Christmas lights and SNOW!!!! Fetch i'm jealous. Here we have heat and smelly dogs. awesome. haha I'm sure you guys are just loving the season there, I don't really remember what a real Christmas is like, I really feel like we never entered into winter cuz all it did was rain when it was cold here, lame! We did see some Christmas decorations in the local grocery story though, so i felt a little spark of Christmasyness. I haven´t received the Christmas package yet, but i´ll get it soon so don´t worry.
That fireside you guys went to sounded really great, to be able to go to a meeting and listen to an Apostle is definitely a blessing that people here really don't get, and that i really miss. I was talking with a brother in the stake the other day and he told me that he has gone to Utah twice, and that he absolutely loved it. He loved that the cities were so organized and that there weren't dirty dogs in the street, and trash all over the place, and he was amazed with how the members worked there. I told him it's the land of the prophets, and that there's no better place on earth. I have great pride in Utah.
This week was kind of interesting. Elder Balkman was in Concepcion for several days for a training capacitation with the President and the other new missionaries. So Elder Higham and I had to work in our sector here in Molina, and also in Lontue at the same time. It was hard with all the traveling, and my wallet a lot thinner now haha, but we did have some success. It definitely was a relief to have Elder Balkman come back though, and be able to work normally. With Elder Higham I had several interesting and funny experiences that i haven't had before in my mission. One day after lunch it suddenly hit me that i had to use the bathroom and bad. I just kept hearing Josh Larsen's words to me before i left, '' You're not a real missionary until you crap your pants.'' That wasn't a very comforting thought haha. We were really far from our house, so we went to some members houses that lived close by, nobody was home...so we began doing contacts to be able to use their bathrooms. It was definitely a different approach to get into people's homes that i never had used before. Normally it's, ''hi we're missionaries of Jesus Christ, and we want to share a message about his restored gospel and how it may bless the life of your family, may we come in and share this with you?'' This time it was, ''hi i'm Elder Christenson nice to meet you, I'm really sorry and embarrassed, but may i ask you a favor?'' they responded with a suspicious look on their face, ''what do you need?'' ...''I need your bathroom'' Well it sadly wasn't very successful with a couple people, and i began to be very nervous, but thankfully we found a nice family and got into their house. Afterward they didn't want to hear our message, and i don't blame them haha. They were nice about it though. anyways...
We worked really hard to help our investigators get to church on Sunday, and we saw quite a few results. We did have several people arrive that we're not teaching, and a random drunk guy off the street attend, but also 5 people that we are teaching came on Sunday. In all there were 10 non members in church on Sunday.
Two of our investigators, Paulina and Claudia, are sisters and have attended twice now. They really liked church, and stayed for all the classes. they loved young womens and know several of the girls that are members here from school. They still haven´t accepted baptismal dates, but we´re hoping that we can help them progress soon. They´re catholic, their mom was a missionary for the Catholic church, but like all Catholic´s don´t go to church hardly ever, but they still feel unsure whether or not they are willing to leave all that tradition behind and be baptized. They know what we teach is true, and they like it, but they need to be brave and just accept it and pray to receive the confidence to be baptized. Another investigator named Juan finally came to church after teaching him for about a month. We normally don´t continue teaching someone who doesn´t attend for that long, but he has been reading everyday in the Book of mormon and is interested, so we felt we couldn´t let him go. The sacrament meeting was a bit of a mess cuz it was the primary program and it wasn´t very organized, plus that drunk guy i told you about came in and fell asleep immediately. His phone went off several times, but we couldn´t wake him up to answer it, so everyone was just staring at me while i´m slapping this guy in the face trying to wake him up haha i felt so bad to have the meeting interrupted. Also Camilo´s dad came to church! That was really awesome, but we were hoping to have his whole family come cuz they told us that they were going to. We´ve found that it´s really difficult teaching over there. THey´re not like the other families we teach that we can sit down and pull out our scriptures and teach a lesson. Many times we go over there and just try really hard to direct a normal conversation to something gospel related, but it´s often times difficult.
We´re excited about what the future brings. We had one investigator, Manuel, call us the other day and tell us that he wants to be baptized, we visited him yesterday and asked him what made him decide to do it. He told us that he read the testimony of Joseph Smith in the beginning of the Book of Mormon and that when he was in bed his words kept going through his head and that he felt something really special. We were really excited to hear that, and we put a baptismal date for the 19th of December. We have several dates in December so we´re confident that we´ll be able to baptize that month! We were a little disappointed with November as we won´t be having any baptisms this month, my first month since i got here without baptisms, but we´re excited about the future. We´re contacting and testifying and working hard, and i´m sure that those we´re teaching will be blessed as they are obedient and demonstrate their faith in Christ.
This week we´re going to focus a ton on contacting to find new investigators and just invite everyone to repent and be baptized. It really is no secret, the only way to true happiness is following the teachings of Jesus Christ, THE WAY HE WANTS. I´m really grateful for the time i´m having here in Molina. I feel that i´ve learned and grown a lot, and I feel a sense of urgency, that i need to take advantage of the time and opportunities that i have left. I do know that this church is true. We had the opportunity to teach a lesson in English the other day with an Adventist preacher who also teaches english at a Seventh day adventist church. We testfied of the truthfulness of the Restoration and the Book of Mormon, he didn´t want to touch the subject cuz he didn´t want to argue. He was a really nice guy that made us home made juice and we had a really pleasant conversation, but when we brought up The Book of Mormon he went stone faced haha. I know what we teach is true, because when we testify of it the spirit is there. We left him with a Book of Mormon and our phone number, and hopefully he calls or some other missionaries can find him and teach him.
I hope you all have an awesome week and that those filthy Utes trip and fall on their face!!!!!!!!!!! GO COUGARS!!!!
love you all
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