Sweet Proclamation Prompt.

Well, I write this sitting on a hammock roasting some Finnish sausages and some pineapple. We are at the national forest called nuuksio again today for p-day.  It is super super cool place. 

We had such a good week! Bob is doing great. He has his baptismal interview tomorrow, so fingers crossed that it goes well! We had a great lesson with him this week. We met at the temple and had a great time walking around the temple teaching about why we have them and what goes into making a temple.  He really wants to go inside and committed to pay tithing to help build more of them. Hopefully after he is baptized I will still be here and be able to go with him to do baptisms for the dead! 

We are going to the temple this week. We have mlc, or mission leadership council. It is going to be grand. Me and Elder Krause have quite a bit of stuff to teach there to the other missionaries, so we shall see how it goes! 

There was a way cool experience this past Sunday! Very rainy day, and we always go street contracting Sunday mornings,...this morning we felt we should bring around, The Family a Proclamation to the World. We have not done that the past 3 weeks, so we wanted to give it a try again. It went really well. it had a plastic covering on top of it so it didn't get wet, and a few people had actually read it before. We stopped this one elderly lady and she was way nice but didn't really want to stop and get wet  so she kept walking.  I asked her if we could walk with her and she didn't have a coat or umbrella, so i held this plastic family proclamation over her head for the next 20 minutes as we walked home keeping the water off her head. It was a really special experience. Had we not been prompted to take out the proclamation we would not have been able to help her! Heavenly Father really does know how to help his children and help guide us to them! So many people walked passed us looking at our tags and I really think it helped a lot of them to feel Gods love that morning! We became great friends with that lady!

That is all I can write. I love you all!

What About Bob?

Wow, we had a superb week here in Kauniainen. This is the best place to be for sure!

This past Sunday we had stake conference for southern Finland and it went really well! A member of the 70 from Denmark came. He is the same one that was here in November talking to all the missionaries in Finland. I really loved his talk. He talked a lot about how the Book of Mormon is the most precious gift from God! And how is life would be different with out it. He is a convert and it is amazing to me to think that when people really learn to love the Book of Mormon they change and have so much joy. I can imagine quite a few recent converts that I have met right here in Finland becoming future leaders in the church. 

Our friend Bob is doing great. He was going to come to stake conference with us...but he forgot that it was in Helsinki and he went to our church building in Espoo. My heart was crushed when he called me and asked where everyone was at. We had a great lesson though with him yesterday about temples and the priesthood. He is ready. His date is for the 1st if June, so not this Saturday but the following. We are super excited for him!

This week is zone conferences, and we are going on splits with some of the zone leaders in Helsinki. We are super excited for that. We had a splits also with some elders this week and it was really good. We had another lesson over the technology. Super fun. It is coming in handy. By the end of this week all missionaries should be using their devices. We are going to wrap up the training. 

We had a really good lesson with these boys from the Congo. They are awesome. They are all cousins around the age of 20. We have been meeting with them for about a month now and they love it. They had a ton of questions and are pretty scared of dying, so it was really great when we taught them the plan of salvation! They found a lot of comfort in learning that God has a plan for them! We have been talking a lot about the Plan of Salvation with people recently and I am super grateful that I have been blessed to learn of it for myself! I am so grateful that God has a plan for each one of us. 

We are going to go hiking next week again in the woods for p-day, so we shall see if I send out an email! 

Love you all!

Thieved by "Slim Guys"!

Well, it really does feel that the days are so short and that we are fast-forwarded constantly until we get back to Family Prayer each night. The days are just flying right now. This week was so good. 

Yesterday we had an awesome meeting with President Aura. We talked a lot about helping missionaries grow in their confidence in talking to people and how we could do better, and be better at finding as a mission. We counseled and came up with a ton of good ideas and role plays that we can do. We had this experience last night where we tried some of them out. we had like 5 minutes to get inside before night fall, and we just pulled into our drive way, and this dude was walking on the sidewalk a little ways away, so I got out of the car and yelled over to him asking how his mother's day went, and we started chatting from across the street. We tried all the tips and tactics and it just worked so well. He was really interested in talking about God and why we are here. In the end, he didn't end up setting up a lesson or anything , but it was really cool to see that God prepares us, and then lets up put it to the test as well. We are way excited for this zone conference and being able to help the missionaries try it out. 

