What An Awesome Christmas

     What an awesome Christmas. Myself and Elder Gardiner had an awesome time teaching and testifying of Jesus Christ these last couple days as peoples hearts just seem to be more prepared to receive the message. One thing I was praying for this last week (partially because I thought it would be cool and partially because it is my purpose as a missionary) is that I would be able to be an instrument in the hands of the Lord by bringing someone to a knowledge that Jesus Christ is the Savior during the Christmas season.

     Last night that happened. There is a part member couple in my area that are Hmong married and have been taught by the missionaries for about the last year. The husband is less active and his wife is the most golden investigator of all time. She has loved learning from the missionaries and wants to believe everything but has had a hard time coming to know that the Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of the world because she grew up shaman. We had the most awesome joint teacher with us. His name is E and he is a white guy who was a branch president for the hmong branch about 10 years ago for the hmong branch. Here is a little background on the guy. He is a multi-millionaire who owns like 15 buisnesses and he is also in the mission presidency. I once asked him what he does for work and he said, "I get paid to make people think that I'm more powerful than them, and I'm very good at what I do." So yeah he is pretty intense. Anyways we brought him to our lesson and after about 15 minutes the husband D felt like he had the whole weight of the world set up on his shoulders. Then he bore this super awesome that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and the Savior to C and the Spirit was so strong, there was a huge pause and then he turned to me. God pretty much handed me the answer to my prayer right there and I looked at C and just said,"I feel the Spirit, and if I feel the Spirit, I know you feel the Spirit. C, God is telling us both to believe. Then I bore testimony of the same truths that our joint teacher did and the room basically exploded with a spirit bomb. C started balling and D is just sitting pale as a ghost because he knew that he had been holding his wife back. Needless to say, I felt it was a success. After that experience I am now so excited to continue to go out and testify more of the Son of God and as His role as our Reedeemer. So have a Merry Christmas everyone and a happy new year. Remember, share your testimony with all those who cross your path and the Spirit of God will back you up. Love y'all peace.

Pumped for Christmas!

     This week has been awesome. With Christmas coming up Elder Gardiner and I are going wild talking with everybody and spreading the message of Christ. The Church came out with this new video and they are telling all of the missionaries to use it. It's called "He is the Gift." I don't know if you know this but they basically translate nothing into Hmong in the church so when we show the old hmong people the video they look at us like, what in the world was that. But it is still a sweet video and really powerful. 

     Elder Gardiner and I got stuck out in the cold one day for like three and a half hours because all of our appointments fall through. (In Minnesota you have to have appointments like everynight during winter because it is pretty hard to get in houses if you don't.) But we decided that we would try and be creative in teaching people. We were driving home after not teaching anyone that night and took a wrong turn and ended up at a dead end. I got out of the car to do the famous missionary humility check and saw a man putting up his christmas lights across the street. We walked over and started helping him out and he agreed to watch the video with us. It was so powerful. It really felt that God wanted our plan to fall through just so we could meet this man. He is in his 60's and was a veteran in the army and is super cool. Way excited to keep teaching him. It was neat to gain a witness that God really does lead us in ways that we don't expect.

    Things are going well and I'm just getting pumped up for Christmas. Pretty sure Elder Gardiner hasn't quite experience this must enthusiasm for a holiday before but he is keeping with it real well so I'm pretty stoked. But, have a great week and Merry Christmas!

My First Week in Minneapolis Went Awesome

     This last week was pretty awesome because I got a combination of Thanksgiving and Hmong New Years. Hmong people throw some awesome parties and the New Years Party is the granddaddy of them all. They have this huge celebration that lasts for 3 days in downtown St. Paul and we set up a booth at the party. We found some awesome investigators through and look forward to seeing what happens with their progress. At the new years party they have a talent show, breakdancing competition, a huge market place, tons of crazy old hmong games, and other random stuff. So that's how we celebrated thanksgiving. It was great because their was 8 of us their and everyone wanted to talk to us because we were white guys wearing Hmong clothes that could speak Hmong. We even got pictures with a bunch of their famous actors and got pictures on the red carpet. I was laughing so hard when they were taking pictures. So yeah it was good times. Also we had the annual branch turkey bowl. When the football game started it was -1. It was cold but also super fun.

     My first week in Minneapolis went awesome. Elder Gardiner is my new companion and he is a stud. He is super obedient and really wants to be here and I couldn't ask for anything else so I am excited. He is from Cali and has been out on his mission for 6 months now.

     This week we got a referral from the mission office for a lady named M. We went to visit her and found out that she was learning from the missionaries in Wisconsin and has already been taught all the lessons. She moved up here because she was having struggles with her family down there and was looking for a fresh start. Our very first lesson with her was really powerful and we comitted her to baptism on Dec. 27th. She is working on overcoming smoking but she has such a great desire to change which should really help. It would be pretty awesome to have a Christmas miracle go through and also she has a cousin in the branch that is rooting for her as well so things are looking great.

     Hope you all have a wonderful week. 

-Elder Henrie