February 24, 2014

Hello Family and Friends!
Well I guess I will tell you about my birthday first, since I will
probably forget by the end of this email. It was great! I found out I
am a terrible chef! Not too much different than any other day, it was
a fantastic day though, and I will explain why a little later. Thanks
for the water bottle mom!

So here we go, we had probably one of the best weeks so far ever! I
truly have felt Heavenly Father blessing us and answering our prayers,
and all of your prayers as well! People are progressing and things are
looking great. We have been working better with the Ward and the Ward
mission leader, which helped us to have 10 lessons this week with
members present - more member support than we have ever had! We worked
our tails off too!
The J. family is doing fantastic. This last week the teenage
daughter, K, expressed a desire to be baptized with her mother
next month! We are praying we can actually meet with them more so we
can prepare the whole family.

We found a new investigator named P. who is the husband of a
less active Spanish member. He is quite an interesting guy! He didn't
come to church this week, but she did for the first time in quite a
while. But we are excited to start working with them.

So J....J. is a boss! We set a baptismal date for him for March
22! He is super excited and so are we! He feels he isn't ready yet
because he wants to know more, but he prayed out loud for the first
time EVER I think in his life with us that night, and he asked if he
could be ready for baptism by the 22 of March. The Spirit was bien
fuerte, and we all just kinda sat there when he finished. He kinda
started giggling cause he didn't know why he felt different. We feel a
great love for that man. It was a great way to close off my birthday.
:) we also finally got him into the church building and gave him a
tour with our Ward mission leader who thankfully speaks Spanish too!
We are praying he can actually make it to church this next week.
Speaking of church, we had a total of 8 investigators there yesterday!
It was crazy! :) !!!

We found out D. is willing to do anything to be baptized, and she
has made her decision on what she needs to do. So we decided to back
off and just keep encouraging her. We found an awesome friend for her,
a recent Spanish convert named L. who was abandoned by her entire
family when she joined the church. They related perfectly.

So I don't think I ever told you all about Jn.   A Priest
in our Ward randomly texted us a few weeks ago, and told us there was
a guy from school who was interested in the church (we later figured
out they weren't even friends-Jn just knew the priest, B, was LDS and
came asking questions). Well now they are pretty good friends. We
taught him that night in B's home, and two days later we met
again. He had read 15+ chapters in the Book of Mormon, and had prayed
about it. He knew it was true and we committed him to be baptized the
22 of February...he accepted and has come to church the last 3-4
weeks, and is getting baptized tonight because his family couldn't
come last Saturday! He is awesome, and so prepared. We ended up
handing him over to some other Elders because he didn't live in our
boundaries but was being taught in our members home. It has been so
cool to see him grow! This last week, his cousin saw the changes in
him and wanted to figure out what they were, so he invited him to
listen to us! So Jn helped us teach his cousin, Js, and he
said he wanted to be baptized too! We handed him off to yet another
set of missionaries as well. 

We have generated probably 5-6 solid
prepared referrals to other Elders in Prescott Valley in the past 2
weeks. Not only is The Lord allowing his work to hasten, but the
evidence of the power of everyday missionaries is incredible. We
couldn't have found any of these golden, prepared people were it not
for members who were willing to open their mouths and let the world
know who they are and what they know. Let's be careful not to miss
those prepared souls The Lord is placing in our way!

Family and friends, I love you all so much! I am so grateful for your
words of encouragement, testimonies and support! I do know that this
church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the only
true church here on the earth today. Because it contains the fullness
of Jesus Christ's Gospel, it also contains the fullness of Happiness
for each of us. This is evident as we strive daily to live that
Gospel, and learn, and grow. I hope we all can feel greater happiness
as we do so!

Thanks again! Have a great week!


Elder Collin Christensen