March 30, 2015

Buenas tardes!

I'm pretty wiped so I'm sorry this will be short. This week we had a
lot of success as far as finding and teaching this week! We are
finally starting to see some balance between our work in the family
Ward and the work in the YSA ward. We began teaching a guy named
Arnaud who is solid! He has been going to institute classes for the
last couple semester. He previously investigated but his parents made
him stop. Now he is at college and realizes this is something he wants
in his life. It's crazy yet so obvious that we are naturally drawn to
the gospel in our lives.  We also began teaching a Chinese Scholar
here at NAU. He has broken English but understands pretty good, and he
is super interested in Mormonism. He enrolled in every institute class
we offer and is now taking missionary lessons! A member is bringing
him and a group of 15+ other Chinese students to the Easter Pageant at
the Mesa Temple, and also to the Payson, Utah temple open house! They
are awesome and will be going back to China soon, but the amazing
thing is that the Church's representative in China has a son living in
our stake who is helping us! Since no one can be baptized yet in China
unless they are family, this is a super neat opportunity to help them
accept the gospel now that they are here so their families will have
it in the future. He told us that to him the family was the most
important social unit in his perspective. He pointed at the Family
Proclamation to the World on our wall and said "that is Chinese
Culture." Once again, it's evidence that the gospel just has a
familiar "ring" to it when you begin to discover it with an open
heart.
In addition to these awesome successes cam some pretty huge setbacks
and trials last week. We went from having 6 on date to be baptized to
3, and 2 of them completely stopped meeting with us due to anti Mormon
material and just pressure in general. It's been tough to live with an
understand why it's all happening at once. This is the most busy, fun,
fruitful, and rewarding area I've ever served in, and yet it's also
proven to have the most stress, frustration and disappointment. Mostly
because we've had to watch people we love gain testimonies from the
Holy Ghost and then not act upon it, and even completely ignore it.
That's been the hardest thing for me to deal with. When someone sees
the fruits of the gospel, lives it, loves it, knows it's true, commits
to follow the commandments, and then totally lets go. That kills me
more than anything. And yet I know God has a plan for me, and a
purpose for me at this time to experience these setbacks. It's good,
it's teaching me patience and humility that's for sure!
Well I love you all and hope you have a lovely Easter weekend watching
General Conference! Remember to share the new video on
helives.mormon.org, or watch it if you haven't yet!

Elder Collin Christensen