is ready to commit.  We'll also be meeting with her tonight.  Also, she got a job offer that would require her to start working Sundays and her decision on that one will determine everything.

At the moment, the rest of the people we are teaching are doing okay. There are multiple people that could be baptized if they would just take a step of faith to get over their obstacle.

This week we had our last conference with President and Sister Becerra.  They gave us their "last words".  It was very interesting how much of what they said had to do with families and marriage.  It almost felt like they were giving all of us the "you're about to go home" talk.  I assume it was a lot more meaningful for me at my stage in the mission than those that just got here.  To summarize what they most frequently taught us over the course of my mission, President often would ask, "what doctrine or principle, if better understood, will change attitude and behavior?" and Sister Becerra would often say, "You can do hard things.  It's good to struggle." Sister Becerra pointed out something that broke my heart a little bit.  She pointed out that because of President's new assignment, they aren't going to be super available for drop in visits or going to homecomings or going to sealings.  That reality was a little harsh, but they said they'd be faithful in answering emails and having reunions, so we'll be able to keep in touch that way.

They will be here for about another week, but I don't foresee any interaction with them before then.  They've been so awesome.

I spoke in Sacrament meeting yesterday.  They gave me 5 minutes to talk about what had the biggest effect on my mission preparation.  I think the biggest change came for me when I was a Junior at Timpview. I had Brother Little as my Book of Mormon seminary teacher and he got me excited about learning the gospel.  That year I read the Book of Mormon not to just finish it as I had in previous years, but I read it to learn something.  That change of attitude led to nightly uplifting experiences as I read the Book of Mormon.  I felt like my nature was
changing.  Looking back, I don't know if this was the most decisive moment, but I do believe it was one of the first essential moments. Everything else started falling into place because of that.

I hope you all are reading a bit in the Book of Mormon daily.  It can totally change everything!  Love and kindness.

Elder Christensen

p.s. I went to the chiropractor again, and it worked much better this time!

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