Sept 24

Bonjour mes chers amis!

Cette semaine était vraiment exceptionnelle, et je sais que c'est beaucoup grâce à vos prières, alors merci. :)

But really though, this week was fantastic.

Our prayers were certainly answered in many ways, we've met worlds of amazing people, and we've seen miracles every day. I love being a missionary. :)

Alright, so some highlights for the week. 

On Thurdsay we met a woman named Jenny. She takes care of 6 autistic kids, and she was really impressed with.... The law of chastity. Bahaha! She just went off for a good five minutes about how amazing it was that we don't "fait l'amour" before marriage. It was quite the interesting conversation that, we usually DON'T start an initial contact with someone by talking about the law of chastity, but I guess there's a first time for everything? :P Anyways, she's super excited to learn more about us, so I really can't complain about that. :) 

We also spent a lot of time knocking amongst the student housing (yes, there's a university here in our tiny town. :D), and have found many charecters in the process of doing that. We met one man that came from the edge of new brunswick. He spoke French, according to Elder Thia, but I certainly couldn't understand him at all. It was rediculous. Every time I think I've got French down, a new accent rears it's ugly (well, ugly might be harsh. We'll go with unusual) head. He told us about some of his relatives that speak a literal blend of French and English called shlack. Or something like that. Again, his accent. The example he gave us of that dialect was that when leaving they would say something like "watch moi je vais venir back". It was.... Interesting. I want to meet some of these people. :)

Other than that, me and elder Thia just knocked on a whole lot of doors this week. The great missionary fallback. Door to door. It was another one of those wonderful weeks where everything we THINK we have planned falls through every single day until Sunday when all of a sudden everything goes right. I run into a lot of those weeks. Go figure. Elder Thia is slowly adjusting to my American habitudes. He's finally stopped bringing me a knife when we sit down to eat, and he's started putting maple syrup on his bacon. Next week, I'll get him to put ketchup on eggs. :)

Do you all remember Marcel Tremblay? Funny old man with no teeth? Well, he's still amazing. the rest of our lessons with him went a lot like the one I detailed to you last week. Mostly our biggest problem with him is that his baptism is three weeks away, and we're out of things to teach him. :P We'll figure something out though, have no fear.

My mission president has a habit of dishing out tidbits of spiritual giantesse every week, so I'd like to share his latest one with you all this week as well.

"Agency is an interesting gift. We are not always free to choose our circumstances. Sometimes we can, but mostly 

we make a few big decisions and then live with the consequences of those decisions for long periods of time. Yet we 

believe that we have the gift of free agency all of the time. What gives?

Agency means that we can always choose how we respond to the circumstances that we are in. We can choose how 

we view our world and the life we live in it. We can choose to see our circumstances as hopeful or we can choose to 

view them as hopeless.  That is the nature of the choice that we make every day."

It's true though. Our Free Agency doesn't mean we get to choose the path of our lives, it means we get to choose how we walk that path. Do we skip or do we trudge? Do we keep our heads down and wonder why there's so much dirt on our shoes, or do we look around and take in the trees and sky? Our Agency is an interesting gift, but it's just that . A gift. One that we all have, and that we all get to decide what to do with. How are you using yours?

I'm going to use mine to make smoothies tomorrow. ; )

Alright, I've got some shopping to do, but! I love you all. Thank you again for the prayers and the support. It means a lot. :)

Love,

--
Elder Christensen

 

Always a P.S.

I almost forgot to tell you. Elder Thia rode the plane over here next to Elizabeth Smart. Yes, that Elizabeth Smart. He had no idea who she was. Most of his interaction with her was to borrow her barf bag. :P But I found out because she served in Paris, so she wrote her name down for him so he'd remember to say hi to some of the people she knew from there. Funny world eh?

I love you!

--
Elder Christensen

Sunset photo

Thought you might like this photo of a sunset, taken by Elder Heder, in my area. :)

Sept 17

 

Heya everyone! How's it going? I'm doing just splendidly, thanks for asking. :)

Training. Is. So boss. I'll be honest, I didn't want to train. I always said that Training was the one thing I never wanted to do on my mission. I'm sincerely grateful that the Lord didn't listen to me. :) My greenie is named Elder Thia Soui Tchong, but we call him Elder Thia for short. He's from France, but his ancestors are Chinese. Does he speak Chinese? No. Unfortunately. But! What he is really is amazing. He..... is a million times more ready to serve a mission than I was when I came out here. I feel like I'm about to spend the next 11 weeks learning a lot more than I teach, as far as this relationship is concerned. :P For starters, he's humble. That's a good quality to have for a missionary (and one that seems to be conspicuously absent from my list of strong suits..... :P). He's also very well-versed scripturally, and his testimony is rock solid. To top it all off, he's fearless. I abandoned him during a lesson last week, just to see what he'd do (I know I know, I'm so mean), and when he saw that I wasn't going to start talking again he just started testifying. It was glorious. The spirit was super strong. I'm so proud. :)

