Transfer: Area #4

I found out today that Jeff is getting transfered this next Wednesday to Florissant, MO. This is a suburb outside North St. Louis. It is not super safe there I am told, so make sure you are praying for his safety! He has had such good success in his current area, I know he will be sad to go, but I am sure he will do great in the new area as well. He was super bummed on his last transfer too, but once he started Springfield, he now says that this has been his best area so far.

I also got to see a bunch of pictures and videos of Jeff that the ward missionary posted on Facebook. There were pictures of the baptism that Jeff did today with Amanda and some videos of Jeff making crepes. It was fun to see the pictures and videos and know that he is doing so good.

One thing that has happened recently is that Jeff has been having cluster headaches. These are extremely painful and one of his eyes swells, droops and waters a lot when he gets these. You are supposed to get a CT scan if this happens so that they can rule out other causes (like brain tumors) but so far Jeff is refusing to get this done. I think he is worried about getting put in the mission home office or something like that if the Mission President knows about it. I am still working on nagging him to get this done, so hopefully he will. If not, we may have to call his mission president to get it done.

Elder Christensen: Letter 01/14/13 Revive me bro!

So this week we made up for my cluster headaches I'd had last week and we found 5 new investigators and we got some solid work with our old ones as well!  We picked up 5 new investigators this week. A part member family who the mom is a member but she hasn't been in forever and her kids aren't members. I'm soooo stoked to teach. They have 2 kids, 17 and 15. The 15 year old boy plays hockey and we will be going to his game this Wednesday for support.  We watched together forever and they were super locked in. The spirit was strong and my companion and I both bore our testimony on the importance of family and how the gospel can keep your family together! They are super busy with all the sports they both do and games fall on Sundays so we don't see them at church but I know they will be baptized after the hockey season...yes they're high school aged. The mom is way nice and their excuse for not coming to church is that they're kids are involved in like every extra curricular activity imaginable so that's why they don't come. I'm sure there's more to the concern than just that. But we shall see. Then we picked up some formers that lived in Taylorsville. That's like the furthest part of our area. Its a good 45 minutes away. But we were there all Friday so we could maximize our time there. And we found Brian and his family. He had a baptism date for a while but kinda bailed. His only concern right now is if God really does exist. We talked to him about the Book of Mormon and answered some other questions about the characteristics of God and his daughter. I love his daughter. Shes 7 or 8, almost 8 I think. Out of no where she's just like "I know there's a God." And surprised, we looked at her and are like well how did you come to know that and shes just like "I just know."  Good enough answer for me. Why to people have to grow up, they just get stupid and hard-headed. Now I understand why Christ prefers children haha! But yeah, a pretty good week. Oh yeah, and lastly, this is pretty funny. On Friday we went over to Deans house, he is a recent convert who runs a half-way home and for a few months there have been some less active members that are just sacking out at this place and not paying anything to Dean or helping him out. But he's a nice guy and wants to help them until they can find a job. The only problem is they dont look for jobs. Anywayyysss . Dave, who just got made the teacher for the CTR 8 class, got sent to jail for possessing some illegal pain killers. So yeah, he's in jail. The first thing I thought when I heard this was "Oh no who is going to teach the children this Sunday?" Ha!Ha! So we helped Dean move all of Daves stuff out and put it in storage. While we were taking his stuff out, we went into Dave's and Nicoles (other pile member who doesn't do anything) bathroom to get some of his stuff and behold! We look down and see probably a good months worth of poop in this toilet. They haven't had plumbing in this house for a while since it broke and Dave refused to fix it. So yeah. Poops singular are nasty. Imagine a collective of em. It was very traumatic! Throw up your lunch? I did lol So yeah we quickly got everything and left, and if I think its bad then it must be really bad lol!!

