Training going well and 7 investigators to church!

Dear Everyone,

First off, I feel like Elder Antoni [trainee] is doing well. He is absolutely amazing at asking inspired questions, and though his teaching skills aren’t quite refined, I believe we have one heck of a missionary here.  He always has good ideas, and he has an innate desire to share the gospel.  He really REALLY cares about the people and their concerns.  No matter who it is, he is always trying his very best to help them.  He’s a bit more comfortable now and I feel like overall he’s getting happier and happier!  He really likes to tell stories and I like to listen so it works out good!  I love being his companion.

Well, I feel like every time a change comes in my time as a missionary, I find myself saying “Man, this isn’t as easy as it was last transfer!”  Not that training is the most difficult thing in the world, I just feel like the work has just gotten a little more difficult.  For example, we have a full planner of lessons that last transfer would lead to 7-9 lessons, and it’s only 6 pm.  But, that’s where faith really comes in.  Truth is, I was tempted to say, “Well, we have run out, let’s just get some dinner and call it a night.”  But it was at those times I remembered just one more person, rarely visited, and gave it a try.  From that situation, we have 4 new investigators this week.  It’s when you’re pushed and stressed and want to just call it when miracles happen, and Heavenly Father puts those ready in our path.  

A few details of the week’s happenings:  Tuesday we finally committed the Canlas family to stop smoking/drinking coffee, and I think they will be baptized in April, so that’s exciting.  Wednesday we had so many people cancel on us or tell us to come back next time, it was nuts, but we eventually went back to a rarely visited investigator because he wasn’t really progressing.  He wasn’t there, but we taught his wife and sister in law and it was super spiritual and good.  Thursday…we had a really intense lesson with this recent convert who was baptized last July but hasn’t been to church in a long time.  I was prompted to be bold with him, but the spirit was super strong, way cool!  He ended up committing to find a way to not have work to work on Sundays and come to church.  Friday was like Wednesday in that we seemed to spend the whole day walking and not doing much teaching.  We had run out of appointments in our planner, but I remembered one more investigator that was a bit far, but we had nowhere else to go.  Well, he wasn’t home, so we said thanks to his wife who was cooking dinner and started walking away.  I then felt that I needed to ask for a referral, if they knew anyone we could teach.  It turns out that they have a niece currently living with them.  Her name is Venus, she is 24 and separated, and her brother is a member!  Well, we taught her and it was super spiritual!  She really has potential!  That was way cool…Saturday we sat down and finally figured out what the problem was with one of our recent converts here, which is just too complicated to type all out right now, but it was good to finally figure it out and we shared a message that they said really helped.  Sunday was cool as we had 7 at church and we were able to teach Venus again, as well as Maria’s husband, where I had an impression to not give up on him yet, which was my thought prior to the lesson.

Visiting the enormous statue of Jesus at the Monesterio de Tarlac

We had a way cool spiritual zone activity earlier where we visited an enormous statue of Jesus Christ in the mountains and had a short personal study about the atonement and then a quick testimony meeting.  I’m grateful for this week, even though it was a bit more walking and less teaching.  Great things are happening here, and I have faith it’s just going to get better, even if it gets harder.

Love, Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen--A representative of Jesus Christ!

*When I asked about his greenie, he responded:   “He's opening up a lot to me, telling more stories...that sort of thing. He's super nice, like SO nice to me, like the nicest of all my companions...I'm trying to be nice to him too, but he always outdoes me! Always washing dishes, cooking the rice...I don't know, He's seriously awesome.”