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