I'm Having the Time of My Life

Hello family and friends. This week was a bit better than last week.  We were able to balance the work with Elder Alvarena a bit better.  This week his trainee is going to come, so we'll be back to our area full time, which will be nice.

 

So I think a few weeks ago, I mentioned that we started teaching the Garcia family.  The Grandma is from Mexico, and one of her main purposes in visiting here is to convert her family.  The dad, Hector, has come to church 3 times out of the last month or so.  The weeks he hasn't come he was working.  He's looking like he'll be pretty solid.  He just needs to keep on learning.

 

This week, we set a goal as a district for everybody to hit their finding goals.  3 out of the 4 companionships were able to do it.  It was so cool having everybody on the same page.  It was the first week in the last 5 that finding was in the double digits for the district.  We had really been struggling with that in the past.  Our next focus is to keep finding in the double digits and church attendance.  We have seen that once somebody is willing to take the time to go to church, they are ready to do basically everything else that's needed.  We think that August and September are going to be sweet.

 

As for our area...  For a while, we were hanging on to people as long as they would let us because we still didn't have many to teach.  We are slowly, but surely, getting to the point that we can work the people a bit more. We have more people in our teaching pool than I ever have had in my mission.  Now, it's just a matter of sorting and aligning our schedules.  Everyone we are teaching are pretty tough to catch.

 

District leader stuff is still going well.  I kind of have a small idea what I'm doing now, but still not much.  If any of you have any ideas on getting a ward council functioning well, I would love to know.  We have some ideas, but since we don't have the keys, we aren't really sure what we can do or how we could counsel on that.

 

Now some fun stuff:  On Friday, we had a mission conference + summer party.  I didn't take any pictures, because tons of water was involved.  It started out with a 2-hour devotional kind of thing.  I absolutely love the leadership we have here.  I've decided that Pres. Becerra reminds me of Dad and Sis. Becerra reminds me of Aunt Susan.  They all talked about having faith in the moment and keeping your focus in the moment.  Then for the next 5 hours, we ate and played tons of games with water fights going on the whole time. 

 

In President's words, "Some people have asked me: 'is this really a good use of time?'  To them I usually say, 'There is a true principle in working hard, then playing hard.'"  When Joseph Smith was playing with some boys one day, a man rebuked him saying that that kind of behavior was below a prophet of God.  He responded with a parable that was basically, "A bow that is always drawn, ready to fire, will lose its elasticity."  So ya, we played hard.

 

Love you all so much.  I hope none of you are worried about me in any way.  I'm having the time of my life.

 

Elder Christensen 

Note from Mom: Tanner melted my heart when he told me he needed a new blanket for his bed because he gave his comforter to a 4-year old in their ward who has been sleeping on the floor with nothing. The comforter he took with him had sentimental value, so his giving that away makes it even more tender and meaningful. Ohhh...I absolutely LOVE what missions do to (for) these young men and women!!!

He Finally Sent Pictures!!!

Gotta love P-days!

Imagine Tanner's excitement when he met a professional ping pong player in his ward!!

Making lunch

The one thing Tanner said he would definitely be bringing home--A TORTILLA PRESS!

Elder Flores and Tanner at the Los Angeles Temple

In typical elder fashion--hanging a fan with a bungee cord and weight.  :) 

Tanner and Elder Smith enjoying items from the Cinco de Mayo package we sent them

I Love Latinos

Hello family and friends.  A HUGE thank you to my marvelous family for the package!  I will keep getting fat on candy, and then get skinny by playing frisbee.  It's genius!  I hope you all enjoyed your reunions and family time.  I was able to stay busy enough and laugh enough that I didn't really think much about home.

 

We'll get the fun, random stuff out of the way first.

