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