Tuesday, February 24, 2015

"We as missionaries have a perfect boss and a dream life!"

Well, I swear if this gets any faster I’m going to blink and be back in Lindon.  Ah, scary!  But here’s what’s happening in “the life”.  Monday we ended up teaching Danilo’s grandson, a 20-something named Rafael or “Raf”, and he had a great question: “How are we saved?”  And of course, we had a perfect answer!  He’s awesome.  We also taught Jess and the fam in which we discussed tithing in depth!  Tuesday we got 2 referrals!  Woo!  One from our neighbor, the Coampueds (we’ll visit her with them on Sunday), and one from an active member family, the Ramos’s!  We met a long lost less active member named Wilfredo Waje.  He still remembers about Joseph Smith, but he is somehow under the impression that pretty much anything goes in this church…We’ll get to that!  We taught Tatay Danilo about prayer and he finally prayed for us!  And he’s seriously thinking about his baptism next month.  And we finished the evening teaching the Victorio family and they’re a joy to visit with!
Wednesday…Ever since I got here we’ve spent our mornings looking at houses/apartments for the sisters in the other ward here, as apparently that is our responsibility here!  Well, we finally found a good one in the area/price range we wanted, but the problem was that on Wednesday when we discussed contracts with the landlord, we found out that he has an illegal set up going on and he’s evading taxes…so we are back to square one…pero ayus lang, just another adventure!  In the afternoon we had a good lesson with Lito where we answered all of his questions and he prayed for us at the end AND committed to come to church!  We finally, after a good amount of stress, found an adult priesthood holder to come with us so we could finish the Recent Convert lessons with Lolita.  AAAND she gave us cake and spaghetti because it was her birthday. We had an awesome lesson with Lourdes, Kris and their cousin Oliver (who has a lot of potential!) about Moroni’s challenge as they haven’t done it yet, and we committed them to pray that night and ask God.  They gave us biko, one of my favorite Filipino desserts, then the Tollentino family gave us monggo bread and Sprite!  So many blessings…
In a trike with his kabahays
Thursday was zone conference!  I had to conduct.  But, it was good!  We learned about making our area more like an efficient pipeline, reviewing our teaching pools, the area book, music, dropping or deferring investigators and what President Clark likes to call “real growth”.  I loved his quotes:  “We as missionaries have a perfect boss and a dream life.”  And “My success as a mission president will be determined by how many of your grandchildren get to the temple.”  Well, that gives me something to think about!  Awesome Zone Conference!  Afterwards, we had to take care of lots of Zone business and we didn’t get home until after 5! After dinner, we taught Nora with our 7th Day Adventist friend, Kevin there, which was interesting.  After our lesson with Nora, we fielded Kevin’s opposition to the Book of Mormon, and we both felt like we should leave 2 Nephi 29 as a reading assignment to pray about.  We’ll see how that goes!  We ended the evening by teaching Raf again and it was another great lesson.  The spirit flowed, he asked good questions and we had high hopes for him after that evening! 
Friday after weekly planning we headed out for exchanges with the elders way out in Dapdap, but I was late getting out and because Elder Lumugdang had interviews to do in the other parts of his district, we didn’t get back to Dapdap until after 7.  There I gave an interview to a very mature 9 year old and then to his mother.  The 9 year old said that he didn’t feel like he had repented of his sins, and further follow up questions revealed it to be true.  After explaining the importance of repentance in relation to baptism, we decided to work on repenting of the things he wanted to change about himself before he was baptized.  His mother passed, but opted to wait and help her son repent, and then be baptized together in the coming weeks. 
Exchanges with Elder Lumugdang
Saturday morning we taught an American Air Force veteran named “Buddy” and I found that, to my surprise, that the Spirit was still able to guide us and show us how to teach in English!  The rest of Saturday…I just feel like I can’t stop making these little mistakes that cost us time and productivity.  We taught only two lessons on Saturday back in our area, even though we worked all we could.  Then none of our investigators that we expected to come to Stake Conference came…Well, it just means we have to change our approach and work a little more efficiently!  I don’t know exactly how we’ll do it, but the Lord will provide!  Stake Conference was way good. Elder Bowen, of the seventy, came!  It was packed!  He talked a lot about families sharing the gospel with families!  I was eating it up!  In the afternoon Lui and John Chris introduced a couple of their friends to us and we taught them, so we’ll see what becomes of that!  We taught Carlos, who is now always on the road driving buses… We taught Jess and the Victorios, and Sister Lourdes.

With Sonny, whom he baptized a year ago. He just received the Melchizedek priesthood!
I’ll be honest, I don’t really know what this next week has in store for us, but it will be an adventure for sure!  And I know if we do our best, the Lord will grant us according to our desires.  We’ve just got to know that everything’s going to be alright, stay strong and believe!

-Elder Christensen

The saying on this trike expresses how Elder Christensen feels on his mission!

What happens when his dad's mission (North Carolina) meets his!

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