 

The 4th of July was a little uneventful.  We went up to this super sweet hill that over looks downtown, and it looked like there were people setting off fireworks right downtown.  That was cool.  On this hill, you can see my old area in the distance, and I could only imagine how crazy in was over there.  I hope I'm back in East LA for next 4th of July.  We had to be inside before any of the big fireworks started.  Everybody was having BBQs and was acting like we didn't exist.  Kinda lame.  We were really hoping for an on-the-spot invite.  (On the note of on-the-spot invites, we had two this week, and both involved carne asada tacos, MY FAVORITE!!  I was excited about that)

 

I thought about Emmy on the 4th when we were eating at a place called Foster's Freeze. It's a lot like Ripples. (it's on Fletcher Drive near the LA river if you want to Google Maps it) We were in line and this guy starts mocking us under his breath to his wife. We start ignoring it, and then we hear another voice that was like, "oh wow..." kinda like "oh wow, are you really talking about them like that?" We thought that was cool and we turned around and started talking to the guy. He was super, super cool. Now, here's why I thought of Emmy. His wife is the President of Forever 21. Cool, huh? They are temporarily living in my area in some sweet new modern homes on a street I pass everyday. He went to a Singles ward with his friends back in the day all the time and said he always had a blast. He said he wasn't interested, but he came and sat at our table as we ate the whole time. He is about 40 or 50 and retired because he sold his Porsche restoration company and is now working for Jerry Seinfeld Porsche. So there's California for you. Super nice guy. Coolest part is that he was wearing a t-shirt and jeans. Looked super normal. But ya, there's the random story of the week. 

 

Now, the "I love Latinos" story.  We come home to our apartments, and there is a massive birthday party going on outside.  I think it was the manager's family member or something.  We live in a apartment complex full of latinos in the middle of Armenian-ville.  So there's the party going on, they have live Mariachi, and the manager is right at the front and he offers us tacos.  I'm pretty sure it was a peace offering so we wouldn't have any hard feelings about the noise.  We go back into our house, and the music was so loud, that it sounded like it was coming from inside our house.  It was hilarious. It gave us a chance to laugh out some frustration and stress with how our areas are going right now.

 

So now, down to business:

 

Elvia FINALLY GOT CONFIRMED!  For little things, she missed the 3 weeks following her baptism, but she's back and every week she felt super bad that she wasn't there.  She'll be solid.  We're going to start pestering the bishop a bit to give her a calling or an assignment sometime soon.

 

So this week, I was in a trio with an Elder named Elder Alvarenga from Salvador. The last two transfers (2.5 months) he was one of our zone leaders. I will be in a trio this upcoming week as well, then he will be getting a trainee. We are trying to learn as much as possible in the time we have with him.  We have the responsibility (pleasure, burden, opportunity, not sure how I feel about it) to cover two areas right now -- the area of me and Elder Smith, and the area of Elder Alvarenga and his future trainee.  Our new "area" as a companionship is about 10 miles long, so we are using the car a ton...a little too much. There will be a lot of biking near the end of the month. We both had a bunch of stuff set going into this week, which required us to bounce back and forth a lot. We tried to be in each other's area a lot each day, but this upcoming week, we are probably going to take days in areas so we can "get into the groove" as the disco kids say.  We'll also be a lot better at having members go out with him so that we can still go do our stuff.

 

As for new investigators, there's nobody that looks super prepared at the moment.  We are still sorting a lot.  We are going to start being a lot better at being consistent with the people that have the most potential.  We're figuring out that our lack of working with the members is starting to hurt us a bit.  We will be repenting this week.  We have some good stuff planned and we are starting to figure out when people are actually in their houses, so this week will be pretty sweet.

 

I hope all went well this week with everybody.  Next week, there will be fewer random stories, and more awesome inspirational missionary stories.  Love you all so much!

Elder Christensen

A Cool Week (but not in temperature!)

Hello friends and family!  This week was a cool one. (but not in temperature)  Thank you to all the friends and family for the emails.  Have tons of fun at all the summer reunions that are coming up.  It has been stinking hot here this week.  I assume it's nothing like what Jacob, Morgan, and all others are going through, but this is the first time in my mission that I have just been too hot.  I inherited a camelback from a missionary that's coming in handy.  (so yes, Mom, I'm staying hydrated)

 

So like I've described in the past few weeks, stuff has been going a little bit slow.  Stuff just wasn't really coming together, appointments were dropping all over the place, etc.  This week, it went much better.  We were able to hit the majority of our goals this week, which was definitely motivating.

