Elder Christensen: Letter 12/30/13 "Gym for the Win"

Well family it was great to see all your beautiful faces again. Man all you have changed so much! I hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas and loved the gifts I got them. Ha! Ha! I wish I had more time. I wanted to share more cool mission stories with you, but that will have to wait till I get home. :) So we found people like crazy this week. We have 4 new in our area, and 5 in our Teaching pool, which is just what this area needed! We had nothing and now we have 5 solid people to teach. I love when the Lord helps you through these tough spots.

 

The members are great and every meal feels closer to my mom's cooking, but of course it isn't there. I have a few more months to get that! Ha! Ha!. It was way cool on p-day this week. Our ward mission leader took us to the Arnold Rec center and we played basketball for 2 hours, and then worked out for an hour. Reminded me of the good ol' days when that's all I did to stay out of trouble after work. Ha! Ha!. Well hopefully this week we can get a few of those new investigators to come to church so they can feel theSspirit for themselves and start sincerely seeking... We had some really good moments tracting. My poor companion is just out of his 12 week program and has tracted for 2 transfers, so now that we got some people to teach, I hope that gives him the break he needs!! I Love you all so much!

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 12/23/13 "Toys for Tots"

Well Family, I'll be Skype-ing you this Wednesday at noon your time, so be ready for that. I can't wait to see your faces!!! So it was pretty hard to say goodbye to all the great members of Springfield, but I was warmly welcomed into Crystal City! My full address is 1009 Kenner St. Apt 5, Crystal City, MO 63019 if you'd like to know.

We have zero investigators right now, but I guess that's why i'm here! I've come up with an awesome analogy to explain my whole mission. Some missionaries are sent to ride the tractor and enjoy the harvest with very little effort put into it. Some are sent to watch others drive the tractor so they don't miss any of the crops. Then there is the missionary that gets transferred every 3 months or less and his job is to fix the tractors and get the the machine running good for the next missionary, so he can enjoy the easy ride ha ha! So I'm a fixer! Whether that's a companion who's struggling or an area that's struggling, they send me to fix it and get it running, then I leave to do it all again for the next area ha ha!!!

Well, a pretty cool story this week. We did "Toys for Tots," and I helped like 5 families get toys. Then we have been tracting all week to get some investigators and we tracted into a woman that I had helped get toys! What are the odds of that? ha ha! She was like, "wow, hey remember me?" I was like, "oh ya, I do." She was like, "I'll take a book and read it, but I'm busy for the holidays. Can you come back after, then you can meet the kids you helped me pick toys out for." Ha ha! I was like, "Sounds good to me!!!" Merry Christmas everyone !!!!!

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 12/16/13 "Crystal City"

Well Family, as I had predicted, I'm getting Transferred to Crystal City, Missouri this Wednesday. I'm really going to miss Springfield. ome of my best memories have been here! This week I got to make a few more memories before leaving. I got invited to Grandma Hurley's 94th Birthday party, which also is exactly one year from the day I baptised her. That was pretty cool to be here for. I'll never forget her. I will be missing a lot of baptisms in the next month that I worked my butt off for, but hey it's happened a lot in the last 18 months, and it will happen again ha ha! I'm pretty excited to get into my new area and hit the ground running. I will be a district leader again and will have the biggest district in the mission. It's almost as big as the whole zone I was just over. The District has 12 missionaries. That's mind-blowing for me! I will be in the South Zone of our mission. I've served in every zone other than St. Louis Zone, but hey, I've got 6 more months, so that can still happen lol!!

This past week I knew I was going to leave, so I had all my things packed a week in advance. My poor companion thought I was crazy, but I know how things work for me and I knew I'd be leaving ha ha! So I prepared ... The ward and the Stake President were not too happy when they got the news. They even cancelled our Christmas dinner now that I'm not going to be here ha ha! Poor Elders! I'm sure someone else will sign up tho!

We got hammered by snow this week and there was ice under it, so driving was a blast! My companion got his driving privileges back this week as well, so I let him drive some and we almost died ha ha! I calmly said as we fishtailed into oncoming traffic, "Yep were Dead!" ha ha! I know my mom is shocked I didn't yell my usual phrase of "DEEEEEE!" We also had a good week of finding, while tracting through all the snow. People saw just how crazy we are and how dedicated we are to this work so they heard us out. None of them made it to church this week because of the driving conditions, but I don't blame them. The ward Christmas Party was great. I'm glad I got to stay for that. Now hopefully my new area is having theirs this weekend so I get double the Christmas ha ha! I love you all hope that your safe and warm!

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 12/9/13 "Ice and more Ice"

This week we had a killer ice storm. I got to see 7 cars fly off the road, as I was driving to a farewell party for a sister in the ward (Brooke Bellmonte). She reports to the MTC this Wednesday. It was pretty cool to see another missionary talk and see the family here for that. Seems like mine was just yesterday, and at the same time, it seems so far away! She gave a very good talk and testimony. It was a shame none of our investigators where there to hear it... However we did go to the 2nd Ward with Betsy and Paul. We found them last week and they're both awesome. Paul read the intro and has finished 2nd Nephi. He is a very logical person tho, and doesn't believe the trip was possible. However early that same day I was reading my Book of Mormon student manual and helped show him how that trip was possible! I pulled the manual up on his computer and he went to town after we left. He loved having all those facts and now he is continuing his reading of the Book of Mormon. Betsy loves meeting with us. She really enjoyed our church and the people she has met. She will be getting baptised in January for sure! We got to teach Ashley this week. She has set her baptismal date for the 28th of December, so that's Awesome! Hope I'll be here for all that good stuff! I've put a lot of work into this area and this zone and haven't got to see to much of it play out yet...

We Also had our Zone P-day last week and had a mini Pool Tournament. I'm pleased to say that Springfield 1 was the Champion.:) We also had a bonfire, toasted hot dogsm and marshmallows. We had a good time. Elder Jensen, who goes home next week, said "Elder Christensen that was the best zone P-day I've ever had." And he meant it. He said I love that we had tons of fun things to do and we could just go do whatever we wanted when we wanted to. So I'm glad that made his day. Ultimate Frisbee was pretty fun too. Glad we had a lot of sun that day. It was perfect. The Messervy's are Awesome! I'm so glad they let us do that! Well, I had exchanges with Elder Presher this week. That was pretty fun, however, there was many unplanned events that took place that day. We almost made it in time to give a man a blessing and he passed away. :/ And I saw a new side to some of our investigators that day. It's a long story! You just have to ask me during Christmas Skype lol its a funny one tho !!!!!! I love you all hope your getting 3 feet of snow and drive safe !

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 12/2/13 "Turkey Bowl 2"

Well family, this week has gone by way too fast. I can't believe Thanksgiving was here again. It blows my mind thats it was a year ago! We played the same Turkeybowl as I did the year before haha! They weren't so clueless this year when I told  them I wasn't very good lol! It was worth a shot tho. We had a few appointments this week. Tracy didn't come to church this week again, but while cleaning her daughters room she watched the BYU channel and listened to a few talks. She did her Book of Mormon reading this week too. She is awesome! I have no doubt she will be Baptised one day. She just needs a social conversion as well. Oh and just a heads up Mom and Dad, I told them they could stay with us next summer for a few days ha ha! :)

Greg got up an gave his Testimony this week so that was really cool to hear. I didn't think I was helping him too much until I heard him say it. So that was nice! Ashley is out of town so we haven't started teaching her yet, but we hope she gets back soon so we can get her dunked before she is 12 so she can go to the temple for Young Women's. There is so much happening in this area. I hope I will stay another transfer here. I might be too much for my companion to handle tho ha ha! He is awesome, don't get me wrong, but I'm too crazy for him a lot of the time, but that's still the Jeff that's in me! Won't change that for the world tho. I am who I am! :)

 

Hope everyone enjoyed their Black Friday. I got to drive 190 miles to St. Louis for a 6 hour meeting. Oh the joys of being a Zone leader! I hope they come to their senses soon and retire me ha ha jk! But I'm getting burnt out with all the needless driving, but my companion is black-dotted, which means no driving for him! ... Oh well. Endure to the end right? Hope Thanksgiving was good for you all. I've got a couple weeks to Christmas. Hope everyone is ready for it!! Today we will be having our Zone P-day at the Messervys home playing some pool and football and a bon fire. What a good way to start the week! :) Love you all !

