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