 

So this first week as a district leader has been pretty cool.  So embarassing:  my first district meeting, I totally forgot my notes at home.  I was, luckily, able to remember all the scripture references and I was still able to pull everything back together, but it was way too stressful those first few minutes.  I've definitely felt the weight of the calling sinking in.  Our whole district has had a tough time the last few weeks.  Our area has the most latinos in it, so there's a little extra stress to have successful weeks.  Having a week like this week that went well eased a lot of the stress.

 

Unfortunately, Antonia dropped us.  I'm still not exactly sure what the problem is.  She felt like her whole life was getting thrown around and she wasn't really trying any of the suggestions we were giving her.  We took about an hour trying to explain how all this would help, but she just felt too busy to do any of it.  That one definitely hurt.  She told us to check back with her in September.  I think all this falling away stemmed from a comment from a family member, "You're only studying with them because you're lonely."  When she told us that a family member said that, I was stunned.  I think that comment just made her question everything.  It'll all work out.

 

We picked up some cool people this week.  There isn't anybody in particular that has the mentality of "baptize me now!" but I think we can work with them to get them there.

 

The Adversary is working on Elvia.  She missed church AGAIN.  We're super bummed about that one.  She still doesn't have the Holy Ghost.  She's still committed, just all this little stuff keeps getting in the way on Sundays.

 

This week, in addition to all the cool investigator stuff, we spent a lot of time with ward members.  There has been all kinds of crazy stuff going on recently.  The faith of some of the strongest members has been shaken.  We witnessed a lot of tears this week.  I'm so grateful that Heavenly Father cares enough for these people to bring scriptures to our mind to share with these people -- even when we haven't looked at those scriptures in months.  I'm still working on the purification thing, and I'm starting to see little changes.  I definitely have a long way to go, though.

 

Thanks, as always, for all the love and support.  I'm having a great time and my district is stacked.  Cool stuff is going to happen here in the very near future.

 

Love you all!

 

Elder Christensen

I'm Staying!!!

Hello family and friends. For the next 6 weeks, I will be STAYING!!!  AND, I will be staying with Elder Smith as well.  We have already been together for 3 months.  The time has been flying.  And, I have also been made district leader in Fletcher.  I have no idea what I'm doing or what President saw, but we'll see how that goes.  Family and friends that know what to do with all that, help please?  I'm super excited that I'm staying.

 

So this week was another kind of slow one.  And my time is a little short today.  Sorry.  After that amazing week with all our baptisms, our stuff has kinda been falling apart.  So we're currently in the rebuilding phase.

 

I hope that all of you had a chance to watch that leadership broadcast yesterday.  The whole time I was thinking, "Holy cow, I hope everybody is watching this!"  The hastening of the work is happening.  I'm pretty sure there's no arguing it.  In D&C 88, it talks about hastening the work around verse 75ish.  It's kinda nuts to see what's coming after the work is hastened.

 

For this week, I'm not really sure what to talk about.  We didn't have much happen.  With transfers, one of our zone leaders is now just serving as one of our district members in our ward.  So we basically have 3 zone leader quality missionaries in our ward now.  There's tons of potential here, we just need to get it going.

 

After the broadcast yesterday, President Becerra shared a few thoughts.  We opened up Luke 5; and applying what we read there, we are now, "launching out into the deep."  Going into new places where we aren't comfortable.  And the haul will be huge.  We are now working on hastening ourselves as the Lord is hastening His work.

 

Thank you for all your prayers.  I WILL be having some sweet stories to share this week.  One quick story.  Raul and Rosy went and did baptisms for the dead this past week without the missionaries committing them to do it.  They are amazing!

 

Love you all,

Elder Christensen

"...felt a little like Moses this week..."

Hello family and friends.  As always, thank you to everybody that sent me emails.  I'm a little short on time today, so sorry to those I was not able to respond to.

It's been an interesting week this week.  Felt a little like Moses this week.  When he went up to the mountain, he saw God face to face.  He saw and comprehended his power.  Last week, we saw God's power.  It was undeniable.  After Moses' vision, Satan came and tried to ruin everything good that had just happened.  Well this week was definitely a tough one.  I feel like we were definitely being tested this week.  We had lessons drop all over the place.  It was insane.  Numbers wise, it was like we were starting the area all over again.  It was just weird.

