Apr 23

(Justin's - I mean, Elder Christensen's - birthday was last Saturday, April 21.)

 

Ah the missionary life. :)

 

Thanks for all the birthday wishes! I won't have time to email anyone back directly today, but tell Jake Thanks for me and I'll shoot him an email next week. We had a lack of computer time this week, so. :P

 

Thanks for the package! We only get mail once a month. I'm about three hours away from the mission home, where all the mail goes, so we only get it once a month when the AP's come down or the ZL's go up for trainings. So. No worries about mail. :P Dad, that counts for dear elders too, just so you know. But! I do enjoy getting written mail, even if it only comes once a month. Just makes it easier to focus. :P

 

My companion! His name is Elder McLean, and he's from AUSTRALIA!! :D cool huh? He's probably the coolest guy in the world, and we teach really well together. :P This week we placed a book of mormon and got a return appointment with *Drum Roll* Une Temoin de Jehovah! Yeah, I'm teaching a JW. That's the spirit for you. ; ) I'm probably going to lose her now due to pride. Dang it.

 

So! This week was insane. It was definitely a lesson in how to reschedule. I don't think we had a single appointment all week long that we didn't have to change in some way, and we ended up spending a lot of time just out knocking. I actually love knocking. You get to have the best experiences. :) We've been trying to teach this woman named Sandra since my first day here, but she's been REALLY hard to schedule with. We finally taught her this week, and she's so prepared. She was in tears as she talked about how she knows theres a life after this life and how she'll get to see her dad again, it was awesome. We basicaly just asked what she thought about this or that and listened to her teach us about the plan of salvation. I wanted to sing. (I may or may not have sung for reals, after we left. :P) 

 

We had a lot of good things like that this week. We have a lot of good things like that every week. :)

Highlight of the week, wanna hear it? We got a phone call this morning. The Zone Leaders. They told us they got a call from a ward member saying they're worried about the missionaries (us) and they think there may be some inappropriate contact going on between them (us) and some of the young women. That freaked me out. A lot. We spent the whole morning racking our brains trying to think of anything we could have done to make someone think that. We get together as a zone on P-days sometimes, so the ZL's asked us if we could just chat when they showed up. They split us up and I sat with Elder Blank and we went through the talk "Lock your Heart" By Spencer W. Kimball. He was deathly serious. Elder Anderson (The other ZL) called him out in the middle of our interview. I was terrified. I thought Elder McLean was going to be sent home or something. It was the single most frightening moment of my mission. Then the door burst open and the entire zone ran in with a cake for me singing "happy birthday." I hit Elder McLean.

 

Man, I don't have any TIME!!!

 

Yes we have a microwave, Skyping would be difficult and I still have that phone card so I'll probably just call on Mothers Day, anytime is fine. It's one twenty five our time, I don't know what time it is your time. :P I think we're on Eastern Time.

 

We had eleven investigators at church this week. And our four regulars didn't show up because their baby was sick. Miracles happen when you make cookies for people, I'm just sayin. ; )

 

Alright,time to share a spiritual thought. Read Alma 14-16 and think about Amulek. An ANGEL told Alma and Amulek where they were supposed to go. What sort of success do you think they were expecting? Do you think if an Angel of the Lord told you to go to this city and teach them about the church you'd expect a lot? What ended up actually happening? Where they succesful? Of course they were, but probably not in the way they expected. The question I really want you to ask yourself is this, what did Amulek sacrifice in order to serve the Lord? What have you sacrificed to serve? What WOULD you sacrifice to serve? Would I give my life? Gladly. Would I give my companions life? That's a harder question to answer. Would you let your child die to save someone else's life? I don' think I know a single person that could answer yes to that question with any certainty. That's what God did for us. Think about it. Say thank you sometime.

 

I love all of you! Especially you. And you. Oh alright, you too. ; ) Sorry the email was short, I'll do better next week. Bye!