Our friend Bob is doing really well. He came to church again for the third time in a row. That has only happened once on my mission and it was with Oona, and she got baptized after three times. She is still doing good too. I am in charge of keeping record of all the recent converts from the last two years, so it is really cool to keep track of her and Pekka (who I was teaching in Pori, he got baptized two weeks ago!) But Bob, he is getting baptized in two weeks for sure. He is doing so well. We taught the word of wisdom and law of chastity. no problem. Then we also taught the importance of obeying the law of the land. He got robbed 3 days ago. His iPad got thieved by two "slim guys". Satan really does try to hamper the work of salvation. But while teaching literally the only law that I could think of was not to steal. I tried so hard not to say it, but a couple time it just slipped out and then there was like 5 seconds of silence...and Bob would say "I know man, come on man...." and then he would shake his head and we would all start laughing. That happened like three times. It was so funny. We love Bob so much and I am so grateful that We get to help him! You can really see how his mindset on God and Jesus has changed. So different. So much more understanding. It all starts with the little things we do. Every day we can pick a little thing and make a change. They dont have to be big to be repentance. It could be waking up earlier, reading your scriptures more diligently, saying your prayers, treating others better, cleaning your room, listening to better music. It all just starts little by little until you change completely. 

Verse of the day: D+C 58 21 Let no man break the laws of the land, for he that keepeth the laws of God hath no need to break the laws of the land.

I read this like 3 times yesterday to people. so true.

We set another baptismal date with this guy named kevin. Way cool guy. he was like 55 minutes late, and i almost left, but thankfully we waited :) We are excited to keep helping him as well. 

I love you all!

"Cotton Candy Club"

Wow, this was maybe the fastest non stop week ever! Everyday something was happening all the time. My new comp is with me now and we are having a jolly good time. He is Elder Krause and is from my same MTC group. He is from New Jersey. We have had a thrilling time so far and have set some high goals.

During the first part of the week, we spent a lot of time with missionaries and In meetings. Tuesday was transfer day. That was a good one. A missionary put his bags on the train but never got on it. But all in all everything worked out in the end.... and the bags were found. Also, we picked up all of the trainees from the airport and took them straight to the temple so they could walk around and check it out. It is so fun to be with younger missionaries, especially the ones that just get here because they are super pumped. The next morning we woke up at 3:30 and took all the departing missionaries to the airport. Elder Jacobsen, one of my past companions, and all of my MTC sisters went home. It was super spiritual to be able to participate in the final Testimony Meeting. I am so thankful that I still have 6 months to go. We had district meeting right after that and some work to do and some teaching to do, so we skipped our nap. We were sustained.

After all of this, we went to the government and took the trainees with us and got them all declared and ready to go to work. On the drive back, we turned on some piano hymns and everything was quiet. For about 20 minutes there was no talking and I was in the front seat. With out turning around I asked everyone if they could play the piano. no one replied. It turns out that they were all sleeping. That is ok. We all get tired. The Auras and us had a nice laugh about it afterwards.

We also had a ward Vappu party. Kind of like a graduation party. There were tons of Donuts, bounce houses, and a cotton candy machine. It was so good. Our friend Bob came and we were teaching him about the restoration and Joseph Smith. We brought him in to this tiny little classroom on the side, so that the party would be a little ways away as we discussed...but sure enough as we were giving the first vision account, our ward mission leader's wife walked in with 4 sticks of cotton candy. We ended up continuing the lesson each holding our cotton candy club. But Bob is doing so good. He came to church and loved it so much. There is a russian member here who had a great chat with him and they have become pretty good friends. Bob says that he can really feel the spirit strongly at church. 

 On friday, we had a missionary Leadership training meeting. It went really well. We counseled together and it was super cool to see how the Holy Ghost was working in all of us. We chose themes and scriptures for this transfer and talked about what we can do to improve and align our will with the Lords. Our new Mission Scripture is 

Jacob 5:71 And the Lord of the vineyard said unto them: Go to, and labor in the vineyard, with your might. For behold, this is the last time that I shall nourish my vineyard; for the end is nigh at hand, and the season speedily cometh; and if ye labor with your might with me ye shall have joy in the fruit which I shall lay up unto myself against the time which will soon come.

I love that the promise is : If you labor with your might, WITH ME. That is the key to finding joy and success. Doing it the Lord's way and doing it with Him. I have learned that we are not just invited to come and cheer Him on in His work. He wants us to be right there in the middle of it, the receivers that catch the balls, the midfielders that are making plays and being creative. We are to join Him in the game, and to PLAY! 

I love being here so much! This is the best thing to be doing, and I am so grateful to be a missionary!

Also, one last note, we met this dude and he said that he didn't want anything to do with the Book of Mormon, and i said that i ok. And then I just started teaching about a book that is full of Jesus Christ's words, and helps us get closer to Christ, and to understand his atonement. Then I asked him if I could give him a Book that testifies of Christ. He said sure! Aren't we so blessed to have the Book of Mormon as a testimony of Christ?

Love Elder Christensen