March 6, 2012

Tuesday: I got BORED on Pday. It was the first time I have gotten legit bored since I started my mission. I wrote letters to everyone I needed to, I took a nap, and I had FREE TIME. That doesn't happen on missions. When I told the Spanish sisters, they gasped haha. I turned to my last resort, which was organizing and cleaning the apartment. Later that night we had a great lesson with the Mieures. Dani is pretty set for the baptismal date of March 20th. My companion and I are super stoked. We are always nervous to get too excited, but we really think Dani is ready to make the commitment and she will be an awesome member of the Church. I love love love them and teaching them and hanging out with them. They are probably one of my favorite families in this area.

We also had correlation with our ward mission leader and he read us the email of another missionary. It was all about how baptisms will not happen if a ward is not ready to receive them. A missionary can work their butt off, but if a ward is slacking and is not missionary minded, nothing will happen. I love this ward down here because they really are missionary minded. They are always looking for opportunities to spread the gospel and invite nonmembers. We constantly get excited members telling us how they shared the gospel with others and I can totally see the difference. Note to my family: You better be helping the missionaries and looking for opportunities to share the gospel! It is a commandment. We are a missionary church and we need to be missionary minded. It can be so easy it's ridiculous that people have a hard time with it.

Wednesday: We had seven lessons. We should have had nine but two people canceled. It was super legit. And we also did service for a lady in our ward for a couple hours. I am getting really good at painting and laying mulch, just so you all know. I realized that the further I get into my mission, the more I feel the necessity to be bold and say it like it is. We don't want to waste our time with people who aren't ready to change. Two of our lessons on Wednesday were with people who do not keep their commitments. Normally I would hold on to them, but in these lessons we laid out our expectations, and if they haven't followed through, we will be dropping them tomorrow. My time here is too short and too valuable to waste on people who are so casual about salvation. Lo siento pero ne necesito :)

Thursday: I had a fabulous personal study. I read a talk by Elder Holland, "I Stand All Amazed", and basically he slapped me in the face. Let me explain: The talk was all about the atonement and its role in each of our lives. It intertwined forgiveness and repentance into one. Elder Holland posed the question, "Who in your life stands in need of your forgiveness?" and I immediately thought of a couple of names, but in my mind I was like, "ummm, they sooo do not deserve my forgiveness, they wronged me!!" and the next line of the talk said, "Don't you dare ask for justice and justify why you cannot forgive".....He continued on and got me really thinking about my life. For those of you who know me well, you probably know I have a problem with letting things go. I am most definitely a grudge holder. But Heavenly Father has forgiven me for SOOO much. I sometimes question his judgment for forgiving me (joke). But for real, it is because of Jesus Christ and the atonement that I don't carry that weight around with me, and yet here I stand, wanting to keep the chip on my shoulder for things I may not fully understand myself. So in humility, I know I need to forgive. I am not perfect, and I know it will not be easy, but I am really working on it. I don't want to hate people or wish bad things on them. I am a disciple of Christ and I know this is a big step towards change. I am sure I will reread this talk a million times to help me through it all, but it is possible. Amen.

During the day we had five lessons and we have another investigator who is praying about baptism. She is a young single adult and I really respect and admire her. I cannot wait for her to get baptized!

Friday: We had a ward party! The theme was Chinese New Year. It was really fun. We had at least 8 nonmembers there and we socialized with almost all of them. I love my ward!

Saturday: We picked up a family of four as investigators, but their story is really sad. Last month they lost their son to a car accident. They were crying and telling us about it, and it seriously made me depressed. I just wanted to cry with them and hug them. They have a Buddhist background, so we are literally starting from "a great spirit" because they don't know who God or Jesus Christ are. Also they are Laoation (sp?) so we have to have a translator there with us to communicate with the mom and dad. I love my family so much, my heart hurt for them! It was a harsh start to our day. But we had a great day in teaching and getting the work done.

Sunday: We taught some lessons and we were taught some lessons. We learned about coming unto Christ and being perfected in Him. Also our Relief Society President's husband told us about the new show "Walking Dead" and gave us a 20-minute synopsis about the show. It felt like we were watching t.v. haha. We were both like, "What happened next?!?!" Apparently this is a big show on television in the world?

Monday we had president interviews and district meeting. And we did service and taught some less active people and played dodge ball. Which I am terrible at. And wa-la, that was my week.

Hope all is well, cause life rocks here in sunny California.

Pce out and party hard,
Sister Christensen