Apr 16

(Note: I sent Justin the Dictionary.com Word of the Day this morning:
aperçu \a-per-SY\ , noun:
1. A hasty glance; a glimpse.
2. An immediate estimate or judgment; understanding; insight.
3. An outline or summary.
Aperçu literally means "perceived" in French. It entered English in the 1820s.)

Today's Letter:

Mom. Oh goodness gracious, mom. That was a joke. When I said I thought I emailed you yesterday, what I meant was that it FELT like only yesterday was our last p-day. *sigh* ; ) Speaking of, it did it again! Time here disappears. I'm halfway through the first transfer. I don't understand how this happened. Oy.

 

So! This week has been AWESOME! I could tell you all about it, but that would pretyt much mean chilling here in the computer lab for the rest of the day.... and I've got some hiking to do! So I'll give you a brief aperçu (Look momma!).

 

That guy Herbie we contacted? Haven't been able to get in touch with him since. :P He'll set up appointments willingly and happily, but he always reschedules them the same day. I can see how I could get frustrated with that, but he's Haitian, so it just makes me smile every time. :) I love Haitians. They have become my favorite kind of people. It's actually way sad, here in the Canada Montreal Mission we have a very high percentage of Haitian investigators.... but a very low percentage of Haitian baptisms. They're just so happy to have anyone over to their house anytime, and they love to talk about whatever you want to talk about (they REALLY love to talk. Whew!), but they seem to struggle with keeping commitments. Like I said, it's sad. But! I love them anyways. :)

 

In the process of trying to contact Herbie, we stumbled across a young man named Zebair (Seh-Barr). We just knocked on his door and started talking about the restoration, and when we explained the book of Mormon the first words out of his mouth were "Where can I get one of those books?". Hah! So we grudgingly handed over one of our precious copies of the Book of Mormon. ; ) Anyways, he works nights so we haven't been able to get an appointment set up with him since, but it's funny to see the Lord work like that. We're still trying. :)

 

We also met a guy that works at our favorite gas station (Petro-Canada) named Justin. He looks a lot like I did a few years ago, and I recognized the music he was playing behind the register pretty quickly. I'm now tight with the guy that works at my favorite gas station. No big. :)

 

Alright, time to get to the real highlight of this week! Patricia. She's a woman who's been investigating for a while now, and her parents are members. She had a baptismal date for Saturday, but we hadn't seen her for like two weeks straight so we moved it back a bit. She said she'd been feeling a lot of pressure from the previous missionaries, so we backed off the pressure on baptism and spent all of our time just showing her how much we love her! I baked her cookies. (they came out of a box.) She raved about them. (They came out of a box.) I confessed their origins. (out of a box.) She laughed at me. (Stupid box of cookies.) So I promised to make her some more. (not out of a box.) :) The last lesson we had with her was just incredible. We taught about families living together forever and I just straight up told her how much we loved her. I didn't cry. No matter what anyone tells you. It was great. :) Patricia didn't show up to Church on Sunday. We haven't been able to get a hold of her all week, and the card we put in their door saturday is still there today. We don't know what's up, but I wanted to ask you to pray for Patricia and Joe. Please?

 

We've also been spending a lot of time working with a less active family, Brian and Bridget Powell. They're my favorite family in the ward to visit. We saw them three times this week. :) On our second visit we successfully...... punched a hole in their wall. With a couch. Don't worry about it. Anyways, Brian promised us he'd come to church yesterday, and he didn't. :( We saw them yesterday night and basically just chatted. About the gospel, why it was important to them, why they had first decided to join the church, it was great. Brian told us that they both love having us over because by the time we leave they just feel good. It was awesome, hearing that come from him. :)

 

I heard a quote once. "Whatever kind of missionary the members think you are, you are." If that's true we're the best missionaries in the world! The members here love us. Actives and inactives. Every single person I've spoken to from this ward is just incredible, they're all so nice and loving! We get fed every night. Every. Single. Night. I love these people. :)

 

Alright! That's all I've got for today I guess. Thanks for your love and support everyone, and keep up the great work. :)

 

Love,

Elder Christensen.

