Elder Christensen: Letter 12/31/12 Holiday Week

Not a whole lot has been going on this week cuz everyone is out of town for the holidays those weird people that have lives!! lol I'm jealous :/  we did however find one new investigator that is pretty solid other than her boyfriend who she lives with is atheist, but she knows our message is true so we are excited to start working with her! Her name is Melissa we had tons of "Joy to the World" DVDs so we had to hand them out like crazy and she was working on her home that's being remodeled and she just opened the door thinking it was family or something... We were like hellllloooo..... she was like oh sorry I wasn't expecting missionaries. I thought you were family. Come on in! Ha! Ha! Then we talked about our purpose as missionaries and she said that's exactly what I need!! 

Alos, I found out Michael Jackson from my last area who I taught all the discussions to got baptized this weekend. So that's cool. A lot of the people I've taught have been baptized, just not by me lol! They don't leave me in an area long enough for that;) Love you all and hope you had a great Christmas and a happy New Year!!

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 12/17/12 The BEST week yet!

So this week has been my favorite one on my mission yet. I was blessed with the privilege of baptizing our investigator "Grandma" Cathryn Ann Hurley on her 93rd Birthday on 12-12-12!!  I was born in 93 so that was cool cuz grandma was born in 1919, and I baptized her at age 19 on 12-12-12. Ha! Ha! Very cool!  This Baptism was unlike any other in the fact of how I had to help grandma get into the font and how I practically had to support grandma the whole time so she wouldn't fall again. (If you look back at Jeff's letters, he mentions that grandma fell had had a large bleed in her brain several weeks ago. Jeff was able to give her a blessing and she has recovered when nobody thought she would at her age!-part of the story is below.)  President Clark wants me to take an hour or so to type the full story so he can share it with our mission then he will send a copy to Salt Lake talking about this miracle:)  I'm so happy I was able to be a part of this experience in this family's life!  I also got to confirm Grandma this Sunday and that was the 1st confirmation I've done too.

The short story of this miracle is that we had begun teaching grandma when I had first got to Springfield and she was very receptive to our message because she had be going to church with her granddaughter, sister Elliot and she teaches the 7 year old class and grandma was also very involved in these lessons.  Then 2 weeks after our first lesson, grandma had fallen and hit her head really hard had lots of internal bleeding of the brain and the doctors said at her age recovery is very unlikely and may take months... After the blessing we knew that would not be the case for Grandma. We had a date and knew she would be ready for baptism by then!  Grandma immediately began to recover. Her softball size bump on her head was going down like I've never seen before it simply was a miracle.  Then we had asked grandma to be baptized and she said yes because of the power of the priesthood she had felt during the blessing.  

Then our other investigator Amanda came to our church this week even though our sign interpreter was out of town she had a little white board to talk on. (Amanda is deaf) Her and I had a great talk about the atonement:) Then when I had confirmed grandma, Amanda said I can't hear the words you said in that blessing, but the power I felt from it was unreal !! I explained that's the Spirit and she then wrote on the white board Elder Christensen finally have made my decision, I want you to baptize and confirm me !! I really had to fight back some tears on this one! That dang Spirit being strong! Why can't he just leave me alone? Ha! Ha! jk I love it, and I told her I would love to baptize and confirm you !! So now I have to learn more sign language! Ha! Ha! Ha!  I have until January to get this prayer down but Sister Green says this prayer is easier than the Sacrament one so that will be good cuz those were hard enough to not mess up on:)

As if all that wasn't good enough, we also had a great deal of success tracting with B.Rob (a guy in their ward who supports the missionaries a lot!) He is our luck charm! We have 6 potential investigators and 2 with return appointments :)  Then later that night we went to the Valaroe's home and had our best lesson yet. We are slowing and kindly breaking down that unification church little by little :) Hope to hear from you all soon!!

Love Elder Christensen 

Elder Christensen: Letter 12/10/12 The Right to Bare Arms!

