Emily sent us the following email on Monday, December 30, 2013:

Hola Familia! :)

You are wonderful and I loved hearing from you for Christmas!  That was the best thing that could've happened!  I am so excited that everyone is loving the things that I sent to them.  I love you guys very much and know that family is the most important thing EVER.  SAM!  You put your papers in!  That is absolutely incredible and I am so proud of the decision that you've made to serve the Lord.  You will love being a representative of Him.  I always feel so much pride when we come to doors and introduce ourselves as representatives of Jesus Christ.  Being a member of the true church is never supposed to be easy because there is a lot of responsibility that comes with that calling and association.  It is exactly like being a part of a family.  You are born into responsibility that you are going to fulfill, with the end result being more joy than you can realize. 

So it turns out that I love contacting!  I feel more like a missionary when I am contacting than almost anything else.  We have been analyzing different strategies and trying different things.  We have had to adapt how we contact people so that we can make contact with more souls.  I have realized that right now the efforts in the mission are more on finding the ones that are ready than on convincing everyone.  I think at different times and in different places missionaries play different roles, and I am ready to accept all the inspiration and guidance that our leaders have for this mission and do the work in the way that they want it to be done. 

We had an exchange with the sister training leaders and I feel that our companionship is doing a very good job contacting.  During weekly planning we analyzed everything and compared our numbers with our vision and we sought out the point of disconnect.  The biggest problem sources down to the fact that we have potentials that frequently don't progress from that state.  This usually seems to happen because when we call to confirm they cancel or when we show up they are not home or tell us that they are busy or just about to leave.  To diagnose this specifically, we have a plan.  There are two things that we are going to start trying:

1) When we show up for an appointment that we have with a potential, we are going to be bolder in telling them that we came to share with them a message that is very important and will only take 10 minutes. 

This message is very important and should be made a priority.  I am going to show my confidence in this message by telling people of its importance and insist that it needs to be shared.  (always with love, always with love)  There are those that reconsider.   (this one directly addresses the problem we have with flaky potentials)

2) Inspired questions.  I love this because they are so powerful.  I am not very good at asking inspired questions and I think that is because a good question takes thought and is harder to form on the spot in Spanish.  I'm going to do the same thing with this that I had to do with contacting.  This is a weak area, but I'm determined to make it one of my strengths.  I have been thinking of inspired questions for contacting and different parts of each lesson.  (This more addresses contacting and lesson teaching--We are working on becoming gospel wizards.)

Also, Adrian is one of the most wonderful, faithful people I've ever met and he is going to get baptized on Saturday.  My testimony has grown through teaching him and addressing his concerns.  He had his baptismal interview on Sunday and he passed with flying colors.  President Mendez is going to baptize him and it is going to be a joyous moment. 

I love being a missionary.  I love feeding His sheep.

Love, Hna. Christensen