Remember Him

Hey everyone!

Glad to hear that you're all doing so well! I'm doing fantastic! This has been an absolutely amazing week. It rained, and our efforts are becoming a lot more fruitful. The Lord has been more than generous with His blessings.

First off, we got two new investigators!! Wooohoo!! The first is a girl named Kayla, and she was a referral from the Zone Leaders. I'm pretty sure if you looked up the term "golden investigator" in a dictionary, you'd see a picture of her right there. She's so awesome. She's been going to the first ward for about 2 months now and she is just so receptive to everything. She's had a little bit of a rough life, especially recently, but she see's all those trials as, quote, "God's way of telling me I should be a Mormon." I. Know. She's just awesome. A complete answer to prayer. So is our other new investigator. He is the son of one of our other investigators. We've been trying to get him and his siblings to sit in on the lessons, but they weren't to excited about that idea. But this last appointment we were able to teach him and now his siblings are starting to want to as well. He also had the quote of the week: "Why doesn't everyone read the Book of Mormon?" Good question, Martin. Good question. So yeah. This week has been awesome.

I also had a chance to go on exchanges with our Zone Leaders this week. That was pretty interesting, but it was fun. I got to go with Elder Welker. He's a really good person and a good missionary, he's just also one of those "robot missionaries" as Elder Collard says. But I learned a lot and it was a really good experience.

So for this week, I wanted to talk a little bit about the spirit of Christmas. More specifically the first gift. If any of you haven't yet seen the He Is the Gift video, go and watch it. But I want to talk more specifically about the scripture it's based on, John 3:16. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." First off, check out that first few words. God loves us. More specifically, God loves YOU. And He loves you so much, that He wants you to come back to Him and live with Him forever. But we can't. Not the way we are right now anyway. Nephi tells us in 1 Nephi 10:21 that "no unclean thing can dwell with God." But our Heavenly Father knew that, and He knew that we can't be perfect by ourselves. So He sent His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to offer Himself up as a perfect sacrifice, and to save us if we would believe in Him and repent. He gave us the ultimate gift. He gave us a Savior. And it's through Christ, that we can receive a greater gift: eternal life and exaltation. This Christmas season, remember that. People are always saying that, but really try to this year.

Anyway, I hope you all have a wonderful week! Thank you for all your prayers and encouragement :)

Much love,
Elder Rosenlof