African Soap Opera

January 19, 2019

African Soap Opera

Chillin' in Nauvoo

Squad!

Winter has finally arrived here in Iowa and we got a couple inches of that blessed white stuff! I had missed it so much. Nothing better than rocking the boots, getting all bundled up, and watching Iowan drivers slide off the road at any possible turn. It was comical but I'm going to just go ahead and knock on wood so it doesnt happen to us now... The week as a whole was pretty solid as well. Long and tiring, but the reasons for it made it a good one. This week was our zone conference week so we had 3 days in a row being able to see everyone on the mish. Was super cool! At each zone conference as well, Elder Matthews and I were able to give a training to all the missionaries. We focused on the fundamentals of missionary work to help move the work along most efficiently. We found our inspiration to the training from all the mice we have caught and related it back to how out of all the traps we tried, the most basic and fundamental trap worked every single time without fail. Everyone got a good laugh as we were explaining it, a couple concerned looks, but somehow we related 3 fundamental things in the work back to our mouse traps and everyone loved it! Hahaha!

Just another Iowa Sunset

So we were gone until Friday, leaving us just a few days in our area but with those few days we saw some mighty miracles. One of those miracles, you can take it as such and see it as God's hand, or just call it a totally whack story...both are correct. It involves our lovely African duo. Not sure if I’ve mentioned that we had been teaching a really cool guy named Roland, and his ex-significant other named Christine. Long story short, they were together 2ish months ago, had a cute little newborn baby together in October. They loved coming to church together and were looking forward to get baptized and everything. That was 2 months ago. Fast forward to a week ago, they were not together, Roland had a restraining order on Christine for a reason I'm still not certain about. This means they can’t be together or in the same place at the same time, and they both, separately, still want to get baptized and come to church. So drama to say the least. But wait, there's more! We stop by Roland on Friday to check up on him and everything. We get there and we can tell something is up. We get to the juicy stuff and he tells us that Christine had been in jail since Thursday and while in jail, found out that she is pregnant! With Roland's child. HELLO. Bet you didn’t see that one coming... yeah me either. So like a flip of a switch, Roland threw everything aside, his anger and frustration at Christine. He went and dropped all the chargers he had placed, and he was frantically in the process of selling stuff from his home to raise enough money to pay for Christine's bail. He said, "family is always first. I can't stand Christine to be in there for another second because family is always first and we'll figure everything out later." What a stud. The ultimate drama court switch up. WE'RE LIVING IN AN AFRICAN SOAP OPERA. I MADE IT.

Besides that, nothing is as exciting as seeing Kelly acting, talking, feeling, and dreaming like she has been a member for her entire life. She's getting ready to take the swim this Saturday! And both her and Emily are going to be hooking us up with referrals to all their family members coming up soon. Yupppppppp. We have some good stuff going and are excited to get down to it.

The work is true. No doubt in my mind.

Love you all!!

Elder Christensen