So updates and some of the stress we were going through: Cristina got confirmed (after showing up 15 min late), Elvia went out of town last minute, Raul and Rosy got confirmed (and I had a huge sugar drop right in the middle of the blessing).

This next week is looking a lot better.  We already have a few lessons set with some people we want to pick up. 

This week is the last week of the transfers, so hold off on mail to the Mariposa address for now.  I personally feel like I'm staying, but you know how it goes: anything can happen.

Sorry, time's a little short this week.  This next week will be a lot better.

Highlight of the week: Bishop in Bel 2 said, "Raul and Rosy, you are now officially members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Congratulations."  Temple in one year!

Love you all!

Elder Christensen

Additional comments...We asked Tanner in our letter if he ended up being able to golf as planned last P-day, and this was his response:

"YESSSS!!! And the place was a total dump. It only cost $5, and that's about what it was worth, BUT I LOVED IT! I played pretty bad, but every time I hit a bad shot, I thought, 'I'M GOLFING!'"

The most legendary, unforgettable weekend EVER!

Hello family and friends.  Really quick note on the package I got last week:  The guitar part you sent me was EXACTLY what I needed.  Now I just need to find somebody with a guitar amp. (It's sooo cool that President will let us play the guitar!)  And that Pi day shirt is so freaking awesome!  I've been wearing it almost daily.  One of the Elders in my apartment is thinking about studying math, so he really enjoys it too.  And Mom, I got your letter and if you haven't gotten the return letter yet, it's in the mail.

It seems like this week has kind of been a long one.  This is one of the few weeks that passed very, very slowly.  But we got everything done!  

Cristina: baptized (by Elder Smith, and I helped.  She has a bad back)

Erik: received the priesthood

Elvia: baptized by Erik (husband)

Raul and Rosy: baptized (Elder Flores baptized Rosy, I baptized Raul)

SATURDAY:

I don't really know where to start!  There were lots of little miracles along the way that made all of this possible.  We weren't positive that Cristina's baptism was going to happen until Thursday night, so attendance wasn't super awesome.  When they showed up, Cristina asked, "can my grandson get baptized today too?"  He's 7 1/2.  Darn...

After the baptism, we were in this stake play thing on the Book of Mormon.  Our ward didn't have enough people to cast our part, so all the missionaries were the robbers in the story of Ammon.  Unfortunately, I don't have any of the pictures, but I'll bug the bishop to get them.

SUNDAY:

Elvia's baptism was better advertised and we had a full room.  For any of you that have seen the District 2 videos that the church gives the missionaries, it was totally a Robles Family experience...a long time less-active comes back to church, gets the priesthood, and baptizes his wife.  There was such a special spirit there.

Raul and Rosy FINALLY GOT BAPTIZED!!!  And they mentioned one year until the temple like 3 times.  It was awesome.  Easily the best baptismal service I've been too.  And it was awesome being able to actually hug somebody that I've baptized, since all of them have been women up till now.  I admittedly got a little choked up during the baptismal prayer.  Then, another awesome moment, all of the missionaries there (and there were at least 10) were asked to sing "I believe in Christ."  Raul and Rosy had their hymn book open following along.  Then verse three, they started singing with us while they were still sitting in their chairs.

So, as a reminder, I got the call to come to my current area on a Tuesday night, and had to be in my area Wednesday morning, so I didn't have a chance to say bye to anybody.  I felt the worst about Jeaneth, my first baptism.  She came to the baptism Sunday, and it was awesome to get to say an official goodbye.  But it gets crazier.  So the baptism was yesterday, she moves to northern California TODAY.  So we got some pictures and stuff, said official goodbyes, and one of the last things she said to me was, "Thank you for baptizing me."  I was speechless.  She's still been active in church.  She was baptized 4 months ago today.

So ya, all this happened Saturday and Sunday.  Now I'm tired.  IT WAS ALL SOOOO WORTH IT!  

Today, we're throwing a mini-party for a sister, Hermana Thayne, that goes home at the end of this month.  It involves GOLFING!  She has told us that her brothers golf, she always wanted to go, but they never invited her.  We have a guy in our ward that makes cakes for a living.  He made a cake for her that looks just like her red dress she always wears.  We convinced her it was "National Red Day" so that she would wear the dress and then eat the cake that looks like her dress.  Hopefully it all works out.  I'm having a freaking blast! 