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 11/25/13 "Behold the Cold :P"

Well family, yet another week has gone by and this was a cold one. We had 18-22 degree whether, which I'm cool with as long as it snows!!! We still got nothing. It's snowed one time and it melted already:/ We had tons of appointments this week and most of them didn't fall through. Heck yes! We also had a miracle this Sunday with 12 year-old Ashley. She is a girl that lives with a recent convert family (the Winters) and she has a twin sister who was baptised a year or 2 ago. And just now after meeting us and seeing how fun and not scary we are, she told them on Sunday, "I want to be baptised." Now we're working on that, shooting for the 7th of December with Shawn's date too. So that was awesome!! Also on Sunday, Asta came to church even by herself. I was like, no way, but she was super interested after the FHE (Family Home Evening) we had with her. We watched the Living scripture Nephi and the Tree of Life. ha ha! I miss those movies I'll get them on DVD one day when I find those dang salesmen!!

We also met with Betsy this week on Tuesday and invited her to be baptised she said yes. We don't have a date yet cuz she hasn't come to Church yet, but she has been out of town the past 2 weekends so that doesn't help... We will be having a dinner and a lesson with her at the Messervy's this week on Tuesday. Hope she can feel the Spirit that's in the member's homes. She will be bringing all 3 of her kids as well and they are ages 9, 12, and 16, so hopefully we will start teaching them soon too. That will be great! I've always wanted to teach a family! Martin and Alecia are the biggest family I've taught so far, but their girl was only 2, so that's border line ha ha! I love them!!

We had our exchanges in Jacksonville this week and got to do some service there. Raking leaves is always fun. You get to see the immediate success of your labors lol. We also met Mary and reset a date for her. She dropped them last week and we helped respark why she was getting baptised and investigating the church and set goals with her. It went very well and she came to church this week. We taught Rachael the Plan of Salvation and I could really see her questions being answered. By far our best lesson with her she still hasn't come to church tho...

Also had Zone Conference this week. That was a lot of work! Getting everything set up and getting our trainings ready for that. I'm so exhausted... My training was super fun tho. I made an object lesson using a Basketball as a friend that needs the gospel. I took a missionary to the other end of the court said, ok you're a member this is your friend that needs the gospel. That hoop clear over there is baptism. Think you can make it? He missed of course, then I said, ok half court you decide to have the missionaries meet him at dinner. He got closer, then I said he takes the 1st lesson and comes to church, 3-pointer, and he almost made it. Then I said, ok now they teach the Plan of Salvation, free-throw still missed. Then I said, ok now they are taught the gospel of Jesus Christ, almost a layup still missed! ha ha! Then the commandments, layup he made it, and I taught from that. Sometimes we can make the half-court shots and 3 pointers, but if we invite them to church and get the lessons going its much easier to make the shot!  So the whole point of my training was to walk with your members and their friends until they can make that layup and see their friend get baptised. Pretty cool huh?  

Elder Christensen: Letter 11/18/13 "Twister 2"

Well family, this week we got lucky with yet again another huge tornado just missing us! :) It hit just 15 miles away but did most of its damage in Washington, IL. I'm not sure if we will be doing any service up there or not yet. It's just out of our Zone, but that town got hammered, so who knows?  Stake conference was good. I was asked by the Stake President to talk about when I had seen the Lord's hand in my life. It totally caught me off guard, but it went very well! The whole conference was very uplifting and directed towards missionary work, so it was great! We had a super great lesson with Greg this week as well. I'm glad he didn't drop us. We were pretty hard on him, but he's been investigating for almost 18 months and hasn't read The Book of Mormon.  His excuse is my favorite!! He says, "if I read it I'll know its all true, so if I don't then I'm ok still living the way I live." He knows it'ss true and he hasn't even read it yet! That's also why is was frustrating, but he will start reading this week. :) We moved Shawn's Baptismal date to December 7th and helped him understand how he can know he is ready. Great lessons all this week.

Elder Donaldson From the district Videos came to our mission this week and gave us tons of training on how to use the lesson pamphlets more effectively. Most missionaries don't ever use them, so they were all super shocked. I've used them like mad my whole mission, but I never used the picture like he taught us, and I learned a lot from that and introducing the Book of Mormon more effectively was great. We applied what we learned all this week. I wish the whole mission was at this meeting but it was hand selected. I just got lucky I guess... My favorite lesson of the week was probably with Betsy. We taught the Plan of Salvation and you could really see her feeling the spirit, and I invited her to be baptized and she said yes. We don't have a date yet, but I'm hoping we can get it before then end of this year, or before I get transferred lol! Hope everyone is safe and well!

Love Elder Christensen  

Elder Christensen: Letter 11/11/13 "Blues from a gun :)

Well family, this week was great. I got my new companion. His name is Elder Boren. He is from New Mexico and has been out for about 20 months. He is a super strong Elder! He can teach very well and has a lot of drive still in him. It's great! So we got this new media referral investigator and she is great. Her name is Betsie. She is 25 and is dating a member from Rolla, Missouri and wants to hear more about our church. We taught her the st lesson outside, and it was super cold. I was just in my windbreaker! That was so bad on my part. It dropped like 20 degrees from the time we met and the end. I was bearing my testimony with the shivers ha ha! She could tell I was sincere even through all the shakes. I also gave my talk this Sunday. It was the lowest attendance I've ever seen for this ward! They must have known I was talking ha ha! It went well. It's weird how I'm not so nervous giving talks anymore. I'm sure my homecoming talk will be different tho, just saying... I gave a really good joke. I know '
you're shocked right? Well my talk was on using the scriptures to fight against temptations, and I used Ether 11:14. At the end of that verse it says, "And Moron did that which was wicked before the Lord." So I told everyone my talk is to teach you how to not be a "moron" ha ha! They loved it!!

For service this week, we did some dry wall repairs and some intense mudding and I got to use this cool texture gun that shot mud all over the place. Pretty fun stuff! :) We also met with Shawn Reeves this week and set a Baptismal Date with him. Heck Yes! November 23rd, so pray for him please:) Should have another full week this week. Definitely time for the winter gear to come out. I'm gonna miss the Fall. It's so pretty with all the reds and yellows out here. Tons of leaves to clean up, but its worth it! Love you all hope all is well!

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 11/4/13 "Time to say Goodbye. Andrea Bocelli"

Well family, this week I sent home my companion just an hour ago. That was weird. It's crazy how fast time goes by on your mission!!! I'm sure he won't forget me singing all my goodbye songs to him on his last night with me! We had alot of good times, and possibly more to come.. ? I'm staying in Springfield for another 6 weeks. :) Hope I'll stay for Christmas too. I'd love to have both of my Christmases here! :) This week we said tons of goodbyes. Got tons of rain over Halloween weekend, but that's ok cause we cant trick or treat as missionaries. Our investigators went all out for sending my companion home. They fed us Crab, Shrimp, Scallops, and Steak ha ha! I was so full. It was also weird on Halloween to think its been a whole year since I met B.Robb and came to Springfield! The Bishop asked me to give a talk this coming Sunday, so pray for me that my talk may write itself haha! Because I don't have the time to. :) This whole not having a companion for 2 days is already weird. Im having Springfield 2nd stay the night at the guest home and they will drive me everywhere but I don't know how we will keep both areas going for the 2 days. It's kinda hard but we will figure it out.