EMAIL ADDRESS

jraychristensen@myldsmail.net

April 9

Heya guys! How are things going? I'm relatively positive that I emailed you all yesterday.... but my calendar (and my companion) tell me otherwise. So. :P

 

Thanks for all of your letters! It's great hearing about the family and everything. :) Tell Chris I'm in Chapel Hill right now, and ask if he knows anyone from here.

 

This week was a good lesson in how to WORK! We had a whole lot of things fall through all over the place, so we spent a lot of extra time finding. We dug through the area book with a bunch of old investigators and all that, and we called a whole lot of people who weren't super friendly, but we found four that said they'd love to meet with us again! But they couldn't set up dates then. So! We set ourselves up with four really solid potential investigators for next week. :P\

 

Allow me please to bear testimony to all of you of the power of member missionary work. There is a family we are teaching called the Riviere's, they're a Haitian family that's been living in Canada for a while now. They're all really cool, and they have a baptismal date for mid-may (they're waiting on some legal business before they can get baptized.... it's a bit personal to them so I won't share it). Since they have been involved in investigating the church they have decided that, even though they can't be baptized just yet, they're essentially members of the church, and have made themselves a part of this ward family. They are always inviting their friends to come to church with them, telling everyone about this new religion they've become a part of and how it's blessed them. Many of their friends don't want anything to do with us, and that's fine, and they stay friends. A few of them, however, have become interested. I say a few, but at church this week we had twenty non-members come because of this one family. twelve of that twenty are actively investigating the church with us. There is no way in the world that Elder McLean and I could have got those people out to church, let alone ever even TALKED to them, but lo and behold they were all at church for easter, able to feel the spirit there, meet the ward, and learn about the gospel, all because of one family (and really two people, Gary and Suze, the parents) that wanted to share the joy they had found here. in 2 Timothy it says "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of courage. Fear not thou, therefore, the testimony of our Lord..." This is me pleading with everyone who reads this, DON'T BE AFRAID OF YOUR TESTIMONY! You don't have to walk around preaching to people to make an influence, just be open with your beliefs! LIVE the gospel, make it the focus of your life! When people ask you questions don't look for ways to avoid talking about church, but try to find ways to bring it up! If it is the center of your life, prove it. "If ye believe these things see that ye live them." That's all it takes to change lives.

 

Our miracle for this week is named Herbie. We were knocking doors at an appartment complex before a service appointment (we met a woman named Caren! :D), and we stumbled across a big Haitian man sitting out in the sun. We had two specific house numbers we were trying to find, but Elder McLean said "Hey, let's go talk to this guy." So we walked up and started talking with him. We mentioned life after death and the man instantly launched into his testimony of a life after this one, and how he knew it. When we brought up the church we found out he has two brothers who are branch presidents for the church in Haiti. We mention the Book of Mormon, he has a stack of them at home. We mention teaching him, he was being taught before, he only stopped because he was hospitalized. We ask if we can come back, he happily sets up a date and gives us his apparment number. We start to walk away, he stops us and makes us take out our planners and watches us write down his address and phone number so he can be sure we're coming back. Herbie is a miracle. The Lord prepares people to hear His message. They're waiting for us, and the only way to find them is to follow the promptings, and to have no fear. Because where fear abides, faith cannot.

 

There's your message for the week! Please send me Each of the kids email addresses so I can email all of them individually, and know that I love you!

 

Also, I'm good to email pretty much anyone, so you can post my e-mail address on the blog if you want. Oh! The blog! Have Jake look into the pictures bit, he'll know how to do it. :)

 

Love,

--
Elder Christensen

April 2

Heya family!

 

So, my P-days here in the field will be on Mondays from now on. Ta-da!