So. The week. Monday and Tuesday were spent with Elder Fitzgerald saying goodbye to everyone, and we drove down to Quebec city Tuesday night. I left my wallet home, so Elder Fitzgerald bought me a poutine so we could go have poutine together for his last day. What a guy. ; ) the next day we saw them all off. Then I went out teaching with Elder Teuira, my zone leader, while we waited for the new missionaries to come in, and we actually were a little bit late coming back to the bus station, so when I rolled up Elder Thia was standing there waiting for me. :P He's way quiet, so right at the start I wasn't sure how he was feeling, but I soon realized that while he's very introverted by nature, he's also hysterical whenever he opens his mouth. Or profoundly spiritual. Sometimes both. ; ) We went for poutine again as a zone next. We have a tradition here where the trainer buys his greenie his first poutine. Problem. I left my wallet in Chicoutimi. So my greenie bought me a poutine his first day in Quebec. :P That was the start of a beautiful relationship. We had a quick meeting with the Zone Leaders, then drove back home for the night. Thursday marked the first of many days where absolutely everything that we had planned was torn up and thrown to the floor, so we ended up spending a whole lot of time knocking, which means we spent a whole lot of time talking. Elder Thia and I are VERY different people, but in just the right way that we get along great. I'm really excited for these next few weeks. :) If you wonder what we're like together, imagine me, tall, loud, energetic, most politely described as Unrefined, and then imagine that my companion is small, quiet, reserved, and most accurately described as Refined. We're very much the stereotypical American and Frenchman. :)

I'll keep you updated on Elder Thia, but to date, that about sums it up.

During the week this week we met an Evangelical woman who started out our conversation by telling us that she did not agree with our book or our prophet, and ended up shortly thereafter inviting us in and offering us pie. Her name is Catherine, and I cannot describe how much I enjoyed the hour long chat we had with her. When we left we left behind a lot of church material, and a very curious middle-aged woman with a very different idea of mormons than she had had before. As far as I'm concerned, that's progress. :) We have an in to go back over sometime thanks to this incredible banana bread recipe that I picked up from a friend, so hopefully I'll have a bit more to say about her later on.

Also! Marcel Tremblay. Still doing great. We brought our Branch mission leader, Robert Truchon, to teach him a lesson about Jesus Christ. Frere Truchon is very bookish, and is great friends with Marcel, so he spent some time putting together some stuff for our lesson that he thought would help. We asked him what he had on the car ride over, and he gave us an astounding list of scriptural references about Christ being the creator of the World, the God of the old testament, and the only name under heaven whereby man can be saved, AND he listed off quite a detailed list of material on the importance of Joseph Smith as a prophet. I'll admit. I was afraid. So was Elder Thia. That's a LOT more information than you generally give to an investigator who doesn't fully understand why we pray...... but! A tiny voice in my head told me to go with it. So I told him we were going to let him teach the lesson and we'd just back him up. My poor companion looked at me with eyes the size of the moon.... hah! It was great. The lesson actually turned out great! Marcel has apparently decided that whatever Frere Truchon says is true, all the time. Which, actually, is accurate (he does a lot of research before he gives opinions on anything), and is also very useful for us. I'll give an excerpt from that lesson:

Fr. Truchon "Hugh Nibley said that no one in this dispensation can enter into the celestial kingdom without the knowledge and understanding that was restored to the Earth through the prophet Joseph Smith."

Marcel "Well of course. That's normal."

The missionaries "... Um, so you understand?"

Marcel "Of course! He was a prophet of God, that means we can't get to Heaven unless we know what he had to say!"

The missionaries "oh. Uh, great!"

That's pretty much how the lesson went. The biggest problem we had was that he didn't ask any questions at all, so we finished much quicker than we had planned. If I had a wish to make for every one of you, it would be that you could meet Marcel Tremblay. He's the funniest old man, in the world. :)

Alright, spiritual thought and then I'm out!

This week President Cannon sent a note to all the missionaries, urging us to continually work hard. He said "We can't be side tracked by results, our job is effort." I found that to be overwhelmingly true. Too often in our daily lives we get caught up in the results of our efforts. Sometimes we get discouraged if we don't see the "fruits of our labors" quickly enough. Even worse, we sometimes get prideful if we see those fruits too quickly. The results are important, don't get me wrong, they're just not our job. It's like President said, "our job is effort". What's the final step in the gospel of Jesus Christ? Enduring to the end. That's the step that we're all on as members of the church. The action word there isn't "end", but "endure". Our job is to keep going, to make an effort, to do our best, that's all Christ ever asked of us. The results, while they are important, they don't really affect us. If we're doing our best, really our very best, we can know with a surety that everything is going according to plan, and that at the end of the day we will have those results that the Lord has promised us. But it's not the end of the day yet, so for now we've just got to keep on running and quit worrying about the end of the race. 

I love all of you, thanks once again for your love and support, and please pray for my district. We need miracles this week. :)

Love,

--
Elder Christensen

 

(2nd email)

 

Hi momma!

Thanks for the news updates from home, It sounds like everyone's doing great. :)

Yes, I am District Leader as well.