Last week we taught Jessica, a new investigator that's way nice. She is the younger sister off Rachael, who bailed on our 2 o-clock ha ha! But she is awesome too. Her questions are super great and she is sincere. The hardest part has been trying to get her to church. She is way busy with school and she is 21 lol. Not many 21 year-olds care too much for Sunday activities that don't involve football, movies, camping or anything else you would do on a Saturday. We're working on it tho ! We will be teaching her the Plan of Salvation this Thursday at 2. Hope they both show up!

We have so many investigators that are right on the edge of getting baptized. I hope we can get it before the end on the year. It's getting close! My new Companion is Elder Boren. He was just in Columbia and he is an awesome missionary. He will be what gives those investigators that final push I think! I can't wait to get my teach on with him. We be dunkin out here! I love you family. Hope everyone enjoyed their Halloween!

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 10/28/13 "More Baptisms, More memories"

Well family, this week was very very busy! We had a Baptism on Thursday the 24th for Samantha Hemphill. I was asked to baptize her and it was awesome! The water was super cold but that's all you get when you got 50 minutes to fill the font.  I have been truly blessed in this mission. Most missionaries only see maybe 4 people get baptized their whole mission and I've seen much more and still have 7 months to find more.  It's never about the numbers but its great to see the lives of the people you teach change and see them come closer to Jesus Christ! "And now, if your joy will be great with one soul that you have brought unto me into the kingdom of my Father, how great will be your joy if you should bring many souls unto me!" Hopefully we will be baptizing her boyfriend here shortly too :) We are pushing so hard to get our missions goal of 450 for the year and its gonna take everything we got to get this !! Also, I got to see how Assistants to the President work the transfer magic. It's pretty crazy how much pull they have and you have tons of pull as a Zone Leader.  I found out this week that Braxton Rose will be coming to my mission so I will have to see what strings I can pull to get him in my Zone or something like that !!! Then we can have an Exchange and that will be legit :)  What are the odds of 2 missionaries from the same ward and even same street would be in the same mission !!!

We have had tons of success in our area which is very strange for a Zone Leader Area. They normally are way too focused on the zone and forget they're missionaries and don't do the work. Those are my least favorite leaders. You were called as a missionary not Dr, Phil! ha ha! I love helping Elders that are struggling in the Zone, but that is not what I'm doing 24/7. I love doing missionary work and that's what I'll do. :) Hope everyone else is enjoying this beautiful Fall and is ready for Winter :) I'm stoked for this Winter !!!! Cardinals are doing good. Better take it this year ha ha!

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Chirstensen: Letter 10/16/13 "Shut it down"

So this week was super crazy! I'm sorry I didn't email till Wednesday. I don't have a ton of time to email back, so I'll keep it short.  Columbus Day we didn't get to email.  It seems things shut down over anything now days.  Even the government haha!!!  Wait, no politics sorry.  

We just had a zone P-day. We went up to Champaign and played dodge ball zone vs. zone. It was intense! Our zone has 20 missionaries and they had 32 and we still won haha! Elder Sutherland and I carried a lot of the weight but it was totally worth it. This past week we also got Samantha's baptism date more solidified for the 25th of this month. 

We did tons of  exchanges in some other areas and it's been awesome.  I've been trying to talk to everyone lately and it's amazing not just how good I feel but seeing other missionaries step up to match me.  Setting an example is huge out here in the missionary world.  I love how real missionaries are with me I feel too many are afraid of the Zl's and Dl's so they put on a face and that is super shallow. So I'm very happy they are open with me and love serving with me for even just that one day.  Exchanges are good and fun but I still like working in my area with Elder Sutherland.  He's a cool kid and we get along really well.  We gave 4 blessings in about 30 mins the other night.  Two older couples requested them so we went over and did them.  It's a cool thing giving blessings and feeling directed by the spirit.  Missions are great!  Good thing they never end. ha ha jk

Love  Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 10/7/13 Happy Days

This week was awesome! I love my Companion! I feel like we've been friends forever. we teach "like a boss," and we are always joking around and laughing. :) Wish I had more areas and comps where I had this much fun!!

So we taught a bunch of lessons and were super busy most of the week. It's always a great feeling. We set 3 dates this week with different part-member families. It's been fun. One is Brian Walton's neice-in-law, I guess you'd say, named Samantha Hemphill. So her and her boyfriend Shawn. They're both 20, and we set one with a kid named Josh Piper. His mom is a less-active member and his Aunt is extremely active. He's 16 and way into music and technology and stuff. He's a really good kid. He also put 400 GB's of music on my hard drive for me so my itunes library will be yoked when i get home. I'm at 145,000 songs right now! :) 

General Conference was really good. We're pretty much living the talks and doing all the things they talk about, so it's different, but I still learned a lot. I think I've finally hit the point where I'm more excited to read them when they come out, rather than listening to them. Elder Oaks and Elder Christofferson's talks really stood out to me. He was super bold! Also there seemed to be a lot of talks that had very similar parts to others. More so than usual? Also Elder Holland's talk had my old mission president in it. That woman is his daughter that was in the plane crash. Pretty sad story, but she is amazing!! I'm sure Facebook already blew up on Utchdorf quotes, but I love the "Doubt your Doubts, before you Doubt your Faith!" So true. He is so wise, it blows my mind!!

I had a question on the whole 15 million members thing. Is that a living number, or is that from how many members of the church here on earth since the restoration?

282 Etherton Springfield IL 62712  is my new address drop me a letter if you got some time :) Love You all!

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 09/30/13 Loving the land of Lincoln :)

Well family, this week has been crazy. Being back in Springfield really has been a blast to the past. I went to my old apartment to meet the new Elders, and to get a map from them because my comp and I both don't have a GPS. Ha! Ha! But that's ok I've gone this far on my mission without one. A little longer won't kill me! The Meserveys drove us up in a 2013 XJL Jaguar. That was such a nice ride! I loved every minute of it.  They took us to Panera (its like Kneaders) and that really hit the spot. :)  They also got me a new suit today! When they picked me up at transfer meeting, they noticed all the other missionaries making fun of my baggy clothes. Ha! Ha! So they were like "oh we will take care of that!!" and they did. lol Very nice people. I love the Meserveys! :)

We had a meeting in St. Louis on Wednesday and its the longest meeting ever! We simply talked about our zones and how they're doing and any struggling Elders or Sisters and talk about how we can help them. It takes 6 hours to do all this and we get trainings from the AP's (Assisstants to the President) and some other ZL's (Zone Leaders). It's the longest day of your life! lol.

I love my new companion. Elder Sutherland has been out 23 months, so I will be his last companion, so we will be going out with a bang hopefully! ha!ha! This area hasn't had a lot going on since I was here a year ago. They have had a few baptisms but not what they deserve. The Ward is great. I also got to see a few from the 2nd ward but not Amanda or Grandma Hurley yet. Hope we will meet up again. 

We had tons of teaching appointments this week and most of them were home so it was a great week. :) Got 2 new investigators as well. I'm very glad we are working hard in this area, cuz ZL's in the past haven't, so its good for this area! Your mission would be so boring if all you did was the meetings and exchanges and checked up on people all time, so I'm very happy we do missionary work haha!! My favorite lesson of the week was when we found Josh. He is 16 years old and loves techno and computers and his mom is a less active member and we talked with him and he was super open with us it was great! We taught the restoration and he told us about his struggles with losing his sister about a year ago, and it felt so good to look him in the eyes and promise him that he will see her again.  I could see the joy in his eyes after hearing this and I'm so thankful we have the knowledge we do of the plan of salvation. I can't imagine how hard this life would be without it! I love you all and hope your doing well!