 

I travelled here to Canada with 2 other Elders. We talked to a lot of people about the gospel and why were here, spent an hour walking from one end of the detroit airport to the other just to get to our gate, and were bought lunch by a friendly member of the church (we tried to say no, but as it turns out some people REALLY don't like to be told no....). It turns out there are members of the Church EVERYWHERE! And everyone notices missionaries! People would stare at us trying to figure out why we were in suits, and then we'd make eye contact and smile and they would freak out, drop their eyes, and speed up to get away from us. People aren't used to noticing eachother I guess. :P My mission president, his wife, and the two Assistants to the President were at the airport when we arrived here. The airport was a nightmare. We were in the immigration office for two and a half hours trying to get visas. Holy cow. But! We left a pass-along card and a commitment to learn more about us with the immigration officer, who had no idea who mormons were. :P So that was good. I met Elder Day! I definitely knew him from school. There's another Elder here who I went to School with. Elder Rasmussen. So my first day I stayed at the mission home with President Cannon, and the second day I hopped on a bus to shuttle down to my first area.... Chappel Hill. A ward in Ottawa city. My first area of the mission is English speaking. I knew this would happen. :P But! I love it. My companion is named Elder McLean, and he's from Australia. I really enjoy him, and we get along great. :)

 

My week has been INSANE so far! I mean really, incredible. When I got to the area, we went out for my first dose of poutine, the fries covered in gravy that brother Whettstein raves about, and it was great, and then we went straight to our first appointment. A haitian man named Rousseau.... who speaks french only. What? So my first appointment was in French, in my English speaking first area. Such is life? It was good. He's a cool guy. I walked into an area with 13 investigators, but only 8 of them are progressing, so we've got a lot of work to do. Some miracles for you! We went out finding on one of my first days and we hadn't been praying before we tried to find, so I asked Elder McLean if we could pray before we went out this time and he saied "Oh, right, of course we can!" So we did. We saw a very small woman standing on the street corner in the dark IMMEDIATELY after we got out of the car. She surprisingly did NOT run away from the two men walking out of the dark in big coats towards her (Hah!) and we had a pleasant chat, taught a brief lesson, and set up a return appointment. My very first new investigator. :D There is POWER in prayer. I can't stress that enough. Miracle number two! During conference (which I was able to watch at the church) the satelite dish started having problems. I said a quick prayer, and as soon as I said the word "Amen" and open my eyes, the problems disappeared. Bam. Some might call that chance, I call it my own personal little miracle. Dad loves His children. :) Also we had a woman come up to us after the last session of conference and begin telling a tale about her ex-husband. I didn't understand the point of it, until she started talking about the church too. Her ex isn't a member, but because their son is he's been keeping up to date on church news, conferences, and reading the book of mormon. He's reading it faster than his son and ex-wife are. So she said she hadn't wanted to talk to us, because she thought it would be awkward since he was her ex and everything, but she felt the spirit touch her heart during the conference and she knew she had to. We called him ten minutes later. He was in the middle of reading the Book of Mormon, and just started laughing when he heard who we were. We have an appointment next tuesday. The church is true. I've seen SO MANY MIRACLES in my short time here, it's amazing! And while I've been especially blessed by a ward that's more active in missionary work than most, and area that's been very prepared, I know that God blesses all of his missionaries with the same spirit that I feel out here. Joy. The reason behind missionary work. Joy. :) I'm out of time for this week, but PLEASE go read and study the conference talks! They were some of the best I've ever seen! And mom and dad, thank you for always striving to raise our family with the gospel. You two are the best. :)

 

Josh, Jens, and Jake, I love you too. Even when I'm arguing with you. ; ) Thank you for always being there for me. And Jenseny, don't worry, I'm sending you an e-mail later today. I didn't forget about you. Sheesh. ; )

 

Spiritual thought!
Well, prayer. Is my spiritual thought. Nephi councils us to consult the Lord in all our doings. Or was that Alma? Either way, it's good advice. Remember, God is our Father. We are His children. Think about how much earthly fathers enjoy hearing from their family, especially when they're away from home. Our Heavenly Father is the same way. He misses you. You're far away from home. Prayer is the way you can pick up the phone, and give Dad a call. Think about it.

 

I love you! More than you even know and more than ever before, I love all of you. Keep me in your prayers? You're always in mine. :)

 

Love,

Elder Christensen.