I loved reading all of that about conference! I promise I won't go on using it to advise everyone around me, but I QUITE enjoyed it, nonetheless. Especially the parts you highlighted for me. ; )

In case you didn't get it from my email, training is going great. :)

I've got to run, but I love you! Please say "I love you" to dad, Jacob, Joshua, Jenseny, and Grandma for me. :) And everyone else too. ; ) 

Love,

Justin

Sept 10

So, transfers are this week. I completely spaced them this time around because I already knew what was happening to my companion. :P Elder Fitzgerald is being transferred to Orem Utah, but President didn't tell him who his next companion would be. He said he can figure that out on his own. :P But! My call was a bit surprising. 

Drum roll anyone?

........I'm staying in Chicoutimi! :D Also, I'm Training! :D My district is the really crazy news. In my district there are three areas, and of the six missionaries that will be in said district, I'm the one that's been out the longest. By two transfers. In Rimouski, Elder Pehrson is training, and he's only been in the field for six weeks, and in Alma (yes, there's a town called Alma, and no the church did not name it. The natives did. O.o) Elder Oviatt is training, and he's only been in the field for three months. District CAR (Chicoutimi, Alma, Rimouski) is going to be a brand new GREEN CAR!  Because of all the greenies. Get It? :D I was terrified at first, but as I was praying about it Saturday night after getting the call this huge wave of tranquility just hit me, with this overwhleming feeling that it's all going to be fine. Great even! Ever since then I've been nothing but excited to watch all the MIRACLES that I know are about to unfold! The other two trainers in the district are still freaking out, they feel a bit young, but they're both amazing missionaries and they're going to do great. We all get the greenies on Wednesday, so please pray for our new missionaries!

As for the week, it was insanity. Monday we drove for four hours and took a ferry to rimouski, tuesday we drove for three hours to Quebec city, and Wednesday we drove for another two hours back to Chicoutimi. We basically only had from Thursday on to actually work in our area. :P But! We still managed to have miracles. For example, Marcel Tremblay, the funny old man that's going to be baptized in October. We taught him the word of wisdom this week. We were nervous, because he used to be an alcoholic, and like lots of alcoholics that quit, he replaced the alcohol in his life with coffee. So we thought that could be a problem. :P When we brought up the word of wisdom we said "alright, there are five things that the Lord has asked us not to put in our bodies" then he pipes up "alcohol and drugs!" "

Yep, those are two of them. Also tobacco." 

"ah, right. Tobacco's nasty. I don't smoke."

 "Perfect, neither do we. Also, Coffee." 

"Coffee? Well that means the fifth one has to be tea."

He named off three of the five on the word of wisdom without having ever heard about it before. And he understood the other two without needing to ask any questions. That's a testimony to me about the word of wisdom. Even people with no idea what it is understand that that junk is bad for our bodies. :P

So, he then told us that he's already been trying to reduce the amount of coffee that he drinks because his kidneys are shot. So we read the promise with him, and told him that if he would keep the word of wisdom he'd see his health improve.

"Oh really?"

"yeah."

"well. Alright. I'll stop drinking coffee. Not because It will improve my health, just because I know I need to do it, and I don't like doing things halfway."

:D Marcel is so cool. He's French, but he knows a few random phrases, and one of his favorites is "Don't thinking it but doing it!" Which, as you can imagine, always cracks us up to hear. :)

Well, it's Elder Fitzgeralds last P-day as a missionary, so I've got to run so we can go enjoy his day! But, I love all of you! Thanks again for everything! Pray for my greenie!

Love,

--
Elder Christensen

Sept 3

Hey hey hey! Elder Christensen here, calling in from the far away land of Rimouski! We're on splits here now (beauty of having a district leader companion, splits.), and it's great. I was going to ask you to ask Chris Whetstein if there was anyone here in particular that he wanted me to say hello to for him while I'm here, but I forgot. But! We'll be here all day tomorrow too, so if you can get it to me like tonight there's a chance we'll still be able to see them. 

So, I'd like to start out this email with a news update from Chapel Hill! That was my last area, in case you've forgotten. ; ) I talked with Dear Elder Odle the other day and he told me how all of my old favorite people are doing, and in short, they're all doing amazing. Joe Balan, the husband of Patricia st.-Martin (the woman we baptized while I was there), will be baptized on the twentieth of October. Randy and Mary-Ellen Siba, a young couple we found right near the end of my time there, will be baptized on the 14th of October, and that's just the beginning. Almost every one of the wonderful People I was teaching in Chapel Hill are firmly on the path of accepting and living the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, and it's changing their lives. 

I'm so excited. :)

Now, as for my area, Chicoutimi, we're doing wonderful as well. Marcel Tremblay, a funny old man that we found on my first day here, is chomping at the bit trying to get himself baptized. We set his date for october 14th so we'd have time to teach him everything and he said "whenever you're ready, I'm ready NOW." Which, is awesome (though not true. :P). We're also working a lot with a young man named Donald who I may have mentioned before, and a few other marvellous people that would take FOREVER for me to tell everything about. Don't worry, I'm keeping a journal. ; ) