Feelin' the Love

?Que onda fam y amigos?

Another week down, here is Des Moines. Days are flying by and weeks are going by even faster! Crazy to think that Christmas is in a week. Last couple of weeks have been full of ups and downs and this last week no different – one day would be awesome and the next would be full of L’s.

One thing has stayed consistent for us, not just at this time of year but since I’ve been here and that’s the sacrifice and love that the members of our branch have for us missionaries. It really hit me last night during dinner with one of our families. As we were giving our spiritual thought before leaving, we were talking about all the blessings that have come from our missions. As we were sharing our thoughts, the father just broke down. At that point he shared the most heartfelt and powerful testimony of missionary work, shared his story of when two Elders knocked on his door and the pure love that he has for all of us out serving. I was just taken aback by this. Here we are as missionaries, five complete strangers to this family but the love they have for us, for missionary work and this Gospel could not be measured. It’s hard to even put it into words but I hope we all have that same type of love. It’s what Christmas is all about!!!

I wanted to start off with that story because it really hit me hard. It was a super cool and humbling experience and to make it even better – I could understand everything that was said…#progress! Haha! But anyways, this week was actually pretty tough. We are in need of new people to teach and people who are ready for the Gospel because the last three weeks, we have pretty much lost all of our solid investigators, 12 in all. It consisted of a lot of knocking on doors and not a ton of success. Couple of the days we even struck out finding anyone Hispanic - so at times, really frustrating. But by the end of the week, we were able to find a few people to stop back by and hopefully spark their interest a little more. It’s been pretty tough to stay positive and what not but hey, hard is good, right?

One positive was while knocking on doors the other day, the door opened and a young Nigerian lady greeted us and let us right in. We sat down and started talking to her and it turns out that Jessica was baptized back in 2010 with her family in SLC. And check this out – graduated from good old East High in 2012 and then went to the U of U. No way am I sitting here with someone from home! Crazy how we live in such a small world! Definitely was the highlight of my week – meeting and talking with Jessica. Always a good day to be a Leopard…even in Iowa!!!

That’s all I have for the week. Pretty low key but this next week will be better! I hope you all have an awesome week leading up to Christmas and remember the true reason why we celebrate. Check out Alma 7:10-12 if you need a reminder.

Love you all! Feliz Navidad!

defecil es bueno, 

Elder Christensen