Mission Field of Dreams

Field of Dreams, Dubuque County, IA

What is up squad.

Hard to believe that my time is winding down fast in Iowa. My goodness. After this one, you guys have only 2 more weekly emails left with Patti's clever and sometimes cheesy subject headers along with me blabbering on about some cornfields I call my second home. So s/o to you if you got through the first couple sentences already. You are the realest!

Iowa is a special place to be during the 24th of July. Throughout the week, we did many things that helped remind us of those first pioneers who paved the way for all of us. Wednesday, along with 5 other elders, we went down to Nauvoo to go watch the Pageant. The place was packed! And I couldn't help but think of how ecstatic and proud those early Saints are knowing their fruits of their sacrifices. A feeling you can't really describe. You just gotta be there in the moment. Then on Friday, we were invited to help out a guy repair some of the paths in the Mormon Handcart Park that's in Iowa City. The park is the location where the Saints crossing the plains with handcarts camped and started their trek west. Really beautiful place. There, the same feeling you could feel in Nauvoo. I wonder if those Saints knew that there would be a strong Stake of the Church one day there in Nauvoo as well as Iowa City. Church must be true or something.

The Sabbath was a party as well. We were able to have a good amount of people there which is always nice and refreshing. But story of the entire week was our guy Pastor Charles Evans. We had walked into church and right away our Bishop let us know that we had a visitor waiting for us. Turned out to be Charles who out of the blue decided on coming to church. We hadn't been meeting with him or anything because he would just sit and preach to us when we did. Well I offered to sit next to him during sacrament and he settled in on the 2nd row, right in the middle. Sacrament starts and boy was he stoked to take the sacrament. After taking the bread he started mumbling under his breath "Thank you Lord" and "Glory! Glory!", etc etc. I was just sitting there thinking to myself "now what am I going to do if this man gets up and starts going crazy or something?" I was bracing myself. So with Charles mumbling a prayer to himself, the water started to be passed around. He takes the water, waits a couple seconds, starts to clear his throat and then bam. He throws his hands up in the air and yells "HALLELUJAH!!!" Keep in mind we are in the front of everyone smack dab in the middle. Everyone could see it go down. It was also right in the middle of the sacrament. Gotta love it. But as loud or funny or bizarre it may have seemed, my guy was spot on. We should all be screaming "HALLELUJAH" every Sunday. So I sat there with Pastor Evans with a big ol smile on my face for the rest of the meeting cause we were praising the Lord. But all the while keeping him just a little bit more quiet ;)

HALLELUJAH YALL.

Elder Christensen

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