We run in the morning as much as we can. When it won't freeze my lungs lol. Which two days ago it was a nice 69 degrees :) It was nice. But we got hit pretty hard with freezing rain. For church yesterday we went to leave and we came outside and our car was plated with ice. At least a good half inch. We didn't have time to scrape thoroughly, otherwise we would have been late and as missionaries you can't be late or else you get labeled and no one will like you. So we scraped two 4 inch in diameter circles in the windshield and blasted the defroster and took off. I was no joke like Homer off the Simpsons when he gets a bucket glued to his head and he has to drive. It looked just like that. But we took it easy through the backstreets and by the time we got to the main busy roads we were able to scrape it all off. It was pretty crazy though. All of the trees were glazed over and grass fields looked like plains of spikes. It was pretty cool. I wish I had got a picture but I didn't. Anyway, this past week started out alright. We had zone p-day which is my least favorite thing to do. We went to the Capitol building, which I was alright doing. Cause now I've been to both Capitol buildings in Missouri and Illinois.  But I had a final headache and . . .I dont really like the zone leaders. At all lol. . Like for an example, we cannot, according to them, drive the sisters around. And giving them rides while they're in the city would be really helpful since they have to use so many miles to get here. It takes em about 45 minutes to get to Springfield. they are the only members in our district. Its just Elder Furlong and, me, and 2 sisters. And we're alone together in district meeting every single week. But we can't drive them because we would be alone with them in our vehicle. Last week we were trying to coordinate how to get them to the Capitol building and we wanted to take them but we couldn't. But the zone leaders drove them. And they could do it because "they're zone leaders." Ya its stupid, but what can you do. So yeah I flat out don't really like them haha. So Monday was hard for me. We had an all day zone p-day because we had a meeting afterward with the entire zone to talk about our new mission goal which is 450. Thats pretty cool. I'm excited. It's gonna be hard because 2 years ago the goal was 400 and we only got like 320. Fail. But with so many new missionaries coming in soon I figure they think we can make it. So we will see. So yes, that was Monday. I can't remember when all of these events took place so this next paragraph I'm just going to combine the entire rest of the week into one day. Well, Amandas baptism is still good to go for this Saturday at 4.  Hope your week was great as well hope to hear from you all soon !!!

 

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 1/7/13 New Year, New Date

So not much going on this week. Still tons of people out of town for the holiday, but we did however set up a date for Amanda's Baptism and I will be baptizing her on the 19th of January :) I've been learning the Baptismal prayer this week in Sign Language for her. It's pretty intense!! I hope I don't mess it up or I'll be there for a while... also typed up Grandma's miracle and this Sunday she got up and bore her testimony and she is walking by herself and has been healing more and more every day. It's so cool to see!!! Hope to hear from you all soon and hope you enjoy this story!

Cathryn’s Christmas Miracle

BY: Elder Jeffrey Christensen

The story of this miracle is that we had begun teaching Cathryn or Grandma as we call her because she old enough to be almost anyone’s grandma. So when I had first got to Springfield we started teaching, and she was very receptive to our message, but said I don’t need to be baptized again. She was a headstrong Methodist, and didn’t feel she needed to become a member of our church and be baptized again.

Grandma 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.  She came to church this week and last week and said "there is just such a warm spirit here at your church."  That's music to every missionary’s ears. Later that night though Cathryn fell and hit her head pretty good! The result of Grandma’s fall was she had tons of internal bleeding and possible brain damage. We both knew this was Satan trying to make sure she was able to continue learning more about us and our message. The doctor 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 come to visit Grandma twice that week to see how see was doing and we were told she aspirated a couple of times through the night and almost lost her.  My faith was defiantly tried once I had heard those painful words, but I knew that Grandma’s work was not done and she would make it.  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. Our prayers and the blessing were at work and they did exactly what needed to be done. 

Once Grandma was able to return home I was thrilled and wanted to continue to teach her more.   We went over to do help Sister Elliot move a lot of furniture to her new business not realizing how appreciative grandma was for all we had done for her and her family.  Later that night we had received a call from Sister Elliot saying “Grandma says she wants to be baptized with Kaleb!” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing so that night I called the Zone Leaders to set up the Baptism interview the next day. They were so happy to be a part of this miracle! We talked about the gospel of Jesus Christ and how he being our example was baptized and how that was done and how I would be baptizing her great grandson Kaleb that same way. Then we had asked Grandma once more if she would like to be baptized? “And she said YES!  The spirit was so strong I knew that grandma had gained a testimony of the power of the priesthood through her experience of the blessing.

The Zone leaders came over and did the interview that same day and ask grandma all the questions and she without hesitation was able to answer every one of them. We knew she was ready spiritually, but we still were a little worried as to if she could physically be baptized is her weakened condition.   I prayed for grandma that night to have her pains relieved from her so that this baptism would be memorable and enjoyable for her.  We had arrived after our transfer meeting and grandma was there in a beautiful all white baptism outfit and she looked very happy but still in some pain. I then said one last prayer for Grandma as I got dressed for this baptism.

As I helped Grandma into the font I saw her pains were gone and she was so peaceful in the water, and I said the prayer put her under the water and as I brought her out of the water she smiled!  That smile meant the world to me I got to the joy in her face, and I'm so happy I was able to be a part of this experience in this family's life.

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 because grandma was born in 1919, and I baptized her at age 19 on 12-12-12. I also got to confirm Grandma that Sunday and that was the 1st confirmation I've done too. I will never forget these miracles that I was able to be a part of and especially my 1^st baptism!

Elder Christensen: Letter 12/31/12 Holiday Week

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

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

Love Elder Christensen

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

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

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

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

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

Love Elder Christensen 

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

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

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

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

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

Love Elder Christensen

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

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