Another great week!

Dear All!

And just like that another week went by! Another great week! Tuesday was awesome as I had exchanges with Elder Escosio, and we had a great time and great work and 4 referrals! One we’ve contacted, and one we’re going to meet later on tonight actually! We found out the Centeno Family LOVED coming to church! I knew they would, and they’re really starting to progress toward baptism! Fevelyn also accepted a baptismal goal date for the 28^th, and she’s excited for it and really progressing as well! 

Wednesday, was actually kind of a rough day, low lessons, but hey we tried! Thursday we had a service project where we cleared some land on a coconut plantation, kind of different! We met one of our referrals, Teresa, and she’s super receptive. We’ve already taught her twice and she has received an answer that our message is true!!! Marcos is progressing alright; we taught him the Word of Wisdom and afterwards wanted to join us in teaching our next lesson! So why not! He bore testimony about the Book of Mormon, he’s pretty much awesome. 

Elder Christensen sporting a pigeon on his head

Friday was a good day as well. We had a good lesson with these two long time investigators, Vangie and Nancy, who are neighbors of the branch president. My companion wanted to drop them, but we just followed up on their testimony and found out Nancy has been reading every day and her testimony is really picking up. She just needs to get to church…and get married to her boyfriend…but yeah! She actually has legit progress/potential, so that was good! 

Saturday we had a district conference adult session thing that ate a lot of our time, and just basically was a big discussion of goals and numbers throughout Baler district, which I don’t think did a whole lot…whatever! It’s ok though. We were still able to get 8 lessons on the day. Sunday we had this really cool District conference thing in Baler. And despite Baler being a half hour trip from our area in Maria, we had 8 investigators at church! And the Conference included a live broadcast from Salt Lake City just for us in the northern Philippines. Elder Cook spoke and everything, it was seriously awesome! Super sweet.

The highlight as far as teaching goes was when we were also able to extend a BGD (baptismal goal date) to Marivel, Fevelyn's sister for the 28^th as well! So we have those two, and Nico getting ready for the 28^th! So cool!

This morning we went to the Mother Falls (Ditumabo Falls) here, which is absolutely gorgeous! And that took most of our day, so that’s why this email is so late (Sorry mom!!!). But yeah, everything is pretty much the best here in Maria!

Kabahays at Mother Falls

 I love Baler Zone, I love my life…really can’t complain!

 That’s all for now!

Selfie at Mother Falls

--Elder Christensen 

***Brandon, in answering the questions I asked him in my letter, told me to say that he is really sorry that he hasn't had time to respond to emails from friends lately.  He is crazy busy on P days now and often doesn't even get to reading his family's emails.  He does always write a general update, though.  He's got so much reporting to do now as a ZL and he says that since he is in Baler zone (that has so many amazing things to do and see) that it is assumed that they will have a zone activity every P day, and those take up so much of the day. P day is his least favorite day of the week because it is always so stressful and he never gets done everything that he needs to, let alone everything that he wants to.  So--sorry if he hasn't responded!***

Underwater nametags at the the falls