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 9/23/13 Sprigfield, IL Round 2

I heard on Sunday that my Utes are still spanking the Cougars. I've got some more good news for you :) This week I did my final exchanges with Rantoul and Urbana, and got them stoked for the next transfer. It was real cool cuz I told Elder Locklear he will be a District Leader before he knows it, and he is taking my place now! Ha! Ha! As for me, I'll be going back to Springfield, IL as a Zone leader.:) Well if I could've picked any place to go. I got it! Ha! Ha! I'm so excited to see all my old converts and how they're doing and kick some youth in the butt to get them out on missions. This area truly wont be the same with out B.Robb... I'm gonna have to make it for my zone though, this will be an epic transfer! Ha! Ha! I'm really gonna miss biking everywhere. I loved it and it was really helping me get in shape, but I will go where they want me to go. I'm also gong to miss serving with Elder Dominguez. He was awesome! I had him sign my journal and it was all in Spanish, so I had him translate it to me, and I wrote it in English. ha ha From what I was told, he will miss serving with me as well. This transfer went by so fast, it blows my mind!

Well I'm going to be ruffing it in a $200,000 guest home for a while, so feel for me family. Also we will be driving a 2012 Subaru legacy. Life is hard!  Hopefully they get the zip line fixed before it gets too cold. I want another ride!  What I find really funny is I'm going back to Springfield almost at the exact same time I did last year and I got a 6-week shaft at the same time! lol Maybe I'll spend both of my Christmasses in Springfield?

I hope all of you are doing well and are ready for fall!

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 9/16/13 Holy Jamba

 

Well family, this week we went bus contacting because an Elder left some bus tokens in the area. So we got on the red 2, and I gave out 3 Bom's, 4 restoration pamphlets, and taught 7 other lessons and 10 Mormon.org cards. I miss the buses! That is definitely my best contacting approach! I wish we could do that more often. We would be teaching like 20 people instead of 2 and 8 Less Actives! lol So Chris the former investigator that we handed off to the Zl's will be getting baptized this week so that's great! I'm glad we called him and gave him a baptism tour and helped get him on track! I will be doing the baptism interview this Wednesday, so it will be official after then. :)

We also had Mission Conference this week and got to hear from Elder Godoy. He was so cool! He is a seventy from Brazil and taught us a lot about missionaries, and different types, and how to improve no matter where you're at. I really liked it.  I learned that I'm a very good missionary when it comes to technique and inviting, but I'm not as good in the attributes area. At the beginning of my mission till about 8 months, I would've said the opposite! Ha! Ha! I just need to find my balance. :)

I was on exchanges this week with Elder Anderson, and we where contacting on campus and we talked to this one girl for almost 30 minutes and she was like thank you so much, and I asked her where she was going she was like, "Jamba Juice." I was like, "shut up, no way!" I've looked my whole mission for a Jamba Juice, and haven't found one. So we went with her and sure enough there it was in the union building. I almost cried at this beautiful sight! I got a power white gummy and was very pleased!! That was the best way to end the day! I needed that tender mercy for sure. It's been a harder week. We found no new investigators and most of our appointments fell through, which really sucks when you have to bike 5 miles to knock a door .... But it puts hair on your chest! Ha! Ha! I don't mind biking everywhere though. I'm in my own world whenever we bike, but I don't feel too effective as a missionary when I'm in that mode.  I love you all hope your ready for fall then winter. I'm stoked! I hope I'm not biking in the snow, but if I do it will be legendary! I'll probably fly off a snowbank/ jump in to a car! Ha! Ha !

Love Elder Christensen  

Elder Christensen: Letter 9/9/13 Casting Demons

Well family, I had another great week. I'm loving this area! We got a baptism. William Day, he was baptised this Saturday by Elder England in Urbana. Then we contacted a former investigator,  Chris Tepedino, and he was like, "I want to be baptised." So we got that in the works now! We decided to give it to the Zl's (zone leaders) because he wants to go to the singles ward, and they cover that, but at least we got to spark that fire in him. He should be baptised sometime in October.:)  This area has tons of Less Active work and we do a lot of that. I'm starting the 5x5x5 program here so that will help big time!

 

My companion and I are 2 peas in a pod. I love it! We get along great, we are unified in our teaching and we have tons of fun. I'm learning a lot of Spanish from him as well so in lessons I have a general idea of what they are saying now. It's pretty cool! This week was a way hot week and biking wasn't the funnest, so we would do like jumps and tricks to make it less miserable and i went all out! Ha! Ha! I almost took out a mailbox after catching some air off an old cement ramp! Ha! Ha! It was funny. The best trick was I was able to balance the bike on a rail road track for like 25 feet! Sorry grandpa Redman, I know that doesn't make you happy that I wasn't following the railroad safety you've taught for years... I couldn't resist tho and got some good pics. I'll try to get them on the blog.

 

We are working with a part member family right now. She is our closest to baptism, and that's still a ways to go ha ha! We are doing all we can tho!  As a district we are doing amazing tho. I love this district! The sisters are super crazy and funny which makes p-day interesting and they remind me of my crazy funny friends and all our adventures.:) I miss them so much! Nine months isn't too much longer tho, so keep strong my friends I'll do the best I can! 

 

One crazy story is this week on exchanges, Elder Teixeira and I were tracting and this old black man comes stumbling out of his house and yells "Elders come here!" So we did and he was wasted of his rocker and then a younger black woman came out and said, "come cast the Demons out of this house!" And I was, "what the heck are these people on?" She was like, "look at me the demons made me this way!!" So we went in and said a prayer and cast the demons out...  but the saddest part was seeing 3 little kids in the living room huddled in the corner seeing their mom and grandpa get drunk til they drop. I wanted to take a kid with me so bad! Some peoples kids.... you could feel the presence of evil in that home, but after the prayer I felt some peace. Then when we left, one little black kid like 4 years old came and hugged my leg and said, "thank you Jesus." I wanted to laugh,  but then after I thought about it, the kid probably really thought I was Jesus.... so gave him a Book of Mormon and then we had to run to the baptism. Crazy, funny, and sad experience for ya! The Urbana Elders will be teaching them this week. Love you all!

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 9/3/13 Memory Lane

Well family, this week a lot of our appointments fell through, but we did get some new investigators for the other areas around us, so that's good.  This week I also got to give my 1st Baptism interview. That was awesome! Very spiritually uplifting for me, and the investigator. He will be baptised this Saturday, so that will be awesome. Hope we can get some of our investigators there for that. 

 

We had a miracle happen this week. We had like 2 hours left and had nothing planned, and I told my comp lets go ride our bike on campus. He looked at me and said, "Elder, are you trunky?" "Do you know how many girls are on campus on Saturday nights?" I said, "no, no, that's not why I want to go there. The Spirit is telling me we need to be at the Union building" (which is right in the middle of all the party buildings...). So my comp said okkkk, but I could tell he still thought I wanted to go for the girls. lol Some people's kids...  When we got to the Union building, Daniel Lee was there and just got out of this discussion for his business class, and was like "Elders can we meet?"  I was like HECK YES! That's what I'm talking about! We taught the gospel of Jesus Christ and went over the baptism questions he said he doesn't feel ready yet, but he has felt the Spirit when we meet, so we are making progress with him. Hope we can help him the rest of the way before he has to go home!

 

All in all its been a good week. Very hot and humid, so biking everywhere has been a blast, and the cherry on top it that our AC unit broke, so we got that fixed. Ha Ha Glad fall is almost here!!  We had Zone p-day yesterday in Springfield. That was a blast to the past! It's been almost 1 year since I 1st went to Springfield. So many great memories are there and going to the mansion to play football, capture the flag, and ultimate Frisbee was great.  Can't believe that it was a year ago when I met B.Robb and he showed me how Springfield was going to be the best area of my mission. I'm very sore and hope I'll have enough in me to bike the rest of this week! Ha Ha! Our team won in every event. Go Champaign! 

