Cinco de YODA!

Hey everyone! I hope you all had a great week! We definitely had a good one here in Tikkurila. The work is going along here very nicely. We had a very busy week of finding and teaching.

We also had exchanges this week...two of them..super fun but they seem like the longest days of the mission...maybe just because everything is just so different. We made this really awesome cake to celebrate exchanges and may 4th and also cinco de mayo. It looked way cool. It was a mud cake...basically like a brownie cake...they eat it a lot here for dessert. It is really good frozen and with ice cream. I must say that it was a big hit.

Exchanges were very successful. One with the zone leaders, and one with a companionship in our district. My comp is the district leader so we go on splits with every companionship in our district. Thats always fun.

We found two new investigators this week. Another African brother from nigeria, and a young Finnish man named matti. He is way cool. That might have been the best lesson i have taught in Finnish. We invited him to read the scriptures at the end, and committed him to read one chapter....and then he asked if he could read more than one chapter! We were like of course!

We had the opportunity to fast yesterday to become better teachers of repentance. I am so glad that we had this opportunity. We had a lesson with our less active/recent convert yesterday...it was so good and totally led by the spirit. We have known that he has had trouble with the word of wisdom for awhile, but he never has wanted to like share any of his problems. Yesterday we talked about Elder Holland's talk about perfection. We aren't asked to be perfect....heavenly father already knows that we will make mistakes. This is part of our earthly experience. But he does expect us to try our best to be perfect. After that, i asked him if their was anything about the word of wisdom that had been troubling him...many things came out. It was so good. And now that we know his concerns better, we can help him on his path of repentance. I have this weird habit of smiling when people say exactly what I want them to say. When everything works out perfectly, I cant help it. I know that the spirit was there in that lesson!

I am so thankful for this gospel and the opportunity I have to share it here in Finland!

sorry it is a short letter, more next week.

love elder christensen