Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaangit, that part of the email just made me sick to my stomach, losing by 1 to Utah by a blocked field goal. It´s probably a good thing i´m here right now and am a missionary, cuz i probably would´ve cursed a few times there hahaha. Oh well they played well, we have a bowl game to go to, and an awesome year next year to look forward to, which i´ll be able to see!!!
Something i forgot to tell you guys last week, today were transfers, and i was expecting a call from my District Leader this morning to tell me if i was leaving or no, but President Humphrey decided to call me himself last night. He told me, ¨Elder Christenson you´re going to have some big changes this transfer.¨ I was sad thinking that meant i was leaving. He then told me that he was moving me up to District Leader, that helped cheer me up a bit haha, i then asked where I was going. He responded that I wasn´t going anywhere, but that i´m staying in Molina for one more transfer as District Leader!!! I jumped and yelled for joy, i think i might have hurt President´s ears haha, but Elder Balkman and I were hoping for this cuz we´re working really well together right now, and I didn´t want to leave. We decided to celebrate last night by making some awesome breakfast burritos! So long story short I´ll be in Molina for Christmas and New Years, and i´ll talk to you guys Christmas day from the same home where we called for Mothers Day haha i´ve been here so long. In all, after this transfer, I´ll have been in Molina for 9 months. They might as well had called me to the Molina, Chile mission.
Elder Balkman and I probably worked the most effective, hardest, and best week that we´ve had together. We really worked on our planning, so that we could continue teaching a lot of lessons, but also search for new investigators, and the Lord blessed us in abundance. We were able to teach over 40, do 93 contacts, and we found 12 new investigators. To get a new investigator you need to enter a home, teach a lesson, and get a set return appointment, which sometimes is difficult, but we worked so hard and really saw the hand of the Lord in our work. We also had great blessings in church after what looked to be a really lame Sunday. 5 of our best investigators, Roxana, Claudia, Paulina, and Manuel, all of whom have baptismal dates for the 19th and are really excited and progressing well, weren´t able to attend church on Sunday for various reasons. Another investigator, Rosa, whom we passed by to go to church together, wasn´t able to attend because her controling husband answered the door and told us that she was in Curicó (lie) and that she said she doesn´t want us to ever come back (another lie) I told him that I knew she wanted us to continue teaching her, and that he just didn´t want us to come back, and i told him to tell his wife that we´d pass by this week. He just stared at me and we walked away. In other words we showed up to church with 0 investigators, we were both about to cry haha, but half way through sacrament meeting Camilo walked in...accompanied by his whole family!! I was pumped to see them, and they all came and sat by us. They really enjoyed sacrament meeting, and afterward the members were way nice to them, so they stayed for the rest of the meetings, something Vicky had no intention of doing. We taught an awesome class on the importance of the Book of Mormon, and the spirit was really strong. The best thing was that all the talks and classes were focused on protecting and strengthening the family, so i´m sure they loved that. The Oyarce family also invited them all over to their house tonight to have FHE, so all in all it was a good experience. We could see that Camilo was so happy to finally have all his family there, and have that support. He doesn´t like to show it to his family, but we can see that he desires so much that they join the church, he just needs to be brave and help them by inviting them, and sharing his testimony with them. They´re passing through some touch times right now as a family, and i know that they´re coming to know the gospel at the perfect moment. Vicky was really sweet the other day. We went over to discuss with her about letting Carolina, her 9 year old daughter, be baptized. She was really honest with us and was worried that her daughter was doing it just cuz she likes us, seeing that she was baptized Catholic only months ago. But she did say that once she sees that Carolina really wants it, she´ll let her be baptized. She did say that she likes our church more than any other church. She told us that the examples of the missionaries have been a big influence in her life and the life of her family, and that we were the most humble people that she had met. She ended by saying that it reflected the type of family that we come from, and that we must have wonderful parents. I teared up at that point thinking about you guys, and felt so blessed to have come from such a great family, the Gospel has blessed us more than we know, and there are so many families here that struggle just cuz they don´t know how to live the Gospel.
We´re really really excited to keep working here together and I know that we´re going to see some baptisms here really soon, Satan fighting so hard against us, and we´ve a lot of tough breaks, but in the end the Lord will win as long as we keep working, praying, and fighting. It really has strenghtened my testimony that this work is true, cuz i can see the adversary fighting against those we teach so hard, and it just shows me that he does not want them to accept this. Pray for us, for our families that we´re teaching, we have high hopes, but we need all the help we can get.
I hope you all have an amazing week, and that dad doesn´t go too crazy with all the Christmas music playing haha eat something good for me, we´re living on rice and noodles every day here due to not having even one peso left haha, but we´re loving life cuz we´re working for the Lord.
Love you all tons!!
Elder Tanner