Roller-Coaster Ride

Pierre rocking his Obama shirt

Squad,

Another week down! And what a roller coaster ride it was. A lot of grinding and a whole lot of patience was practiced. To give a quick rundown before hopping into things: Joseph is nowhere to be found. Both Pierre and Katrina checked into the hospital this week. And Brett, who was scheduled to be baptized this Saturday, went from being so pumped and ready for his baptism to dropping us and blocking us on all outlets so we have no way of contacting him. But things are going great!

I want to focus on Sunday mainly but during the week had a lot of awesome things going on as well. Wednesday, the AP’s came up for an exchange and to spend the night before Zone Conference on Thursday. Elder Matthews (another Spanish Elder) and I were able to do nothing but Spanish work. It was SO nice to get in the groove of the language again. Still got it #blessed. Pierre is turning out to be the most solid person out here. He is a baller. He’s got a handful of health issues and so when things started acting up, he asked us to give him a blessing. The Spirit during the blessing was powerful, I didn’t like heal him right then and there, but the second we said Amen, Pierre hops up and says, “I gotta quit smoking. I need to and I’m going to do it.” We haven’t even mentioned the Word of Wisdom at all to him but the Spirit was already preparing him to do that. Katrina, is awesome. After the whole week went by, we found out she was also checked into the hospital. We thought she dropped off. But we go visit her and she tells us, “the first thing I asked for was the Book of Mormon. So the Reverend brought me it.” The Catholic Reverend brought her a Book of Mormon...how classic is that?! What a good man.

Now Sunday, the roller coaster ride of emotions. Sunday morning, Brett goes from talking about the new shirt he got for his baptism on our group message, to bailing on church, and then later bailing on everything. This was like an hour before Stake Conference started so at this point I was already wanting to go home, get in bed, and do nothing for the rest of the day. But you already know that we had to put our happy faces on and act like everything was going fine. Both Katrina and Pierre made it and it was clutch. The whole Stake Conference was focused on missionary work and just helping people understand the basics of the Gospel. Members were asked to invite friends to come and learn more about the Church, but sadly, not a lot of success in that area. But it was perfect for Katrina and Pierre. They loved it all and Pierre even came up, without saying a word to me, and gave me a biggggg hug. Stud. After the conference, we went right to a lesson with Jerold and “straight doctrine” was being thrown out to answer all the questions he was asking. 

But here’s the highlight of the day…It’s probably like 8:45, I’m just trying to chill but we remember we had a referral we forgotten about. So this never-ending day of mine, one that I wanted to mentally checked out of at noon, kept going. Well, long story short, we meet this referral named Coleen. Turns out Coleen and her entire family of 4 ,plus her mother, had taken lessons and all that jazz for a long time but were never able to be baptized because of smoking. Well, just happened that she clicked on a Facebook ad for a free Bible from E. Scoresby, not knowing it was us. She has been smoke-free for 4 months while her husband, Chris, is in the process of quitting as well. Just a great family, all prepared for more knowledge of the restored gospel….all of this at 9:15 on Sunday night! So I got a nice rebuke from God telling me to suck it up and keep going. I got the message crystal clear.

God is good, through thick and thin. He and His love, mercy, and plan will always take the ‘W’ at the end of the day. 

….just like them Utes! YUP!

All my love,

Elder Christensen

Da Aqualoo Zone

Fufu, habaneros, and chicken feet