Dear family and friends,
My new companion, Hna. Duarte is from Guatemala and is a real mover and shaker. She is an executive-type missionary, with her vision and goals and desires to work hard and give her best. She is very diligent. She also likes American music and American culture, and often she will start singing 2 notes ofa song by Backstreet Boys and I will recognize it and join in. I’m grateful for her faith and for her work ethic. Also, she is not afraid to tell people like it is (be bold but not overbearing!). We balance each other out. This transfer we are helping each other with improving our language skills and our teaching skills. We are the odd couple, but we are friends!
Oh! I was SO happy and excited for my Latin companions and the other Latin missionaries. The Church has developed a program for the Spanish-speaking missionaries to learn English. When they pass the course, they receive recognition and certification from BYU’s English Language Center. That will help them when they return from the mission to get better-paying jobs. For many of my companions, they are REQUIRED to know English for their work. It teaches them English for missionaries, as well as English they need for future employment. The funny thing is that everyone is on chapter one which is called “Meeting the Bishop.” All of the Latin missionaries in my zone go around practicing and they tell me, “How are you, Bishop?” I just respond with, “Fine, thank you.” I balance them out by teaching them slang (and the appropriate contexts to use slang).
Tuesday we had a jam-packed day. It was a day when we met in the morning as a zone to set our goals and to pray, and to work double that day. When the meeting ended, Hna. Duarte had to use the bathroom. She left her umbrella outside the door, to let the Elders know that we were still in the building. After using the bathroom, we turned the door handle of the chapel to leave and discovered to our horror that we were locked in the church! Everyone was going to return for a meeting at 8 pm. We did the first thing we could think of and we took turns praying (I made sure to include a specific timetable, we wanted to be rescued BEFORE 8 pm. The more specific the prayer, the better).
Then, it’s interesting to see the different approaches we each took. I resigned myself to our fate and began sweeping and cleaning the chalkboards, and Hna. Duarte began yelling at passerbys to call the Elders, waving a bright red bag I brought that day. Twenty minutes later the Elders pass by the church, they see the bright red bag, and they hear Hna. Duarte yelling. They call someone who has the keys to come rescue us. Fortunately, we were only in the church for 40 minutes, instead of the projected 10 hours.
I learned many valuable lessons that day about faith. Is faith simply a plea in our prayers for help and then passively sitting in the locked chapel, or is it pleaing for help and then working to have our prayers answered? We can pray to bless the missionaries in other parts of the world, but how great will be the day when we pray as individuals and families to find people for the missionaries to teach?
Sometimes it is hard to meet such great people that we teach that have to travel. We met with Jharlin one last time on Sunday, the day before he left for 10 months to work on the border, and we gave him a Book of Mormon and a study journal. We are waiting for our friend Jander to get back at the end of March. He is a dedicated man of the Catholic faith who felt the Spirit when Hna. Tepen and I taught him last month.
My testimony of the need for both the Bible and the Book of Mormon is increasing. I happened to read in Acts 3 and shared what I learned about how the prophets prophesied of Christ with Hna Duarte. Much to my surprise, she shared with me what she learned in 3 Nephi 20-27. There is a chapter there that has almost the exact things in there! It was crazy. It reminded me of a day when Hna. Flores and I were reading in the Book of Mormon. We discovered to our surprise that she was reading the prophecy, and I was reading the fulfillment of that prophecy. All of this without having planned it in advance. It’s so cool. My testimony and love of the scriptures is growing all the time.
Keep going on in faith! It will be spring for you soon (but here it is always summer!)
Love, Hna Christensen
