Mar 11

Mar 11

à tous mes êtres chères

Hey! How the Heck are you? Good? Glad to hear it. :)

I`m doing great! This was just another busy week in the Neighborhood here in Laval. Our theme for this week: Baptism. Or rather, committing people to baptism. We had a split with the assistants on Thursday and they introduced us to a little hypothosis they've concocted called KALDTism. Explanation, KALDT is a mission term, it means

Know your investigator

Ask inspired questions

Listen lovingly

Discern their needs, and 

Teach to their understanding

Basically, it's the mission president trying to teach us how to get to know the people we teach so we can teach THEM instead of just rattling off the concepts we need them to understand whether they catch on or not. It's one of those skills you never really perfect and you spend your whole life working on. :P

The ism in KALDTism stands for baptism, and what KALDTism IS is this nifty little door approach where the first thing we talk about the first time we see someone is, of course,  baptism! I love it. I love trying new things and watching when they work! Like I said, they just stewed this little angel up last week so we as a collective whole are still trying to figure out how to make it work, but the result as of week 2 is that missionaries all over Québec are learning how to talk about Baptism without being overly pushy, super awkward, or overly shy. I'm a fan.

So, we sort of caught baptism fever after being 'trained' to KALDTism, and we ended up just talking about Baptism with everyone and everything this week, and boy did it make for a wonderful week. I don't think I've ever enjoyed anything quite as much as I enjoyed watching my companion invite someone to be baptized after we'd known them for less than 30 seconds, and I think he could probably say the same thing about me. :) Wonderful.

Other exciting things from our week, the members here rock. We went to a Dinner Appointment with a family that lives an hour north of us, and we arrived at the house to see a giant handmade BANNER saying 'Bienvenue Elders!' that the Children had spent the afternoon fingerpainting for us. :) Talk about cute. They let us take it home with us. :)

Also, Elder Murphy left everything he owns in the zone leaders car on Thursday, so we learned a new meaning of the word Share this weekend. :P

Well, I could go on forever and ever about my wonderful week, but I think I'll leave it there for this week, and share something spiritual with you before I go. Deal? Cool. In church yesterday we talked in priesthood about eternal life, and the blessings and everything that come from the gospel, and the motivation we have to get there. As some of the brothers were having a slightly heated deeply (DEEP) doctrinal discussion about their motivation for wanting to go to the celestial kingdom, our investigator interrupted them to say something really profound. He's from Colombia, he's only been here for a few months, and his French is pretty... well... limited, but he understands well, so he talked in spanish and asked one of the brothers to translate for him. Talk about courage! What he said was basically this 'Lets look at two men who have the same job. One of them works because he wants the money. The other one works because he loves that job, and enjoys the money as an added bonus. Which one do you think is more agreable? Which one do you think spends more time complaining about job conditions? Which one do you think the boss likes more? Now lets look at the Lord. Do you not think that the Lord is happiest when we do His will, not for the reward He has promised us, but because we love Him, and we love to do it?' 

Wow! This guys such a boss. :) He silenced an entire Elder's quorum, in a language they didn't even speak! Then, this morning I was reading an e-mail from a friend, and it said something much to the same effect. 'Our desire to become like Christ has to outweigh anything that might tempt us.' Now, It's true that Christ has made us some pretty sweet promises, but if we're only on His side because of the loot he's gonna give us at the end of the game, really, at our core, we're in it for ourselves, because we're selfish. Every one of us should look into our hearts and ask us WHY we keep the commandments. Is it to get to the celestial kingdom? Or is it, because we LOVE our Father, and our Savior? Your answer to that question may well be the factor that decides whether or not you stand up to temptation when it really counts, whether or not you ARE the person that the Lord needs you to be. I love my Savior, and I hope that that love for Him shows in everything I do. I hope that it's the fire that fuels me, and little pink bunny inside my energizer battery, and I hope it's the same for all of us.

Thanks again, all of you, for everything you do, and God bless you. :)

Have a great week!

Love,

 Elder Christensen