Man! What a week this has been!
Madness, miracles,
and everything in between, it's been quite the ride. Where to begin...
where to begin.... Man. The hardest part about all of this e-mailing
business is that I can never tell you everything that happened!
Fortunately for you, I've done a (relatively) decent job at keeping a
journal, so I should be able to tell you in a bit more detail after I
get back. :P Did you all hear president Eyering AND President Monson
give their plugs for journal keeping in Conference? I sure did!
Well. First of all, this week we had zone training
meeting, and all the missionaries from our whole zone came up here to
our area for it! It was quite exciting, even President Patrick was
there! One of my old companions is floating around our zone somewhere
too (Elder Murphy), and any chance to spend time with him always does me
some good. :) So, zone training meeting was splendid, all of us were
quite pleased with it, and we had a blood drive at our chapel that
started immediately afterwards, so the whole zone went to give blood
together after it was over. Good times. Only ONE sister passed out. ; )
What with all of that, however, our Friday was
pretty shot, but it was worth it. We didn't get a ton done on the rest
of our weekend either, what with conference, but it was amazing. We even
had a few non-members and less-actives show up. For some of them, it
was the first time they'd set foot in a chapel in YEARS! That was cool.
:) Our mission president has been focusing a lot lately on why were
really here, and what we really do as missionaries. He's had all of us
start keeping track of our weekly sacrament attendance at church (not of
investigators, of everyone!), and explained to us that 'after all, what
we're trying to do here isn't just baptize people, what we're trying to
do is build a church!' So, that has been cool, kind of seeing the whole
WARD grow, not simply our teaching pool. It's all part of the 'haste
the work of salvation' program the church is implementing. If you didn't
get a chance to watch that broadcast they put out, I would highly
recommend it. You'll even get to see my mission president, President
Patrick!
The whole point of the above program is to help us
to understand the complete futility of missionary work without the full
support, comprehension, and involvement, of the members of the church.
It's also to help us break down the imaginary line we've drawn between
'Missionary work' and 'less-active work'. President Harold B. Lee once
said
"Missionary work is but home teaching to those who are not now
members of the church, and home teaching is nothing more or less than
missionary work to Church members"
So, with that in mind, when
it comes right down to it, everything we do in the church, from
missionary work, to going to church, to home teaching, it's all the same
thing. Living and acting and loving and caring, like Christ would.
Let's keep that in mind this week, and maybe we'll get some miracles
done.
I love you!
Elder Christensen
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