Hello All!
Well, this
rollercoaster doesn’t slow down! So last week I talked a little about Venus,
our new investigator. Well, we tried to go back there on Monday, and she
wasn’t there, but her uncle, Brother Martin, was. This guy is the most
intelligent man in the scriptures I’ve ever met. Basically, we kept trying to
answer his questions, but he would just tear our answers apart and try to
disprove the Book of Mormon. We told him that we can’t convince him because we
don’t have all the answers, and invited him to pray to know. He basically told
us he wants us to answer his questions if we’re true missionaries or whatnot,
and threw out 1 Peter 3:15, a scripture which now will be forever engraven
in my brain. We got slammed pretty hard, and he did not commit to pray…Man.
That was one heck of a way to start the week.
Tuesday was good,
as the highlight of the day was finally being able to teach a recent convert
who has been hiding from us when we visit and just sending her husband to face
us. We broke the ice with some healthy laughter because my companion, a
Filipino, asked me how to say something in Tagalog! That was good. Wednesday we
had a service project, where we helped destroy an old house. I was good at
that. We taught one of our recent converts in the city plaza, which was kind of
fun. After a few good lessons, we got super punted from all our appointments or
whatnot. We took a moment to pray, and felt like we needed to go back to Sister
Venus. I prayed really hard that Martin wouldn’t be there, and if he was, we
would be able to handle the situation. Well, Martin was there, and so was
Venus. It was hard at the beginning as he was mocking doctrine again,
specifically about the Word of Wisdom and a physical resurrection. In a moment
of slight panic, I prayed to know what to do. I felt, “Push the lesson.” So we
did, which was a part of the plan of salvation: where did we come from. It
eventually turned into a really good lesson and the spirit was there. She
begged us to come back as soon as we could at the end of the lesson.
Thursday was Zone
Conference! We had three different workshops, one on Flirting, which is a
pretty big problem in this mission, another on companionship inventory, which
I’ll touch on more later, and the last was the atonement. We watched the LDS
bible videos of the last 24 hours of Jesus' life, while singing hymns in
between. It was super spiritual, and I had tons of insights and inspiration
about the atonement that I hadn’t yet realized. At the end, President Martino
gave us all new copies of the Book of Mormon for the purpose of studying just
the Atonement. After lunch we had roll plays where I was chosen to demonstrate
in front of a third of the mission, and I failed pretty miserably. But it
was good, I learned a lot from that.
Sonny and Wilma Layug
had their interview that day for baptism, so they’re set for the 22nd.
I also had exchanges with Elder Hubbard that day, which was super fun. Friday we
had weekly planning then companionship inventory. I found out some things about
how Elder Antoni was feeling that I hadn’t even noticed, and things I was doing
that I didn’t even think about but were affecting him. I felt super bad, but we
made some good goals as a companionship and ever since then our companionship
has been better than ever. Stronger spirit, stronger love, good stuff! We’ve
been teaching April Roxas, who came to church last week, and she has a lot of
potential, and we taught her again on Friday. We taught Sister Venus,
which went really well, and she said she would request work of on Sundays! So
that’s good!
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| Teaching Sonny and Wilma Layug |
So story time. In Tarlac,
the sewers are not under the street, but under the sidewalk, and the sidewalk
can be removed to access this really gross canal type thing. Well, that night
while trying to get a picture with a sign that had directions to Baguio for the
other Elder Christensen, specifically the one serving there, I took a wrong
step where the sidewalk had sort of collapsed in to this cesspool. Yeah,
my left leg…was submerged, and I twisted my right ankle in the process! I was
not a happy camper. But yeah, I washed that leg super good and now am on an
antibiotic just in case…
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| Taking a picture by the road sign to Baguio (mission of the other Elder Christensen) |
Saturday was super
sweet, we had eight lessons, and the highlight for me was when we taught Joan,
a recent convert who is starting to go inactive. The spirit was super strong
and I literally all I had to do was open my mouth and it was given what to say.
The scriptures to share just came to me, it was awesome. And then Sunday hurt,
as she didn’t come to church as she had promised, and we only had 2
investigators. Andrew Layug, who was supposed to be baptized on the 22nd didn’t
come and didn’t have a valid reason, so he will have to be pushed back four
weeks. We had some good lessons though in the afternoon, and it turned out to
be an alright day. This morning we got up played basketball, but I didn’t go
too hard as I’m still rocking a brace from my spill on Friday. We wore
green mustaches (Thanks Mom!),
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| St. Patrick's Day in the Philippines! |
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| Sporting the shamrock ties on St. Patrick's Day |
Come to Christ, learn
of him, utilize his atonement every day, and enjoy to the end! Love you all!
--Elder Christensen
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| My favorite leprechaun |
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