 

I love you all hope you doing well!!

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 8/26/13 Good and bad

This week had a lot of ups and downs. We had a super great lesson with Daniel Lee and taught the plan of Salvation and he loved it. I taught it like this. We come to earth to get an education and there are 3 different degrees that we can get here, and he loved that it made perfect sense to him.  I used baptism, repentance, gift of the Holy Ghost, enduring to the end, as the core classes to get the degree. I've never even thought of it like that before.  The spirit definatly knew what to do. I'm glad I was able to help in that lesson.  Then later this week he wasn't able to come to church and I think someone gave him anti-Mormon stuff and he is super busy with school and everything so he texted us saying he won't be able to meet anymore so thats a big bummer! The bishop is going to try and set another appointment with him so we can keep him rolling. He's come too far to stop !!!  So I hope this all works out!

 

We are going to meet with a part member family this week and see if we can get her excited about going to the temple, so we can get her baptised. Ha Ha! When I read the Book of Mormon with them I would've guessed she was a member already, but she's not so we are going to find out what her concern is and hopefully get through it! School is just now getting started so we should start finding more people this week. I hope so, cuz our teaching pool is getting super small! Ha! Ha! We did find one family last week. We helped them move and they said we could come by and teach them this Wednesday, so I'm stoked for that. It's time to get this area moving !!! 

 

I love you all and hope you're doing well :)

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christesen: Letter 8/19/13 Champaign!

So the ride to my new area was 3 hours, but we call it the Champaign Train, cuz everyone in that zone rides this huge old yellow school bus. It's great! I slept most of the way but we had some bonding moments on the bus, too. lol Sang "Nearer My God to Thee." That was fun and we almost crashed, so that was fun too ... WE are crashing, we we are crashing! ha! ha! (Fired up-movie quote) :)

Well family, I'm in love! Ha! Ha! I love bike areas they are the best. You get to workout all day and preach the gospel all day.:) We played basketball early this p-day and in just 4 days of biking, I can grab the rim again. Heck yes! I'll be dunking soon ! We also have some sweet investigators that have come from members. Daniel Lee is a business student from Shanghai, China and speaks ok English, but doesn't undersatnd many of the things we've taught him. So we are taking baby steps, but it looks great. We have to hurry tho cuz he goes to China again in October, so we need to get him rolling !

We also found 2 new investigators this week. I'm kinda having some tough times. There have been 2 lessons this week where I said nothing at all, but that's cuz I don't know any Spanish and they speak Zero English! Ha! Ha! Elder Dominguez is awesome. He does all the work for those investigators.  The ward is great here. They feed us everyday of the week and they are working on some of their friends to get even just dinner lessons with us. It's awesome !! We had our fisrt ever combined District meeting and that was cool. Never had one of those, but it was fun. I'm way excited. My district has tons of good elders and we have 2 sisters that are way cool! They're very athletic as well so p-days just got real! :) 

 

I love you all very much hope you had a good week !

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 8/12/13 Back to ILL

Well we got transfer calls, and I'll be going back to Illinois in Champaign. I will still be a District Leader, but this area has been a dry one for a while now, so we will have to change that for sure !! My address is 110 Kenwood Dr Apt 397 Champaign, IL 61821, so if you want to write letters you got it :) Elder Presher in my current District just came from this area and has told me many great things about this area including I'll be without my truck and any car. LOL It's a bike area and that's just what I wanted !!! 6 pack here I come! ha! ha! jk Hopefully I can lose the last 10 pounds I want off though !! My companion is Elder Dominguez. He came out with my group, so babysitting won't be an issue anymore. :) We are right next to a college so we should have some contacting going on in this area which will be awesome.  I'm very excited to start this new area !!! I will miss the people of Moberly for sure. The members here have been Amazing and have made this area the best it can be!  I'm missing the baptisms though. Both the Salas girls. Karina and Jessica, and Nathan Sudholt will be baptized on the 31st. The dates are super solid. All the paperwork is done. Just got to put them under! ha! ha! I'm glad I got to teach these people and give all 3 of them blessings. That's really what sparked their conversion! It will be great to hear how they're doing!! I love you all and hope to hear from you in my new area. :)

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 8/5/13 Big Beef :)

Well family, this week was a slower one. Had tons of rain which made the truck very useful on those muddy hills! :) We found 3 new investigators this week; 2 are pretty solid. One I don't know too much about, but one comes from a family in the ward, the Waltmans, and he seems ready to take the lessons.  The Salas family we've been teaching have a solid baptism date for the 31st of August, which is the same date we have for Nathan Sudholt. :)  So that's great! I'm hoping to have Elder Presher do the baptism. He's been out for 10 months and hasn't had one yet, but transfers are just around the corner so who knows what will happen. We get calls this Saturday, so we shall see what happens?

 

This week we had President interviews as well. They went great! President Morgan is awesome. Can't wait to get to know him more. I had to give a 15 minute training on personal revelation for the APs (assistants to the president) and the ZLs (zone leaders) and all the missionaries waiting to be interviewed. It was probably the best training I've ever given, and the role play and everything was just perfect. I loved it, and so did everyone else! :) Then during my interview, President just kept thanking me over and over again for helping him with all these struggling Elders. He said, they've got 2 months to truly change and shape up or they are gone!  That's what I like to hear. If you don't want to be here, then just stay home. Ha! Ha! Then we went to Fuddruckers and I ate a double 2/3 lb patty southern burger that was the tallest steak burger I've ever eaten. lol That's all I ate the whole day. Hope everyone is enjoying summer and making the best of it :)  I love you all and hope to hear from you soon !!! 

Love Elder Christensen  

Elder Christensen: Letter 7/29/13 LOVE vs. LOVE

Well family, this week has been a crazy one and it just keeps coming. I feel like sometimes I'm running with my head cut off, but that can happen when you companion does absolutely nothing when it comes to planning, teaching, or finding. Ha! Ha! On top of struggling missionaries in the District, Im doing all I can to NOT kill anyone. Ha! Ha! If I do I'm counting on you to come and bail me out of jail! ;)

 

This p-day we also had our golf tournament and that was super fun, but also very hard. We had to give out snacks for hole 17, and when your comp has ADHD it's very hard to stay in one place all day and be quiet for the golfers. Ha! Ha!  Can't complain too much though... So after that we went to the chiropractor just to see how stressed I am with all this stuff that has been thrown at me lately and found I'm doing much better than I thought I'd be. He said my nerves are super solid and my muscles are great but a few are over worked and need to relax. No doubt it's from all the service we've had !! Waking up super early for the gym has been a huge blessing for me though because that's my stress outlet! Ha! Ha! And this will be a shock to no one, but my heart was my weakest part for stress. He said I'm kinda like the Grinch! Ha! Ha! I started laughing so hard! He said though being away from your family is a huge part of that, but I'm doing the best I can to keep my heart locked on the work !! Dang family why do you have to be so awesome!!

