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| Elder Strong, Elder Bolinder and Beraki |
April Showers Bring Snow Plowers!❄️🚜
Hola hola.
Hey! It's been a while. Last week
we had a mission wide P-day for all the teams in the city areas and we got to
go to a Twins baseball game. It was epic! Twins vs. Astros, with a last
inning, 2 outs, full count home run for a crazy Twins victory! It was super fun
to watch and be with some past companions. The bummer was it also took up all
of our P-day. So lucky for you, this week is gonna be packed with two weeks’
worth of goodness!
Man, I'm loving my new area so
far. It feels so good to be in full Spanish work for the first time since my
first area of the mission. I still have a lot of catching up to do on my
Spanish, but my companion also served in full English for quite a while. So, we
are both studying like animals.
The new zone is super cool. We
call it the "international zone." We have one full Spanish district,
the Hmong district, and the Karen district (Both crazy Asian languages spoken
by a ton of immigrants here in St Paul). my new compañero, Elder Calderwood, is
chevere too. Another one from Utah! Lol. He's a strong missionary with an even
stronger testimony of Christ.
The ward is great! About 70 or so
active members. Lots of solid families. One thing that made me laugh when I
first got here is there are like 6-7 families with the last name Rodriguez. So,
when I met one of the Hermana Rodriguez’s she told me, "bienvenidos al
barrio de Rodriguez" - welcome to the Rodriguez ward! 😂 We had a wonderful fast and
testimony meeting. The cool part about the ward is that almost everyone is a
convert to the church, and there are so many powerful testimonies of Christ!
I've been amazed by their faith, they know that the priesthood power is real,
and we have given a ton of priesthood blessings this past week! We've also been
doing some noches de Hogar (Family Home Evenings) with some less active
families to try to strengthen them. Another funny thing from Sunday is our
Sunday-school teacher is from Brazil, and so she speaks Spanish with a thick
Portuguese accent and I felt like I was back in MTC in Mexico because I could
barely understand her😂.
In our ward, we just got a new set
of hermanas so now it is us elders, and two sets of sisters. As a result of
that, our area basically got split in half and we passed off a lot of
investigators to them. We've been in grind mode trying to find more people to
teach. We've had a few really powerful first lessons with people, and also
found a part-member family that wasn't in our records who we are going to start
teaching! We've had a pretty good start to the transfer.
We also had a ginormous zone
conference combined with 4 different zones! It was great, we received lots of
great training on the Book of Mormon, and especially the new message from the
prophet about revelation. I love this quote from President Nelson:
"Nothing opens the heavens
quite like the combination of increased purity, exact obedience, earnest
seeking, daily feasting on the words of Christ in the Book of Mormon, and
regular time committed to temple and family history work."
His talk was inspired of God!
We've been focusing as a zone to increase our ability to receive guidance from
the Holy Spirit, and it's made such a huge difference.
Ahora. Let me explain the
adventure that was this weekend.
It was one crazy
experiencia.
It started out with a breakfast
run to IHOP with this super chido member of the ward. When we got there it was
snowing!! There was a forecast of 3-9 inches of snow. We didn't think anything
of it, because it had already snowed like 6 times in April, and more often than
not they predict a lot more than what actually ends up falling.
The most memorable event that happened
amidst the snow was definitely Beraki's baptism! Later that morning, I got to
go back to New Brighton to see him again and see a lot of great members I
didn't get to say good-bye to.
Before the baptism, Beraki looked
at us and smiled and said, "God has blessed me with white snow on the day
my sins are washed clean." What an amazing gift from God to bless
Beraki with white pure snow on his baptism day -- a perfect symbol of Isaiah
1:18 "though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow."
He was so excited to make covenants and dedicate the rest of his life to God!
My previous companion Elder Strong
got to perform the baptismal ordinance and I was also in the water helping him
up because he is so frail. I can't tell you enough how special the experience
was! Beraki has been close to God all his life, and God has been preparing him
all his life for this moment. There was a special spirit there, and it was hard
to find a dry face in the room. I think it hit me the most when, after the
baptism, Elder Strong and I both went to help him change back into his clothes,
and we both were bent over to help put on his socks and shoes. I had a thought
pop into my head of the Savior Jesus Christ bent down in front of his apostles,
washing their feet. Tears filled my eyes as I realize that both of us were
literally serving him as Christ served his disciples. As literal
representatives of Christ, we helped Beraki come closer to his Redeemer. And at
that moment I had a burning feeling of joy and gratitude in my heart that we
were able to find him and be instruments in the Lord’s hands in bringing
him into his kingdom here on earth. What an amazing experience!!
Following the baptism, we took a
gander outside to find the wind blowing snow around like none other. So, we
start heading off to try to make it back home before the roads get too bad, and
it was just completely white out conditions. We couldn't see 10 feet in front
of us or even where the side of the road was, so we decided to wait it out in
the church. Well, that decision backfired on us as 2-3 hours later because,
although now we could see, our cars were buried in!😬 We had to make it home so we
weren't trapped at the chapel with no food haha. So, all four of us elders
grabbed the shovels in the church and had to shovel a runway for the car to get
to the exit of the parking lot! Long story short, we eventually made it to the
new Brighton apartment and took shelter there. We helped push some people out
of the snow, and got stuck multiple times ourselves. Good times! We made it
home the next morning after the plows made their way through, but then it kept
snowing hard and they cancelled church.. in April! Que the heck!?
The day ended on a high-note,
after setting up lots of appointments for the week and venturing out in the
snow doing service, Elder Calderwood and I did two baptismal interviews for
these two really powerful Karen kids. The Karen elders translated, and it was a
whole different world inside their house. Definitely a super sweet culture! The
Spirit was so strong there because they had such strong testimonies and it was
a really cool experience.
Guys, I can't even remember what
spring is anymore! Haha! just kidding. Just to put it into perspective, we got
15 inches in the Twin Cities since Friday making it the largest April snowstorm
on record, and we've had 25.2 inches total in April, which is the most snow in
April, even breaking the old 1983 record. Aaannddd... we are supposed to get 4
more inches on Wednesday!😂 It has
been quite the adventure here in Minnesota, but honestly I have grown to love
it so much. Every time it snows like this, I feel like we are just so blessed
and filled with joy because of all the opportunities we get to help people
shovel, get unstuck, and just talk to and love those whose hearts have been
softened. I love my mission, and I love my Savior Jesus Christ! I'm grateful
for him and his sacrifice, and the fullness of his gospel that we have on the
earth today.
If you've made it this far, I'm
impressed! This is a super long update so I apologize, but I'm thankful for
each one of you! Have a great week😊
-Elder Bolinder
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| April Blizzard! |
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| Go Twins! Elder Calderwood and Elder Bolinder |
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| Cold, but fun! |
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| Go Twins! |
