MTC Week 3-Consecrating ourselves, hosting, and Canada day

This week, as always has been quite the roller coaster. Only now, the roller coaster sees the ups and the downs at least twice a day! Starting with last Sunday, we had a few incredible devotionals that helped me see what I can improve on and be better at. Elder Holland's talk "Open you mouth" was incredible and I am still reeling from how much I learned about being an effective missionary, as well as how much the people we run into every day need the message we have, but don't know how much they need it. 

Monday I got a package that wasn't for me, so that was a bit exciting, and then a downer. That was an odd thing, going back to the mailroom and returning someone elses package. If you want, you can ask my mom for more on this story :)

Tuesday we taught a couple lessons, and one of them didn't go so well and I blamed myself as well as my companion for some of what didn't go wrong, which was kinda unfair cuz much of it was out of our control. Needless to say that drove the Spirit away, so it was harder to learn until I changed my attitude. We also talked as a district after the Tuesday devotional, and I realized that we need to consecrate ourselves, and do as much as possible so that we can be as effective as possible, and when we finally collapse in exhaustion, then we must ask the Savior for help to continue, and he will grant it. 

Wednesday we hosted some new missionaries, so that was a neat experience. Kinda sad seeing all the parents crying (well not all of them...one dad seemed pretty excited haha) as they dropped their missionaries off. Not much other than normal stuff happened on Thursday.

**The good stuff** (not that everything else isn't good) :P

Friday was Canada day! Starsi Murley (picture forthcoming) is from Canada so he was excited. He had a 6-foot wide Canadian flag hanging up in his classroom and we may or may not have 'borrowed' it and put it in our classroom. We also taught our second investigator, Jadranka (pronounced ya-dran-ka) for the second time. She was much more receptive and willing to do things and I think we will get her to pray and go to church this week. If you don't know, our 'investigators are just our teachers, but they are role-playing as real people that they met and know on the mission. Jadranka is a Catholic Croatian, but doesn't read her bible, and only prays when it's a memorized prayer from her prayer book. Our teachers told us that Catholics, Muslims, and Orthodox all do this in the mission, so that will be a big thing, getting people to pray from the heart and ask God questions and get real answers. That has also made me examine my own prayers, and whether or not I am asking for things that I know I will receive, or if I ask for something I do not believe he will give me. I learned as we taught Almir, our other investigator (a Bosnian Muslim{also one of our teachers but whaterver}) that he must have faith before he receives an answer. He was telling us that he prayed but did not receive an answer, so we were trying to help him with that. It really taught me that we need to have so much faith though, or we won't receive answers or help. And if we have greater faith, we can ask for more things in faith, and then we can receive more, and then we can help people more! That's really the whole purpose. If our prayers are wholly selfish, we will never see the full potential until we ask what we can do to help others. As we learned about spiritual gifts more this week (especially the gift of tongues) I found that all gifts are always for the benefit of others, just like the priesthood. And in fact, I wonder if spiritual gifts are just an extension of that same priesthood. Anyways, enough rambling. I know this church is true and am loving the work. Thank you all for your letters and encouragement and I can't wait to hear from you all!

Sincerely,

Starješina Christensen