Well as far as teaching this week we had a killer lesson with Nathan. That kid is so ready, he is dragging his dad to the font! Ha! Ha! We also did tons of finding this week when we had the ZL's up here on exchanges. Elder Nelson and I found a super great family. She is a single mom, has 3 kids, and her husband passed away in March. So I'm really looking forward to teaching the plan of salvation to her. I could just feel her pain as she wept telling us her story. At least my broken heart can still feel sympathy for others! And we talked about the spirit world and how her husband still has a chance to turn around and accept Jesus Christ. That doorstep has been one of my favorite of my whole mission.  It was so nice to serve with a companion that wanted to teach and find. It just gave me this fire that I knew we would find someone that really needed our message that day. I'm so glad we found her! :) We also were tracting and asked this black guy if someone had lived in the house we were about to knock and he said nobody lives there and so we walked over to talk with him and he was like "no, I'm not hearing it. Keep on walking guy," and we tried again and he was like "I said no !!!" So we got shutdown pretty hard. I had to cheer Elder Nelson up after that. Then after tracting for 3 hours we had to walk back to our car and the same guy was staring us down. So I looked him right in the eyes and just smiled and he says "come herrre white boy." So I did and he apologized to us and said he was going through some hard times and is mad a everyone and he vented to us for 10 minutes and said "so what can your message do for me?" We both shared our testimony of the Book of Mormon and how specific scriptures have helped us through tuff times and he said "I'll read yo book," and we left it at that.  I felt like that was a huge deal though because walking away from him I was like wow he really isn't ready and then 3 hours later he was! Ha! Ha! It just goes to show you how fast the Lord can work on someone's heart! So don't lose hope on those who take more than the first time you meet. The Lord will do it in his time when they are truly ready ! I love you all!

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 7/15/13 "MMA and AMISH"

Well we had a pretty crazy week. All together went on exchanges to Macon this week. Nothing super fun there but we did tract for 4 hours and met a brother to one of the Chicago bears players so that was pretty cool! :)

 

So we did fight our bishop last week and he is dang good, but I guess 12 years of Pro MMA would make you a pretty good fighter! lol Out of all the elders, I did last the longest. I escaped 3 of his best choke-outs, but he did get me with the last one! It was the craziest move I've ever been in for sure. He choked me out with my own arms. I couldn't even tap out. I had to say "tap." It was way fun tho. I haven't sparred in forever !! I think I'll do some MMA on the side when I get home. It reminds me of wrestling when I was little and its always a good skill to have to beat those that are stronger than you. :) 

 

Then we went to a couple of the Amish stores. I'm so glad I'm not Amish. Life seems so much harder without a car or electricity. I would die without those!!  It was cool to see how they make a living. Very humble and honest people. I bought some sweet potato pancake mix. ha ha! Dang good stuff !!

 

This week we found some new investigators in Paris and we will be teaching them on Friday so hopefully something will come of this. I hate going out to Paris cuz only like 500 people live there and they all work out of Moberly, so we rarely see anyone when tracting ....  and its been tracted at least 20 times. We've done the whole town 3 times in these past 2 transfers. I counted 374 doors! ha ha!  The only reason I like going to Paris is for Bro. Reeves. He is old and just lost his wife so he is very lonely but he loves our visits and I can tell they lift him up a ton !! His family lives in Florida and Georgia and Alaska so he doesn't see them much ... His maid makes the best lunch ever though. Her pies are legendary I'm getting the recipe for sure!! We started playing soccer on Saturday in the morning with some non-members and the O'loughlin family and one of them came to church this week. He is 19 years old, his name is Dillan. The other elders are starting to teach him. Should be some good from that. He knows something's about our church. He had dated a member at one time. Hopefully we can get more things rolling in this area. Just need to work out all the kinks. ha ha! Hope all is well at home :)

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 1/8/13 "BOOM BOOM POW"

Well another good week :) Hope everyone enjoyed their 4th of July. I really did. Got to see roman candles fire at my companion cuz he is from Canada. ha ha! We had a rough week finding this week, but I'm happy to say we should have some baptisms coming up in August. This area has been dry for many many months and infact our area has never had a baptism so this will be great !! We are working with a LA (less-active) member getting him ready to baptize him and his 9 year old son and another one is Terry and Julie, but they still haven't been to church yet.  We had a great lesson with him this week. We taught him the plan of salvation and he really loved it then and the end of the lesson we gave him a blessing of healing.  He was ran over by a car a few weeks ago and can't get around too well so hopefully this blessing will be the testimony builder for them that this in the true church and God's priesthood power is on the earth again.  We have dropped John but I feel he will be coming around soon. I always send him text of good talks and scriptures that I read and I can tell it opens his eye more and more each time. :) 

 

We did exchanges with my MTC companion Elder D'ewart. He is awesome! I loved serving with him. He's going through a rough patch in his mission but it happens. I'm glad I get to help him through this rough trial. I'm also glad for the friends and family I have to help me through my tuff times:) 

 

We got to meet president Morgan (new mission president). He is a way cool guy. Loves to ski, and his motto is work hard play hard ha ha! That's our old mission motto. lol Can't wait to know more about him!  We have some cool service coming up soon. We will be running a golf tournament for a fund raiser in Columbia. Should be fun. I sure hope so. We will be there for 8 hours and its on P-day and I don't let my P-day go to waste !!!!! Today for P-day we will be fighting our Bishop! ha ha! He has done MMA for 16 years and will beat all of us but it will be fun!! How many missionaries get to punch a bishop in the face?? I will see what I can do to get it on video :) I love you all and miss you !

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 7/1/13 "Good day to be an American :)"

Well we had a great week of finding this week. We got 8 new investigators. Just what this area needed; a fresh start! We had mini missionaries from Columbia for 4 days and we ran ours into the ground! ha ha! We tracted like crazy and he did great. It really paid off in our finding efforts.  We also had 2 investigators at church this week so that was good. The members seemed shocked like its been forever since they've seen a new investigator come in. lol

 

Tons of Service this week. We got to bail 3 tons of hay, so that was fun. Ate up the skin and had some nasty bugs burrow in the skin but time heals all wounds. lol :) We also did some service for some new investigators. We tore down their deck and it was all nasty and moldy, but I was happy to get some more hard work. I live for that in the summer! :) They were shocked at how fast we got the whole job done they said you guys are just like the Amish, minus the beards ... They also fed us dinner and we had a great lesson. I just sat back and let my greeny and the mini handle it. If they got stuck I'd step in. Other than that it was all them! :)

 

We also taught/ rebuked John in Paris this week. I found a great pamphlet that destroys the RLDS line of authority and he just didn't feel it.  I then kindly said we taught you everything that we can, and you know have the knowledge to pray with real intent for your answer and we will see if that goes anywhere? It's very hard to drop people especially when they are so close but they just need to put their trust in the Lord and let him guide them.  I love you all and hope you have a great 4th of July !!! AMERICA > Canada 

Love Elder Christensen 

Elder Christensen: Letter 6/24/13 "Heat of the Moment"

This weeks Transfer meeting was the hardest one yet. It was president Clark's last one and we lost tons of great elders and sisters.  Sister To'ala was my mission sister and she sang a way good hawaiian song she wrote about our mission and it was a tear jerker for sure! 

 

Well another good week in Moberly. We got to teach Terry and Julie Gross the Restoration and it was our best lesson yet in this area. They seem really interested.  They read the Book of Mormon together and they have read 1st and 2nd nephi in one week so they are doing awesome!!  We put a ceiling up for them in their home this week. That house has a lot of work to be done but I love helping them and they love us. We also had to fix a window on our truck this week it was a shorted wire, but Terry was like I'd love to spend 3 hours with you at the Chevy dealership, so we talked the whole time and really got to know one another.  They didn't make it to church this Sunday not sure why, they seemed really sincere.  We will be seeing them again this week so we will see what the deal is?

