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.
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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