Elder Rivera!

Meet Elder Rivera #GOUTES

Fam + Friends,

¿Comó le van? Transfer week here in Iowa! Sadly I had to say goodbye to my two dads (Elder Sitterud & Elder McConnell) and now have a new comp, Elder Rivera. He is such a STUD! He’s from Sacramento, CA and born in raised in a Spanish speaking home since his parents are from Mexico, so I’m super pumped. He’s a convert of two years and out on a mission…I have so much admiration and respect for this guy already. I’m still here in Des Moines and it works out perfectly because Elder Rivera also started his mission out, exactly one year ago, in the same place. So needless to say, he’s really excited to be back in the promise land of Des Moines!

Overall, it was a pretty slow week. A lot of time spent packing for E. Sitterud and E. McConnell and also saying goodbye to the members. Tuesday was actually fun because we celebrated Sitterud’s birthday with a member whose birthday was on the same day. The members of the branch bought this huge cake for all of us so we smashed both Sitterud’s and the member’s face in the cake. It was a good time!

When I got Elder Rivera on Thursday afternoon, we went straight to work. I filled him in on the all the work going on and he was really wanting to stop by and see his past investigators. There was a group of boys that he called ‘Team Jacob’ (guess they all look like Jacob from Twilight) that he had worked with. But sadly , the mom of the four boys didn’t allow them to be baptized, she was kinda in the way of everything. The oldest boy, Shaddai, was the most solid out of the four according to E. Rivera but they lost contact with Shaddai as he moved out to get away from his mom. So without dragging the story out any longer, E. Rivera really wanted to get in contact with Shaddai but he had no idea how to do that, let alone find out where he was currently living.

Introducing E. Rivera to the Lopez family

So Saturday rolls around and the whole morning we were just off… we were super behind on our schedule, nothing was clicking. We headed to the library to print some things for our lesson later that afternoon and I ended up forgetting everything else back at the apartment that we needed for the lesson as well. We drive back and get everything and we’re finally off to our lesson (probably 15 minutes or so late!) Well, little do we know that we actually hit the wrong address on our GPS so we’re heading in the wrong direction. We turn onto this street and all the sudden Elder Rivera yells, “THAT’S SHADDAI!”. Slams on the brakes, pulls over and runs over to Shaddai. I think Shaddai was as shocked to see Elder Rivera as Elder Rivera and I were to see him. Think about it, somehow, someway, we found this 18 year old kid that we had no way of finding! Shaddai was about to meet up with his friends when he walked outside to see if they were there yet and that’s when we drove by.

We ended up getting the address to his place, apartment number and phone number. And finally figured out that we had the wrong address in the GPS. Got to our lesson and had an awesome time with Martisa, Melanie and Jacquelyn. Moral of the story though, we had witnessed a miracle! And I know that our Heavenly Father placed us in those exact situations through our disorganized, slow morning to be able to be driving down the right street and running into Shaddai. Heavenly Father is always watching over us, guiding us, even when we don’t know or even realize it. This was a huge testimony builder for Elder Rivera and me. Now, it’s time to bring Shaddai back into the fold and start having him progress towards baptism once again.

Everything else is solid here in the 515. Melanie and Jacquelyn are progressing, with their mom showing interest in the church as well. Martisa will be getting dunked on Sunday after church so it should be a memorable week.

Mucho amor,

Elder Christensen

Final pizza and game night with E. Sitterud & McConnell

my man, Giovanni