We did tons of service this week. Tuff work too. We did 2 big loads of mulch by hand and then we did cement fencing for another family. It was a good day.  My companion is from the city and has never done work like this so that was a great joy for me to see him do some real work ha ha!  Then after our long day of service I thought it would be a good day to do MY GREENY PRANK. The other elders helped me out on this one. It was epic! So our neighbor has tons of snakes and Elder Rausch hates snakes so we asked him for a dead one.  Then when Elder Rausch was in the shower the other Elders and I planted the dead snake in his bed and he got in after our prayer and put his hand up his pillow and right on the snake. hahahaha! He flipped out and threw the snake he thought it was alive ! Then he took apart every piece of his bed and checked for snakes. lol He does this a lot now!:)

Well I don't think the church can make missions any easier than they are. Now you can go right out of high school, and still waste your time on facebook, twitter, or what ever you want!  I'm going to tell my kids I had 1 year of a real mission then 1 year of a lazy geeky mission. Tracting puts hair on your chest, and sitting at a computer just makes you fatter this will lead to many new fat Missionaries and you can quote me !! I have failed to find any scripture in the bible or the book of Mormon where the prophets texted or emailed the gospel, and called it missionary work, but I don't make these decisions.  I really hope this tool does more good than evil but only time will tell :) I love you all and hope to hear from you soon !

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 6/17/13 "I cannot come down"

Well this week we finally found some solid investigators. They just moved into Moberly and let us right in and we talked for a good hour on our conversion. They came to volleyball and met some members that same night.  They love motorcycles and they are in the C.M.A. Christian Motorcycle Association. They are in their 50's and have known tons of Mormons and love them, so they said they would hear us out and come to some services so that's great!  We knocked on at least 500 empty doors this week to find them but it was totally worth it, and knocking on all those doors just means your wife will be prettier ha ha !

 

Our other investigators are feeding us this Saturday and we are teaching them this Tuesday as well so hopefully we will get them to volleyball and church this week! They come from Arkansas and are in very humble living circumstances but we are helping them the best we can to improve with what they got. This week we rebuilt the brick stairs off the back of their home and moved a lot of dirt to do so. I love that hard work! I miss it !! Brings back so many memories of working with my family. :) 

We got transfer calls this week as well and I got some very unexpected news. Moberly area 2 is now the District Leader area and I'm the new Ditrict Leader so that's going to be fun. Ha! Ha! this will be the longest transfer in the mission as well. It will be 8 weeks because we get president Morgan (new mission president) this Wednesday.  I will miss president Clark very much but hope to keep his work ethic and motivation in this mission!

We did tons of service this week but one of my favorite was after eating 17 tacos at the Donald's home, they let me milk their cow! Ha Ha! That was pretty cool. I'm never wasting milk! It's hard work for every drop!! They might have a friend for us to start teaching soon which would be great. This area is very tuff to find, teach, and baptize, but we are doing the best we can and won't give up ! As Nehimiah said in the bible "I'm doing a great work and can not come down," so is our work. We just need to keep going and get past this hard summer :)

 

Love you all and hope to hear from you soon !

Love elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 6/10/13 I'm hot blooded 103

Well this week was a lot harder for finding people, but we got through it, and did all we could. We tracted a lot this week when we had time from all our busy service!! I was super excited. I was gonna be a head coach for summer tee-ball, and it was all set up then the ZL's (zone leaders) said we couldn't do it... I was way mad! Ha! Ha! If I wasn't working on my patience some missionaries might have got a tee-ball hitting lesson for free :) I felt bad telling the manager at the YMCA that we had to back out. He wasn't very happy about it either. :/

 

We did our district leader exchanges this week, and I got to workout at the YMCA with Elder Gibbs. That was amazing, other than I was still recovering from a fever (of 103) I got earlier in the week.  Elder Gibbs is a great leader and he is way into motorcycles so we talked about bike for many many hours on this exchange.  He talked me into a Ducati so I'm set in my ways now. Ha! Ha! :) We also got to visit some part-member families in Macon and they had a lot of country in them! Ha! Ha! It was super fun!  I'm very glad I wasnt stuck with Elder Esplin. My poor companion endured that trial well! Ha! Ha!

 

So I found tons of nasty mold in our apartment so I went crazy on cleaning that place top to bottom! I bought huge contractor bags and wrapped my twin bed and all the couch cushions and slept on the floor for one night. Glad I don't have to do that too often. I'm pretty sure we have the cleanest apartment in the mission now :)

 

This week Danny was dropped (as an investigator) because he went crazy on our ward mission leader and I thought they were going to duke it out! Ha! Ha! So we had to leave. The Spirit was gone long before that, but you learn from it none the less ... John Ekstrom is our most solid investigator. He is RLDS so he loves and believes everything we teach other than being married for eternity or anything that we teach that involves eternal progression.  This is new for me and its hard because I'm training as well, and Elder Rausch is doing the best he can, but this guy is far from a routine investigator and the normal lessons. Ha! Ha! It's been fun though !! We have some firesides soming up soon so hopefully that will be a good finding tool for us this week. We need some new investigators !! Love you all enjoy your summer mine starts 360 days from now but who is counting? ;) 

Love Elder christensen  

Elder Christensen: Letter 6/3/13 Slapped by the word!

Well this week was great because we didn’t die in a tornado! Four of them were in our mission. Crazy stuff! And one was 40 miles from us but I have no doubt that we will be protected! We got 2 new investigators and had awesome lessons this week with Mike and Danny and our newest investigator John. He lives in Paris which is a small town like 30 miles from Moberly and he believes everything we taught. He love the restoration, but he just thinks that the prophets to follow aren’t correct so we are working through his concern but he is well prepared and we did invite him to pray to know if president Monson is a true prophet. We will be seeing him again this Friday to see how that went J We also might be teaching Miss Moberly. She ran into us at service and was helping out and was either interested in our message or us... Ha! Ha! We will find out in 2 days, but as President Clark (PC) says “Elders, we need to flirt to convert” Ha! Ha! I love PC im gonna miss him for sure !! His mission President is finished with his mission this summer, so he will be getting a new one.

 We had a baptism this weekend. A part-member family baptism. Nicholas got baptized by his dad and confirmed by his brother. That was cool to see. We taught Nicholas the discussions mainly for practice for my greeny, but they went very well and we got technically a convert baptism. Ha! Ha! Fun stuff, but hopefully we will get some of our investigators to church this week and get them rolling J

We also had a lot of District unity this week as we went to the Pizza Hut buffet and battled to see who could eat the most. To say the least I still hold my title! Ha! Ha! I almost lost to Elder Peterson. He is a beast he weighs 285 and played college football as a center, but I still got it! Definitely had some running to do after that !!

Things are picking up out here hopefully will get some fun stories and more memories. JI also got rebuked hardcore this week in my studies as I was listen to a talk from Elder Ballard. He read D&C 49:15 and if that wasn’t the biggest slap in the face I don’t know what is ha ha so I’ll be looking a little more openly on the subject from here on out haha !!!! I love you all hope all is well!

Love Elder Christensen

FYI, I had to look this one up. D&C 49:15- "And again, verily I say unto you, that whoso forbiddeth to marry is not ordained of God, for marriage is ordained of God unto man." Jeff has been saying that he probably won't get married, so I guess he is reconsidering after hearing this!

Elder Christensen: Letter 5/28/13 Truck + Me = :)

Well this week we got all settled into our new apartment and got our truck nice and dirty with all this rain we’ve had. It's been nice!! We got 5 new investigators this week, which is good because this area is dead otherwise. My new companion is Elder Rausch. He is from Alberta Canada and is 18 years old and is the youngest of 9 kids. Only one older brother wet on a mission out of 5 so he is breaking the curse and trying to get his 19 year old brother to go.  I can say I see a big difference in the age drop now that I'm training an 18 year old, and I must say Im pretty shocked at how immature 18 year olds are! I was one of the least mature at that age but the Lord will make up the difference... I hope J 

It's been really fun being back in the farmland. At least we have the proper tools for this area. I love our truck! The ward is great. The members feed us almost every day and its really good cooking out here. I had some Amish milk and oh my goodness it’s a good thing there isn’t a lot in Salt Lake or I'd be 500 lbs !!!  We are working with some part member families that seem pretty sweet and I can already see why my comp is in this area with me for these specific families.  Can’t wait to see where this goes in the time we are here! Other than our district leader, I'm the oldest one in the district. It's very weird but its cool to see my greeny learning new things every day.  I love you and hope to hear from you soon!