So, I get to stay in Springfield for another transfer. So I will be baptizing a part member family's son. His name is Kaleb. He is so cool. He is 8 years old and weighs probably what I did when I was 8 hahaha! So I hope I don't mess it up :) The date will be 12/12/12 lol. He should remember that one! :)  This family is so cool they are the ones who have been helping us teach grandma who has made a full recovery from her fall. It's a Christmas miracle ha ha! I hope we get to teach her more. She just had her 93rd birthday this week :)  We also had lots of service opportunities this week which I loved!! We were helping move tons of heavy furniture for sister Elliot's business she is starting up and that's when she had asked me if I would baptize her son this week :)  

We also had the coolest district meeting ever this week! Right after the opening prayer and hymn, Elder Banks called me up to the front and sat me down on one end of the table and said "alright so today everyone of us will beat Elder Christensen at arm wrestling!!" Everyone started laughing, including me, because I had no warning as to what we'd be doing today ha ha !! So I arm wrestled the ZL's (Zone Leaders) first and beat them, then Elder Banks and beat him, then the sisters and beat them, then beat the ZL's again and Elder Banks again etc.... so after going through this 3 times the ZL's beat me, then elder banks beat me, and I could still beat the sisters, so we went through it again and I was so tired!! I beat Sister Fallentine again butIi had lost to Sister ToA'la... Then I went through everyone for the 6th time and I lost to everyone. Sister Falletine and I went for like 3 minutes! I just didn't want to lose hahahaha and Elder Banks knew I'd go my hardest every time but she did beat me!! Then Elder Banks explained that I was Satan lol and that everyone of us has been beat by him and how we could keep fighting him by ourselves but we would tire out before he would, but as a zone they were able to beat Satan or me ha ha! So in our missions we have Satan trying to beat us down everyday. Sometimes he uses home or music; things we really like and enjoy, but if we stay strong as a zone and just take turns fighting Satan, eventually we will beat him!! So I loved that training because we really got to feel the struggles of others in our district and we helped each other out!

After this meeting Sister Fallentine came to me and asked me if i could give her a blessing of comfort and I of course said I'd love to!!  This was a very special blessing for me. I have no idea what I said, or how I said it, but I know it's exactly what she needed. She was crying after the blessing was done and I could just feel the weight lifted from her shoulders:) I wanted to cry but fought it as usual, and it's so hard not to give a sister a hug especially when you know that's what they need !!! This was a great week for me though and I'm so happy that I had the chance to help improve the lives of the people I serve with and the people I'm serving:)

This week was just what I needed to get me over the bump of having to wait for Amanda (one of his investigators) to fix things. I'm not very patient obviously, but I'm working on it:)  Hope to hear from you all soon!!

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 12/3/12 Boom, Boom, Pow!

So this week in Springfield was pretty sweet. My companion Elder Banks will be baptising Rebbecca, an investigator that the Sister missionaries have taught and she is super stoked:) We may also have Amanda's baptism the day after, so that would be our back to back baptisms. We don't know who she wants to baptize her, but it will be cool anyway. This will be my 1st one I've taught all the way through and I will see her get baptised :)  This week we also had a great lesson with Crystal our Chinese investigator. She told us she loves the Christian's and how loving they are to people they don't even know. She said it's never like that in China!!  I also was privileged to hand out my 1st copy of the Chinese Book Of Mormon so she can read it all the way through.  Everytime we go over and teach her she insists on make us Chinese food and I'm not going to complain! It's way good !! Best Chinese food I've every had! :)  She also said to us in China it's very rude to not finish all the food that is presented at the table. So I have to eat a lot more than normal... She also explained how Chinese food uses all the different colors in the food because they're all different for the body like yellow is good for the skin, red is for the mind and so on.... It's like my mission is in China everytime we see her! It's pretty cool other than having to wear slippers in the house. That's a little weird ha ha! I'm hoping we can get a baptism date for her very soon. This area is booming now:) I'm hoping and praying that I won't get the 6 week shaft again. This area is great I love it !! Hope everyone is enjoying life and the Holidays :)