Wednesday, September 11, 2013

A Visit with an Apostle 9/9/13


Hello everyone,

What a busy busy week in the life of a Hurricane missionary. At least the temperature is finally starting to cool down.The week started with us taking our recent convert Joleen to the family history center. It was a great experience. She is very excited to get started working on her family history. She is simply on fire, the gospel has changed her life in a complete 180. She is becoming an example to her children and becoming an example of what the gift of the Holy Ghost can do for a person.

We also taught the Foster children again. Zack when he found out it was my birthday promised to make me a birthday present. Mkayla was in the most recent primary program and she did great…They have a sweet disabled 3 year old little brother and it is so cute and beautiful to see how they interact one with another…

We taught Justeen again and we taught her about the Book of Mormon. We shared the Mormon message with Jeffery R. Holland called Safety for the Soul. Those new Mormon messages really help to bring the spirit. They are useful in teaching, they say and invite the spirit better than we can with our own words at times. Justeen is doing great. We meet with her again tonight and are teaching the Plan of Salvation.

This Saturday we got the opportunity to meet with Elder David A. Bednar in an all-mission conference. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to be able to sit in a room that small with a member of the quorum of the twelve. He brought the spirit as he taught us how to be better missionaries and members of this great church. He stressed the importance of being able to invite the spirit and get out of the way. He said that we did not need him to have our questions answered but could use the spirit of revelation to understand the things of the gospel. He invited us to repent and to become closer to Christ and closer to the missionaries that we want to be. We talked about how faith is a principle of action in all intelligent beings and that we need to act and then we receive help from the Lord. At the end of our meeting I was able to shake his hand. It was a really special experience. We took a picture with him as a mission, hopefully I will be able to send you a copy of it soon.

Words cannot describe the learning that comes from the experiences I have had on my mission. I find joy in serving others around me. I find happiness in being able to do all that I can for my Lord and God. I don't know a lot but what I do know about this life is that we have a loving Father in heaven. That he loves us and that he gave his Son so that we might live. This is where we come in, we must humble ourselves, gain that faith, and then do something about it. Pride is the enemy of all of that. Being self-centered destroys and deteriorates our companionship with the Holy Ghost. There was a quote shared from pride and prejudice the other day in one of our sacrament meetings "I have been a prideful person all my life in practice though not in principle" -Elizabeth Bennett. Because of my love for Pride and Prejudice and because of the spirit this quote meant a lot to me. I reflected on my principle and then my practice. I have made a goal to strive to serve those around me, to humble myself so that I can be subject to the Lord's help and that my practice will be aligned with my principle. 

I love all of you. I pray for all of you. I hope that you are all doing well.

You are the best
Elder Christensen  

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