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 :)

Elder Christensen: Letter 11/26/12 A slower week

No dates on the other baptisms. They aren't as solid as I'd like them to be. A lot of them are families and one is super hard. They have been investigating the church for 15 years and they also go to the unification church and believe all people will be held accountable to the knowledge they have of God, which is true, but they know the book of Mormon is true and that Joesph Smith was a prophet. They just don't believe one church is right .... I've shown them the scripture one church, one faith, one baptism, and the father says that's a parable. I'm thinking what?..... if Christ meant it as a parable he wold have said, this is a parable. Ha! Ha! Some people just don't get it !! The wife has a calling and everything, but they aren't members ... They lived in SLC for 6 years and know a lot about our church so its hard. They just don't believe that Thomas Monson is a prophet and the people before him, so its hard!! All is well though. Love you all! Happy holidays!

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 11-19-12 Different, but AWESOME!

So this week has been AMAZING we met with our new investigator, Amanda, and she wanted to go on a church tour so we set up like 45 chairs with pictures on them throughout the building explaining why we do things the way we do.  It was the most in depth discussion I've ever had. The most powerful part of the tour was the baptismal font.  She is deaf, but we have a member who translates for us otherwise we'd be lost.... Then at the end of the tour we had a great talk on the restoration and she said "everything just makes sense I want to become a member of your church and I want to become closer to Christ, and I know the Spirit is guiding me to you guys!" 

We also had a follow up appointment Friday night with the member who has the famous Ghost pepper chili (I called it the Holy Ghost pepper challenge:) So ya I had the hottest pepper in the world this week its called a ghost pepper. These members order it from Pakistan because that's the only place hot enough to grow them and the challenge is this chili they make with tons of them in it. If you finish it you get your name on their wall of fame. I did it and with the fastest time yet; 3 minutes 23 seconds. It was great, but by far the Hottest thing I've ever ate!! They said I've never met anyone dumb enough to eat the whole bowl of chili and in that fast of a time. Ha ha I showed them !! The next morning was not to friendly though! Needless to say I felt more than the burning of the bosom  .....  and we taught the restoration fully this time.  She loved every minute of it and was just asking for more and more information and we gave her a plan of salvation packet and she finished it that night and wrote 3 pages of how she fit into the plan and it just blew my mind. She is so dedicated !! She knew the plan better than the member did. Ha! Ha! She corrected the member like 3 times on parts of the plan of salvation Ha! Ha!  She is so ready to be baptized!!! Elder Banks and I have been learning the Sacrament prayers in sign language which is pretty cool and who ever will be baptizing her will have to learn that prayer in sign too! :)

This week we also had ZL exchanges and Elder Esplin and I tracted in a woman who came to our church one year ago and felt like she got the cold shoulder and no one would talk to her but we couldn't believe that at all. Everyone is super nice and friendly in this area and so I challenged her to give it another shot and she was like ehhhhh what the heck why not. So she came to church this Sunday and felt the Spirit and everyone's love and is taking the discussions now!!  She is super solid.  Then Sunday Night we felt we should see this family the Collins family. The missionaries taught them about 6 months ago. One of her sons got baptized and is an active 16-year old.  We felt we needed to teach the rest of the family again and get the mom on track and hope and pray her other 4 sons will follow her. Its really hard to have the Spirit at her house though because all the boys are crazy and bug her and there is no father figure present so they get away with it. I wish I could just burn the white missionary handbook and put those kids in their place. Ha! Ha! Those dang rules make my work a lot harder!!! 

I hope everyone will be enjoying the holidays especially Black Friday! Ha! Ha! My Holiday:) I Love You all and hope to hear form you soon !

Love Elder Christensen  

Elder Christensen: Letter 11-13-12 Springfield News

So this week I was on exchanges with this greeny and we had a dinner with sister Elliot and her mom who is 93 and I taught the restoration and she was super excited about everything. She came to church this week and last week and says "there is just such a warm spirit here at your church, I want to become a member."  That's music to every missionaries ears :)  Later that night though Cathryn or grandma as we call her fell and hit her head pretty good... Her brain had some intense bleeding but they got it under control. That night I broke the curfew rule and listened to the Spirit and we drove to the hospital to give her a blessing.  So we are praying like crazy for her and her family!!!

• In my letter from Jeff he said that it was weird because he felt so at home in the hospital setting while giving that blessing. I guess from working in that setting for a year, it brings back memories and he feels comfortable and at home. I told him that this would be a big benefit to him during his mission since he won't be nervous and feel awkward when he is at the hospital giving blessings!

Also this last week we got to listen so 2 General Authorities and it was amazing. The 1st one was at Stake conference. His name is Andrew Perkins of the quorum of the seventy.  This was a perfect meeting for us because the day before we had received a media referral and she is Chinese and doesn't understand much English, but we watched the restoration DVD in Chinese and she got very emotional during it.  I said to my comp I wish I could speak Chinese to make things clear to her!!  Then at Stake conference, Elder Perkins talked about how he lived in China for 6 years and speaks Chinese:) So after conference was over I ran up to him shook his hand and told him about our language barrier and he said give me her name and phone number and I'll give her a call. I was like Fetch yes!!!!!  So we will see how that goes when we see her Thursday?:)  Then Monday we had Mission Conference and got to listen to Elder Chei from Korea and I swear every word he said was meant just for me. Ha! Ha! He shared an experience from his mission in Korea and how he opened this new area and busted his butt for 3 months, finally got people to teach, and got them all ready for baptism and he got transferred and he was like why me!!??  And his talk was about how he had become stronger through that experience and he compared it to a fruit tree and how only the Gardner knows why he must cut these big long branches down from the tree that worked so long and hard to get this big.  The tree then was humbled because he was smaller than all the other trees. Over time the tree then will bring forth better fruit on the new branches from the wounds of the gardner:) Then he talked about marriage for 2 hours after our lunch and I don't know if I'll ever be ready for that, but only time will tell....

So we also had tracted into a woman named Annie and she is the funnest person to teach!!!!  Our 1st lesson was on the restoration and when we talked about the Spirit she just goes off yelling crazy stuff at her friend Shaneinei and shes like "why you never told me dis bout the Mormon church !!!!" Her friend is a LARC (Less Active Recent Convert).  Were going to extend a baptism date this week for Annie and Crystal and her husband:)  Love you all and hope to hear from you soon:)

Love Elder Christensen

Proud of my son!

I got to email Jeff back and forth this last week, so it was kind of like text messaging and I got to carry on a conversation with him. He was just made the senior companion in his new area, so I asked him how long his new companion had been out and he told me that he had been out 18 months. I was surprised because I thought that the senior companion was always the one who had been out the longest and Jeff has only been out barely 5 months! Jeff said that his mission president had talked to him and told him that he was really impressed by what he has done so far. He also told him that because of the new age requirements for the missionaries (18 for boys and 19 for girls) that they are expecting 60 new missionaries in his mission in January. Because of this, the mission president is considering opening some new zones for the mission and he talked to Jeff about possibly being a zone leader for one of the new zones. Jeff joked with me that he may be the youngest zone leader ever in his mission! He definitely has a knack for getting to know people and form relationships with them, and that will serve him well on his mission!

Love you Jeff!