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 5/20/13 "The best way to leave!!"

Well this was the big Sunday and everything went perfectly. I was able to baptized Alecia Louis Mata and Dorris Jean Carter and see Martin Mata get baptized! I couldn't believe how many people from the ward came to see these baptisms. We filled every chair in the Relief Society and then some! We had at least 50 people there. It was awesome. The talks at the baptism were very good. Sister McCowin really hit it home for Dorris. I'm so happy that she has a fellow-shipper like that in this ward. She is blessed to have her.  It's funny because Sister McCowin was in my families ward in Montana in the 80's. She told me about my uncles and my mom in the ward and all my grandparents did with their callings and it's way cool how small the world really is.  I can't wait to see how far all these new member of the Church go and how many people they help along the way! 

It was my last Radichel Sunday but it was a good one! I'm gonna miss that family a lot. They have been such a blessing for me in this area. Can't wait to see them after the mission :) This area will be one to come back to for sure !!

 

My new area is Moberly Missouri. It's a small farm town but we get a truck so that's gonna be fun and I'm training a new greeney. Lucky him ha ha ! This will be great! Hopefully this new area will give him a good taste of what this mission is all about! Love you all and hope to hear from you soon my new address is 306 North College ave apt 6 Moberly MO 65270

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 5/13/13 "Love yo ma!"

 

Well this week I got to see my beautiful family. They are all doing very well. I was also able to see my grandma and grandpa Christensen. I miss them so much and they are doing great :) 

 

This is the big week Martin and Alecia are getting married and baptized. I still don't know if I'm baptizing either of them. I hope so because I might not be here for the confirmation if I get transferred, so we will see what happens !!

 

Mother's Day Sunday was great. The talks were really good and had tons of greats stories to go with them.  I cant believe how old everyone is back home blows my mind and I'm not getting any younger! Won't be long till I'm dead! Ha! Ha! Missionary term ;) means I'm going home!  Hope everyone had a great Mother's day and showed appreciation for their mama! If you didn't I'll beat you up when I get home.

We had tons of great appointments this week with all of our investigators. Half of them made it to church we had 4 there, so that was cool. It's been a while since I've had that many come to church! Hopefully more baptism dates for the next missionary to come here... my companion goes home in 5 weeks so crazy, but ending your mission with baptisms and obedience is the way to do it for sure!! Glad I've been able to help him trough the hardest part of his mission especially with getting dear John'd and everything its taught me a lot about putting others needs above my own. I love you all and hope to hear from you soon.

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 5/6/13 "One LOVE, Bob Marley"

Well this week was Awesome have some good news on Martin and Alecia. After the blessing and all the events that took place in her downtime and reading the Book of Mormon like crazy they are wanting to move their wedding day forward! :) My comp and I will be the witnesses for their wedding and the only thing we are waiting on is paperwork for the wedding, which should be coming this week or next week.  So I'm super excited for that! I didn't think I'd be here for that and I will be so that's awesome !!!  This Sunday we got to be with Martin and Alecia for their daughters 2nd birthday and that was a blast. Yhey are so much fun. I can't wait to see them when I come back to visit !!

 

Oh and according to Apples to Apples, I'm Healthy, Cool, Sexy, Depressing, Glorious, Funny, Loveable, Worthless, and Desperate ha ha ha (We always take the cards that we win and they suposedly describe you) Hope you enjoyed your week and the NBA playoffs as the Heat will be winning it again this year!

Transfers are May 22nd, just 2 days before my birthday so that's a bummer if I go. I hope I stay but we will see what happens?  It rained, no joke, all week other than Monday. We went to the Zoo and played some golf with Brother Marco. It was a super P-Day !! We did more service on Wednesday for the Tornado. I used a chain saw and cut more trees and had the youth carry them off. Fun stuff, but hard work !!

 

We set another baptism date with Dorris Carter for Mothers Day, but I feel she will want to push that back more. We will see how that goes but that would be a cool Mothers day !!

 
I was thinking a lot this week about how I can continue to improve both as a missionary and a Human being and through all my diligent studying and praying this was what I got.  The biggest stumbling block to the missionary work is self. Self that refuses to sacrifice. Self that refuses to give. Self that refuses to go. Forget Yourself :) - Elder Christensen. So I'll be trying to do better at this for the next year. Hope I get there! :)

I love You all!

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 4/15/13 Tornado time

Well this week I got to see my 1st ever tornado. Those things are crazy and deadly! I have no clue how people can live where they happen so often!! This one was really close to our apartment and the church. Luckily both didn't get hit. Tons of homes by the church are ripped in half, which is sad!! Full grown trees were thrown into homes and street lights are long gone. We lost power for 24 hours and some areas had no power for the whole week!! We did get to do some service finally though. We helped neighbors cut trees and haul them off and this Sunday we helped put together food and clothing kits with the Radichels and the Ringling family at the Hazelwood elementary school. Nothing would have gotten done if the Mormon crew did show up! No joke. They had no clue what they needed to do!! 

Also this Sunday, Dorris Carter, our investigator got up and bore her testimony. It was great! Then at the end of her testimony she said, "I would like to thank God for my missionaries he has given me. I would like to say they is the most handsome Elders I've ever seen!" Everyone busted up laughing including me. Ha! Ha! She is a character for sure!! Hopefully we will be getting her dunked soon.:)  We also taught a part member family on Friday for FHE and talked about the structure of the church and how the Book of Mormon came to be. Her 2 little kids loved it, especially Kiara. She is so cute! She is 8 years old and loves art.:)  

This month has been going by super fast cant believe I'm almost 20 years old! I'll no longer be in my teenage years:/

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 4/8/13 Stayin here

Well, good news! I'm staying for another transfer. :)  General Confrence was great. I really enjoyed all the talks. I really could realate to president Monson's talk when he shared the story of almost burning down all the cabins and pine trees.That sounds a lot like something I would've done!! 

 

This week people were super talkative on the busses, but only to me. My comp didn't get much action there for some reason.  I was very happy. I got to teach 6 other lessons within 3 buses. Pretty cool! One of them used to be a former investigator and we wouldn't know that because some really dumb missionaries before us threw away all the records of the area. I hope they get their just reward for that deed!:) Sam is the former investigator in whom I'm talking about and she is way cool. I talked with her about the plan of salvation and she just ate that up!! She really wanted a book of mormon so we gave her one and will be meeting with her this Thursday, :) 

 

We had a great dinner with the Radichel family and this was the last time we will be seeing their foreign exchange student from Germany. Hopefully she has learned tons from the Radichels and the great example they are for our ward. Maybe she will taking the lessons in the future now, or at least stop the missionaries when she sees them?  The work is picking up out here. Our area will be getting cut in half this Wednesday, but I made sure that we kept some of the ghetto for us too. Ha! Ha! Hopefully we get some good Elders and a car!! I have taken over the duties of basketball on Tuesday so we can teach those non-memebers and get them rolling. I'm so mad that it just stopped and never came back, so I'm making it happen lol. I bought a new ball last week, and got a key for the hoops on its way! :)

 

I have learned a lot about myself this last transfer and its been almost more than I can handle. I'm so thankful for my Father in Heaven, and for my friends and family who write me. I won't ever forget these letters and emails and when I get home you will be the 1st people I hold in my arms!!  I love you all and hope you are enjoying this Spring and getting ready for this summer. :)

Love Elder Christensen