Straight Up Awesomeness

Monday, November 24, 2014

Dear Everyone,

This past week rocked. I found out why our area is so hard. It's because we didn't have a fellowshipper. Arjay Pepito worked with us almost the whole week and it showed. We taught the most member present lessons than I have ever taught in my mission before. I was so happy.

So to start last Monday President Balledos has started instituting a new expectation that we get 2 lessons every Monday night before we can go to a Family Home evening. Wo that's exactly what we did. We went and saw brother Pepito again and he is still doing pretty good with is word of wisdom. He only had one [cigarette] this whole week.

Tuesday was awesome. We just taught all of our appointments because Brother Arjay was with us. Nothing super crazy happened we just taught a ton of lessons. Good day.

Wednesday was probably our worst day but it wasn't all that bad. We just had a bit of a hard time getting things going in the morning and then only taught a little in the afternoon. Again nothing super exciting happened.

Thursday on the other hand was great. We finished Joseph Smith with Karen-Joy and she liked it. But the coolest part of the day was when we taught the Word of Wisdom to Brother Reyco Devera. He's the guy who broke his leg and smokes 30 times a day. We were a little worried to teach it to them but after we taught it he agreed to throw out all the coffee and tea in their house and start slowing down on the smoking until it's gone too. It was super cool to see him start that process so willingly.

Friday we had a great day of finding. It was just funny because Elder Cabase and I are both a little shy about knocking on peoples doors but we made goals that we have to knock at least 2 doors when we get punted. It was super funny because I went first but after that we were pushing each other around saying "it's your turn." haha We even made Arjay do one. It was really good and we found a lot of people we could teach because of it.

Saturday we had a service project. It was way fun. We went as a zone to a waterfall that's pretty far out from Naguilian. We moved a tone of rocks from the stream bed to make a path from the base to the falls. It's not done yet but we sure had a tone of fun. :) The rest of the day was a little slow because Arjay couldn't work with us but it was all right.

Sunday was another good day to. We had Brother Juan working with us and it was super fun. He's a retired Military. So he's pretty direct and when we saw one of our less active gambling he went and talked to him in Ilokano. But from the 30 sec. conversation they had, he told him that his god was gambling. It was a little awkward but other than that it was a really good day with him. He's really nice, just very direct. All in all we had a great week.

Well that's all for now. mahal kita!

Elder Christensen


Questions from a Separate Email

* Did you receive the Thanksgiving package?

I'm going to go pick it up later on today. So I don't know yet [what’s in it] but I know it's here.

* Do the Filipinos even know about Thanksgiving?

They know about it but they don't do anything because it's not really one of their holidays.

* Do they have a holiday similar--a day of gratitude?

I don't think they do. It kinda just goes straight to Christmas after All Saints Day.

* In a few weeks, I'm teaching a lesson on the joy of the Gospel and the peace and joy that come from atonement. What thoughts do you have on the subject?

Well when I share about the gospel I like to explain to them how personal the Atonement really is. I mean Christ died for all of us. He paid for all your sins. All your pain both emotional and physical. Now think of all the pain you have ever felt and think of how many people have lived on this planet and then think of how much pain that was. And after that it comes back to one fact. That fact is that Christ did all of that and he would do it all again if it meant that he could save one soul and that soul would be you. He would do that for you and you alone. Christ paid for all our sins but more importantly he paid for YOUR sins personally. The real question that we all need to ask ourselves is how well we are honoring the gift he gave us because it's already done. All we can do is be grateful and give our best for him because he gave his best for us. That's what the atonement is to me.