I should have brought more Pepto-Bismol...

Hey Everybody!

So this week was different...everything started out good! We had good lessons on Monday night and a fairly good day on Tuesday as well, but Tuesday night I just was feeling super tired and not so good. I didn't think I had eaten anything bad, but boy was I wrong. Wednesday I woke up with a fever and migraine headache...not too much fun. I was in bed all of Wednesday until Wednesday night when I started throwing up and other things, so at that point I started my diet of toast, apples, and bananas to try to set at bay whatever I had eaten...

Thursday was battling my stomach in the bathroom all day while still fighting a fever...Friday the fever left but the stomach problems remained...and Saturday my stomach still wasn't perfect but we had a baptism to get to!

So the one highlight this week was that Arianne Bernardo was baptized!!!! It was so awesome, she was just glowing afterwards, as they all do. And she's totally getting involved with the church; she wants to go to Youth Conference next month! She's super solid!

Arianne gets baptized!!!

Oh And Sonny Layug has gone out and worked with us 2 more times. All he wants to do is work! Super solid! So, so far the recent converts are staying strong! The work on Saturday was good as well, but that wasn't even close to the highlight. 

Sunday was a hard day, as I still wasn't totally feeling good, and the lessons were few and far between. But we had a dinner appointment that was super nice. I love solid active families in the church; the spirit is just so strong in their homes! And that brings us to now! Hopefully we will be having two baptisms coming up this month, so the work will go forward! No weapon formed against us will prosper, even a really upset stomach!

Love you all!

--Elder Christensen

Here is Arianne’s conversion story that he emailed me:

Group shot at Arianne's baptism

 So she, first of all, was a tender mercy that came when I got here. As you know, we had NO progressing investigators when I got here, but we worked hard and good things started happening! She was a referral coming from an assistant, Elder Olsen. He met her at a ward home evening that their ward had. Arianne's Grandpa, a strong member, was about to move to America so he invited all of his family to this activity and there he bore powerful testimony about the plan of salvation. Arianne was moved by it, even though she's only 14. She talked with Elder Olsen, who then referred her to us. We taught her at her grandma's house, who is a member. She is SO smart, like you tell her something once and she can recall it just like that a month later. It was a bit of a struggle to be able to teach her for a while there, because she was so hardworking with her studies (she's one of the top students in her high school). When Andrew Layug (Sonny’s brother) became ineligible to be baptized, that’s when Arianne started coming to church! Before her interview, we taught her three lessons in one sitting because we hadn't been able to teach her in about a week and a half before that! But it all worked out, and she's just awesome! She reminds me a lot of Anna because she is so tall for her age/gender/nationality! So yeah!

Elder Christensen with his new convert, Arianne