BAPTISM!

We had a baptism this week! He is from Venezuela and is 18 years old. It was awesome! The spirit was so strong in the room! I had the opportunity to be the one who baptized him. As I got in the font to baptize him, the water temperature reminded me of Lake Tahoe haha. Poor Manuel had to get dunked in it too. He came out barely breathing haha. But even after the cold water, the warmth of the Spirit took over. He was a miracle. We prayed so hard to have 1 baptism in November and the Lord definitely answered our prayers. When we set the goal of 1 baptism in November, we still hadn't found him. He got baptized in about 4 weeks!

 

So we had a good thanksgiving as well. We played some turkey bowl too with other missionaries and some members. The Stake President was playing. He is real good and really buff haha. He was trying to sack me because I was quarterback (not a very good one) (we were playing flags) and I was trying to dodge him and another player and my knee went out pretty bad. It has been swollen, but don't worry, I am walking. I talked to President and everything will be good, but I probably wont be playing sports on the mission for a long time because I don't want to risk it. On Friday I woke up not feeling to good and my knee couldn't bend too far (luckily we were in car), but we were blessed enough where we were still able to work all Friday and for the rest of the weekend. A lot of missionaries got sick on Friday for some reason. Florida turkeys must be evil or something. haha bad joke...

We really had an amazing week! We are seeing a lot of miracles. We have found a couple new families as well :). We taught the restoration to a 17 year old girl this week and she understood it so perfectly! The spirit was really strong. It is the most true message in all of the world.

We had an experience where we had prayer tracting planned along with a couple potentials as backups and we were going to visit the potentials instead of tract, but we felt to tract and we did and just chose a random building in the apartment complex and found one of the nicest ladies I have ever met on my mission from Peru! It was a miracle. We recently taught her with a member present and she wants to come to our English classes! We started up some English classes last week. Our first day was Saturday. 4 people came: me, my companion, and the two other elders in our ward haha. But the class will grow in the near future!

We taught a really cool guy from the Dominican Republic and he has a desire to read the Book of Mormon, he is awesome! He is just moving in like a week. But we will teach him until he leaves.

We taught a family from D.R. too. We taught a Restoration lesson in like 7 minutes. We try to teach 5 min lessons of just doctrine and it works pretty good. The family understood the Restoration in the 7 minutes and felt the power of it as well. It was amazing! We talk about things afterwards and get to know them at the start of the lesson, but the part where we teach the message, we try and keep it 5 minutes and straight doctrine to let the spirit do the teaching.

Elder Starks got in another bike crash again! #4... He passed me now on crash numbers. He went over the handlebars again haha. Good times.

Love you! Thanks for your prayers! :)

Elder Christiansen