This upcoming week, we're going to be focusing a lot on making it perfectly clear what it is that we do as missionaries, and we're going to analyze which of our contacts are ready to keep going.  We still have tons of potential in our area.  I'm loving life, and it hasn't gotten too hot...yet.

Love you all so much, and thank you for all the prayers!  There were tons of miracles this past week!

Elder Christensen

Cristina (and 7 1/2 year-old grandson that wanted to get baptized)
(Tanner and Elder Smith)

Elvia and Erik
(Tanner and Elder Smith)

Raul and Rosy

Jeaneth (baptized 4 months ago)
(Elder Flores, Tanner, and Elder Blanchard)

A Crazy Roller Coaster

This week was a crazy roller coaster.  Man oh man!  We had some days full of zeros and other days where we entered every house we went to.  You can probably guess which type of days I prefer.  Thank you so much for the package, family!  Those little caramel things with Nutella are awesome.  Oh ya, I've become an even bigger fan of Nutella while being here.

Baptisms.  Last week, I described that there was potential for 4 baptisms.  Raul and Rosy's (in my old area) and two in our area.  And...drum roll please...they ALL got moved back.  Booooo, right?  The Elders wouldn't tell me why Raul and Rosy's got moved back, so that was on my mind a lot this week.  We weren't able to teach everything we needed to Christina, so we had to move that back.  Elvia was improving on her coffee consumption, but wasn't able to drop it all the way.

Now the good news about all these baptisms.  Raul and Rosy rescheduled for this upcoming Sunday.  When Elvia found out that she couldn't get baptized because of coffee, she said, "today will be my last day drinking coffee."  That was Thursday, and as of last night, she's done it!  She didn't come to church because she had a migraine and stomach pains for trying to go off of it.  Consequentially, Erik didn't receive the priesthood either.  Planning on having her baptism this weekend as well.  We had a great lesson with Christina last night and finished up everything we need to teach her.  She is so funny.  We sneakily asked her all the baptismal questions and she's all good except for her understanding of sin.  She doesn't think she sins much.  We are going to have her baptism this weekend.  Either Saturday morning so her husband can come, or Sunday afternoon with Elvia.

More good news, about 2 months ago, we started this area.  We are now just a hair short of the "standard of excellence" for the mission.  It's been so cool to be here and be a part of it.  We think our area can be its own ward.  So many latinos.  We just need to find them among all the hipsters.

We picked up a few new investigators this week.  They all seem pretty cool.  We stopped by this one inactive from El Salvador.  He's not on our ward list.  We were talking to him and he's been going to his wife's Christian church.  He was baptized as a teenager and never really read the Book of Mormon much.  He had his wife's uncle with him.  We decided to read 3 Nephi 11 with him and invited his wife's uncle, Ignacio, to join in. 

He responded, "I've already read it." 

"What?  What do you mean?" 

"I've read the Book of Mormon. With Nephi and Moroni and all of them.  I've read it."

"We're you baptized in our church in El Salvador?"
"No"

"Did you ever attend church in El Salvador?"

"No"

"Where did you get the book?"

"There was a doctor from the Church that came to El Salvador and he gave copies of the Book of Mormon to everybody he helped.  Then I read it."

How cool is that?  We'll be talking with him again on Tuesday.

This next week looks like it's going to be a stressful one.  We have two baptisms to plan and potentially two different services.  And we have the goal to beat the "standards of excellence" this upcoming week.  And we're in the car this week.

Love you all so much, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!  Sorry I didn't get the SD card to you.  My original plan was to wait for the baptism pics to be on there.  Hopefully you're okay with that.  Congrats to Emmy for being out of school.  Go golf for me.  Oh, speaking of golf: I found out there is a Par 3 course in our ward boundaries AND the bishop has golf clubs.  OH YES!  Hopefully next week!

Go read Hebrews 10.  The second half is my favorite thing ever!  "cast not away therefore your confidence....we are not are not of them who draw back...but of them that believe..." 

Hasta luego!

Elder Christensen