Feliz ano nuevo

Hola Everyone!

Feliz Ano Neuvo! Hope you all welcomed in 2018 with a bang and had an amazing holiday season. It was a pretty low key week here with toasty temps in the negatives all throughout the week. The coldest I saw in the car was -19 so that was a first. Sunday came with a high of -6 and they cancelled church...was the first time that I can remember having church canceled. All throughout Des Moines they canceled church due to the temp so it was actually a bummer to have to tell our investigators not to plan on coming to church. But I have learned some valuable lessons about Iowans in the past two weeks with the cold and snow. 1) Iowans are weak sauce when it comes to the cold. And 2) The whole state shuts down when there is an inch or two of snow on the ground. So taking those things into consideration, like I said, not too crazy of a week.

We did however receive a nice little Christmas miracle! It came as one of the investigators we dropped back at the beginning of December texted us on Christmas and asked when we could come back and start teaching her again. We were all super surprised and obviously excited to get a text like that! And things since then have just fallen into place perfectly. I don’t know if you would remember, but the investigator is Veronica, and along with her is the potential of teaching her entire family. When we dropped them, they weren’t coming to church or reading from the LdeM. So with our pick up lesson, we focused on the Libre de Mormon and the importance of this book. The spirit was super strong in the lesson as we testified how everything we need in this life, our answers, how to have peace when everything else in the world is crazy, etc, is found in this book! I know that if I felt the Spirit that strongly, they definitely did as well. Hoping for Veronica and the fam to have a nice restart and desire to have this gospel once again!

We received the text this morning from the AP’s letting us all know that President Monson had passed away. It was actually just as I was writing this. As sad as it is to see our beloved prophet, leader and example pass away, let us remember everything he has done for the church. You think about it, Pres. Monson had dedicated his entire life to service in the church. An amazing amount of time that he has spent helping others come and grow closer to our Savior. I encourage you all to start fulfilling Pres. Monson’s last invitation he gave to us, “I implore each of us to prayerfully study and ponder the Book of Mormon each day. As we do so, we will be in a position to hear the voice of the the Spirit, to resist temptation, to overcome doubt and fear, and to receive heaven’s help in our lives.”

Love you all. Sending (cold) love wherever you are.

deficil es bueno

Elder Christensen

This is what Elders do on New Year's Eve