Thursday, July 14, 2016

Week 4-Croatian grammar, new missionaries in the zone, and teaching by the Spirit

​This week was wonderful as always! We've been learning lots, teaching more, and growing more and more both spiritually and in the language every day. I realize I haven't talked much about the language. It's pretty cool and I love learning more about it. In Croatian, there are no articles, because the word endings dictate that for you, hence why Russian people when they learn english always say "I want to go to store" instead of "I want to go to THE store" haha. Also we spend a lot of our time on grammar in Croatian, so that is great. I'm actually learning a fair amount about English grammar, cuz I always hated that, and never learned it, so now that's coming back to bite me. 

At the end of last week we each had individual coaching sessions with our teachers, and I had a long talk about what I am doing, and what I could do better, and in the end, we decided that I was trying to do too much, and cram too much study time into not enough hours in the day, and it was tiring me out both physically and mentally because it was just not possible to do everything that I wanted to do. 

On this Monday we saw Elder Murley off, and he is now in the Czech Republic. He was the last one in our zone to leave that was here when we got here. So now we are the oldest missionaries in the zone, and we got some new Czech and Slovak missionaries on Wednesday! We also had a couple really great lessons on Monday, and I could feel the gift of tongues bringing words I didn't know I knew to use to help answer our investigators questions. Even if my grammar was awful, the right words and ideas were there, and it felt wonderful. 

**THE GOOD STUFF**
Wednesday was another wonderful learning experience! We were teaching Almir again, and when we were preparing we had no idea what to teach, and I was feeling really exhausted mentally and just done, but we still had to teach. I said a quick prayer to myself while I was failing at focusing and preparing our lesson that we would be able to have the Spirit and to help Almir with his needs. When we went into the lesson, I still had nothing, but at one point I felt a voice in my head, not my own, tell me that we should read a chapter in the book of Mormon aloud with our investigator. I thought that was a good idea, but had no idea what we should read, so I shrugged it off. About 30 seconds later, my companion asked if we could read 2 Nephi 31 aloud with him, and then we did, and even though I had no idea what it was saying, I could feel the spirit working on him. Afterwards we were able to ask him how he felt and what he thought about what we had read. He said he felt peace and comfort as we read, but that he didn't understand very much of it. I was then able to let him know that that was the spirit, in messy grammar Croatian, and in our very next visit, he accepted the challenge to be baptized! 

Anyways, that's all for now! Thanks again for all your letters, prayers, and love! I love feeling the support from that every day and it lifts me up beyond any of my own capacities and makes me more than I can be! 

Love, 
Elder/Starješina Christensen

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