DESIRE.

Wow, what a jolly good week! Weeks just go by so fast here. every other day is pday it seems. We have zone conference tomorrow so we are going to be prepping for that tonight. we hold the meeting in our ward building. I just got back from the temple too . we went bright and early this morning with our member friend named dinh. he loves being with the missionaries. usually we also eat dinner with him once a week. But the temple was really good today! I love being there. Finland's temple is so pretty. I was very cold this morning...2 degrees celsius...so that is almost freezing. we might be leaving the good summer weather for good now. 

But anyway, the work went so good this week. Our friend Risto came to church again on sunday! on so did our other friend named Hung. Risto has been improving so much! We meet with him twice a week and i have seen his faith grow from nothing to so much in just a couple of weeks. All it takes is a little bit of desire. When we met him he did not believe in God. and then after a couple weeks he hoped that God was real. and now he believes that God is real. We have been talking alot about commandments with him these past few lessons. There is a scripture in deuteronomy that i read this week during my personal study that really stuck out to me. 11:26-28

26 ¶ Behold, I set before you this day a ablessing and a bcurse;

27 A ablessing, if ye obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you this day:

28 And a acurse, if ye will not bobey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside out of the way which I command you this day,

i love that God tells us exactly what he is going to do. If we follow the commandments then we get a blessing...if not, then we get a curse. And the best part is, that we get to pick. We have been helping Risto follow the commandments, and as i have done this my appreciation for them as grown so much! I am so glad that God gives us commandments so that we can know how to get back to him again and to be happy. The same situation with one of our other investigators. She has a problem with the law of tithing. she said that in order for her to pay it, she would need a guarantee that things would work out. I can promise that things will always work out in the end when we choose to be obedient. 

I got to spend a day with my MTC comp elder reed this week. he came down from the north because his companion had to go to a leadership training. It was so fun to see him again and to work with him in the field! We have grown so much but we are still the same. I love elder reed. I also fell down the stairs when we were tracting.

We got taken out to sushi twice this week. Pretty good, but i am not a huge fan of sushi. we are getting ready for the ward temple day too, which is on saturday. We are going to be giving tours of the temple and explaining what goes on there to all of the visitors. We are excited...i need to learn some temple vocab this week though...but hopefully we can get Risto there. 

One last thing that was pretty fun this week was when we taught finnish class. These 3 arabic friends came and they were super cool. they didnt really speak english and no finnish. So we started with the basics...the alphabet and the sounds that each letter makes in the finnish language. it is very hard for them because they have a different alphabet in arabic. in an hour and 30 minutes...we basically accomplished nothing..and i only had them work on the nouns. But is was so fun. they were pretty funny and i was teaching them off to the side of the normal class and they were really embarrassed that they were getting taught the alphabet. But is was so fun and they will come back next week. There are so many things that have changed in my life since i began my mission. people ask me all the time how i have changed the most. I think that definitely the biggest change is just loving everyone as a brother or sister no matter what. there is a big push in the mission right now to focus on God being a loving heavenly father. it is so true...he cares about each one of us!

i love you all! elder christensen