Week 65

Mommy & All,

"Let the biggest enemy you have to deal with is yourself! There's an old African proverb that says: If there's no enemy within, the enemy outside can do us no harm." -Phenomenal

This week was pretty good. We were able to teach Diana again this week and she is progressing pretty well. We taught her the Plan of Salvation and reviewed the Restoration and showed her some videos. She is trying to read the Book of Mormon and every time we go over we are able to read with her so it's good. The only thing that's really stopping her baptism is that she wont come to church. She works Monday-Saturday and so her only day off to take a rest is Sunday. Every lesson she commits to come to church with us, and then we go by her house Sunday morning and she is sleeping and won't answer. So we are trying to really figure out how we can help her get to church with us. 

On Wednesday we had a Sports Night with some of our investigators. One of our investigators, Bryan, came and seemed to really like it. It was the first time he'd been inside the church and he said it was cool. We were able to play ping pong and soccer. Then someone pulled out the basketball. So we ended up playing a little bit and it was Bryan, Jensen, Elder Crawford from Washington, and me against a bunch of members. We killed them so that was really fun haha. Bryan really likes activites, now we just need to get him to come on Sundays as well. 

Saturday I was able to meet some investigators named Raul and Matilde. For the first 30 min of talking to them, I thought my comp lied to me telling me they were investigators because I thought they were members. They are more members than investigators. Raul has a brother here in Ushuaia who's an active member, so him and Matilde have been investigating for the last 2 years. They know so much about the church and how it works and were super active up until right before I got here when Raul's work wouldn't give him Sundays off. The other problem is they don't wanna get married. Raul has a smoking problem that he is trying to get away from, so I shared Ether 12:3-4 that talks about through our faith, we can have "hope for a better world" since we all have our own little world that we live in. And how our hope that we have in Jesus Christ is the thing that anchors our souls to God. So we are trying to help them progress as well.

Yesterday I gave a talk in church on becoming a disciple of Christ. One part I talked about was how being a disciple doesn't mean being perfect. The characteristics of a disciple of Christ as He describes are Faith in Jesus Christ, Hope, Charity and Love, Knowledge, Virtue, Patience, Humility, Diligence and Obedience. None of us are perfect at all of those things. We simply have to have the goal in mind that when we wake up every day we are just going to be better than we were yesterday. 

Much Love,

Elder Christensen

Personal note from mom.  Max has been struggling with a few things the past few weeks.  Things concerning his future plans that are out of his control.  He wrote this to his dad and I this week.  I wanted to share, because it is beautiful, and let me know he is ok.  

"This week I had the feeling to read and study the book of Job for the first time and I finished it. All the scriptures I sent you guys can describe better than anything else how I've felt on the mish and all the peaks and valleys. And all I'm continuing to learn. I'm not Job. He lost more than I think I'll ever lose in a lifetime and in the end he was still able to humble himself and repent and he turned out okay. I'm learning how to suffer with patience. How to praise God in my trials. How to be truly grateful for all I've been given and still have. All things I didn't do before the mish." 

Also, Max may be somewhat sidelined for a couple of weeks.  He has a terribly infected ingrown toenail and is having minor surgery to remove it and clean up the infection on the 11th.  (The hospital in his last area was on strike and wouldn't do it.)  He has been told to keep walking to a minimum until it is removed.  

This I am assuming is just a random car.  They don't drive and he didn't mention anything.