The Work is Moving

Monday, May 5, 2014

Dear Everyone,

This past week has been amazing in many different ways. We have just had a lot of people to teach and many more to support and help come unto Christ. I'm I love seeing the Lord’s hand in this work. I keep learning lessons each week and it's amazing to see the changes in myself too.

So to start, on Monday night we taught Alfredo and his family/friends again. It was a great lesson about the Book of Mormon and how important it is to read and pray about. We committed all of them to read it and then if they come to know that it's true to be baptized and they all agreed. :) It was a super spiritual night and I loved every minute of it.

Tuesday we taught Christy again and it was a great lesson we taught her about baptism and the importance to endure to the end even after her baptism. She was super receptive too. We also kept busy and found some new less actives to teach and they seem pretty hard but I hope to bring them back. :)

Wednesday, we taught Ramulo, one of my favorite less actives. He is just super funny every time we see him. We have barely done anything. He just started coming back to Church.  He lives on the beach which means he literally has next to nothing but he always manages to get to church and with a smile on his face.

Thursday, we taught Christy again and she basically taught us the Word of Wisdom. It was so funny to sit there and stammer over our words because we didn't know what to say because she already said it. haha She is so prepared to be baptized on the 17th. I'm super stoked. :)

Friday we taught the Boado family again (Investigators) They are supper cool to. The father is a member and he wants all his kids to be members as well. That's about 10 people by the way. His family is very big. We are having a great time teaching them. They are trying super hard to understand everything we are teaching them. That's really the hardest part about teaching here. Because there are so many languages here, very rarely do people understand everything that you say in Tagalog. Most people here are more comfortable with Ilocano. But we are doing our best. :)

Saturday, was the best day of the whole week. We taught 6 lessons in a row. That's a first for me on my mission and it was awesome. That night our fellowshipper Brother Leo took us out to dinner after the work and that was pretty cool too. I love working with the members here. They so want the area to progress and they work for it to.

Sunday was pretty slow as far as work goes because we couldn't get out to work very much but I loved church. I always love church. :) But that's really all that happened on Sunday.

For studies this past week, I have been reading in the book of Mormon and it's been sad to see the Nephites fall into wickedness again and truly deny the faith. There are some lessons to be learned from it though. It didn't just happen all at once and the first steps always seem to be pride. I think that's true in all our lives. If we can catch ourselves when we begin to be prideful, we can prevent our own destruction. The other portion of my studies have been taken up finding specific scriptures for each investigator.

Well that's it for now. Mahal kita.

Elder Christensen

Information from Separate Emails:

* How are lessons with Sister Virginia, Alfredo, and the rest of them?
They are doing awesome. They really want to know about the gospel. I just hope that they understand my Tagalog it's not the best thing in the world. But I think they are feeling the spirit when we teach them about the gospel. Right now we are starting to teach them about the plan of salvation. We are taking it slow so they understand what we are teaching and why it's important for them.

Elder Arzadon and I are doing well as a companionship. Our only problem is that we both have thick American accents and sometimes our investigators have a hard time understanding us.

* What fun/enjoyable thing happened to you this past week?
We just worked and I loved it. But the other night Brother Leo took us to Chow King after we worked with him for a while. It was super fun. Also there was another time when we were teaching. It just started raining and we ended up stuck at Christy's house for about an hour just playing games with the little kids there. haha.

* What spiritual experience stands out in your mind?
Well last night Elder Mejia, one of the elders who lives in our house, got pretty sick with a fiver of 104.1. We gave him a priesthood blessing and right after the blessing he stopped shivering and just felt better. It was pretty cool.