Elder Christofferson

Hey all!

GET THIS! Elder D. Todd Christofferson is speaking in the Grand Rapids Stake Conference! On the 16th! :)

 Here's a picture of my first district in the field, Elders Chlarson, De La Paz, Wilkins, Draper, myself, and Yates. The transfer switched out two, Elders De La Paz and Wilkins (his two years were up). Before leaving District Meeting, Elder Wilkins gave me a large triple combination, huge print!

Speaking of which, an Elder just got back from his mission, and seems to be adjusting well. Crazy thing, his first name is Bryan!

We met Enix (like "Nick's" while pronouncing the 'N'), a very open and well-studied black man, last Wednesday. He said that it's good to talk with others and see their views of God, Christ and life in general. He had some stuff to move on the weekend, so we went back on Saturday to help and talk with him. Well, moving an engine off an old fishing boat is not attempted by two relatively scrawny kids. First though, Elder Yates and I moved a bunch of wood across the man's yard, quite the variety of large black beetles underneath. A chunky black man and a white friend of his pulled up, sub-wafers in the car and all. Both probably hit the gym often, and with Enix helping, got the engine onto a truck. The bed sagged a whole bunch. It took a lot of, "well, if we lift it, put it here... lift again..." (Virgal, the chunky man, said to his friend, "ya need mo' strumph", which is Ebonics for "strength", my fellow missionaries love saying "give me some strumph"), so we got in a conversation about prophets with Enix, then (after the heftin') talked of the things Christ did to establish his church, and that His church is restored upon the earth. I'm not sure what effect it had on him, he mostly enjoys talking of how he views things. There's still hope! We goin' over on Saturdays to serve and talk with him.

Ooh, here's somethin'. On Wednesday, at a particular house, a Catholic lady named Debbie, just a little bit into the conversation, asked us to give a blessing to Chuck, a sick man inside. Debbie told us that we were welcome to dinner anytime we needed it, she seemed just like an ideal grandma. Yeah, tender mercy there :)

Met with Patricia again, the lady that doesn't feel comfortable in the family oriented atmosphere of church. Interesting enough, she brought up the topic of discussion by a question, "what does it mean about the seeds in the parable of the sowers that shrivel up...."........ So we read it, talked, and I noticed a cross-reference to Alma, "...because of your diligence and your faith and your patience with the word in nourishing it, that it may take root in you, behold, by and by ye shall pluck the fruit...most precious...sweet...white...pure; and ye shall feast upon this fruit even until ye are filled, that ye hunger not, neither shall ye thirst." Come to find out, Patricia couldn't read the print in the regular copies of the BOM, so I was like, "I have a large one you can have" smiling on the inside. So it continues!

Met again with Sister Charon, and shared with her 3 Ne. 17. Pretty sure that chapter helped her, she's a single mother, doesn't come to church. Aaaaaaand, we got the number of the Lutheran kid, Jesse! Sister Charon's son Hunter was able to give it to us,  gonna help a lot. 

Love you all!

Elder Brian Stolp