Sister Mack

Family!!!

Thank you for your emails and pictures. It looks like you had a fun weekend. Conference was so wonderful. 

Transfers are tomorrow and my companion and I are going to be separated. I am going to be staying in our area and my new companion will be Hermana Mack. She is Dominican. I am getting demoted and will no longer be a Hermana Leader. I am going to miss the meetings and I have learned a ton, but it will be nice to not have to go on so many exchanges. 

The pros in staying in this area are that 1) I love the ward, 2) the bishop is wonderful, and 3) Gazcue is beautiful. One of the cons is that I have already contacted all the buildings and I am not sure where to work now. My companion and I decided that I will make my new companion re-contact the apartment buildings; I will wait at the bottom and she will yell down to me if someone lets us in. Hopefully, Hermana Mack is down with the plan. 

The other night when we came home we found our door open; the lock was thrown on the floor, the lights were off, all the dresser drawers were opened and it looked like someone had gone through them. My companion and I saw the mess, freaked out and ran. I was so scared I couldn't get the gate open. We finally worked up the courage to go check out our house again and the Hermanas that live with us jumped out and said, "April Fools!" I didn't remember it was the first of April. They got us big time. I love the story you wrote about Karla aka "bambi" tricking Wayne. 

The leadership meeting was really good last week and I think my talk went well. I didn't blush like I usually do when I am embarrassed - so that was a plus. I used quite a few of the ideas you guys gave me. The A.P.s gave a talk that I really liked. They talked about the middle of things; we often focus on strong beginnings and strong endings - but there is a lot more in the middle. They showed a clip from a movie about a football team. The coach challenged a player to crawl from one end zone to the other with a player on his back. The player didn’t think he could do it but the coach was by his side the whole time cheering him on. The player said his arms hurt and he wanted to quit but the coach said, "I know they hurt but keep going!" It was something I needed to see. There are definitely moments when I feel exhausted or unmotivated, but we have to keep going and push through. The AP’s asked if we thought that Christ ever felt tired, discouraged, or alone during his ministry. Of course he did. But he just kept going and focused on what he needed to accomplish. 

Conference was great! It seemed like quite a few speakers focused their talks directly at the youth and young adults. I was hoping I would be able to watch it in English but it wasn't an option; the voice-over’s are not the same but it was still cool to have that experience as well. We took our fifteen-year-old investigator to one session and I didn’t get one thing out of it. He was asking me the whole time why everyone in the choir was old; how many people were in the conference center; is the pope or President Monson is more powerful? Haha – it’s funny to see conference from his perspective.

Congrats to Madelyn on her mission call! That is so exciting.

Have a great week. 

Love you so much,

Hermana Christensen