I Am Not the Gardener.

Wow! we had an amazing week! Pori is the best city with the best people :) The work is moving on.

Pekka is doing really well, I love meeting with him. His Finnish is really hard to understand but i still like him. Yesterday he was asking me to grab his gloves but i had no idea what he was saying, I kept thinking he was saying grab his tie or something. we went to the store to help him buy food 3 times last night, but we never actually ended up buying any food....we first got to the store and he realized that he forgot his wallet, so we rolled him back, and then 20 minutes later we were in the check out line and his credit card wasn't in his wallet...so 20 minutes later we showed up again and it was the wrong card...but we have a lesson tonight with him and we are super excited. He still has his baptismal date for January 19th and he is way happy about it.

We have been teaching the Nicaraguan Family this week! twice! They are elect. we teach in english and I cannot get out a sentence with out getting emotional from the spirit. Heavenly Father wants them so bad. This is why they have moved to Finland! We taught the Restoration and the plan of Salvation this week and they have the best questions and they really want to know what is true. Yesterday the spanish member from our ward came with us and he brought his young kid, so the two kids played together the whole time and it was amazing! next lesson we are going to be talking about baptism! fingers crossed!

One really funny thing that happened this week was, we were waiting in our car about to start tracting, and then all of the sudden !boom! this kid on his kick scooter runs into the front of our car and then he slides off our front window and smiles at me.  I am confused and not really sure what just happened...so I do the only thing I know how to do...I smile and wave! and then he scooters off into the dark!

We had Father's day here in Finland on sunday! Dad's are the best! not a whole lot of celebrating here. Lots of the people we talked to on the streets didn't even say anything about it and many even forgot. Ah well.

I had my best game of bowling i my life last p-day after the emailing. I rolled a turkey. 401 points in 3 games. that is pretty good. I am not pro yet, but it is decent.

For spiritual thought, I have been reading a lot in the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants, Maybe one of my very favorite verses i discovered this week. This is when the Lord is correcting the saints for not building his temple. D+C 95:1 Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you whom I love, and whom I love I also chasten that their sins may be forgiven, for with the chastisement I prepare a way for their deliverance in all things out of temptation, and I have loved you.

Because God loves us, he corrects us...so that we can be forgiven and become better. It reminds me of the talk about the little currant bush :"how could you cut me down mr gardener? I was doing so well, how could you do this to me?" "I am the gardener here...I know what I want you to be.....And when you are laden with fruit you will say to me, thank you mr gardener for loving me enough to cut me down." How many of us have thought this before? all of us right? I am grateful for those little moments that I have had when i was able to think "how could you let this happen to me? or this isn't what i think it should be" and then coming to the understanding that I am not the Gardener. Someone else knows better than me what is best.

I love you all!

love elder Christensen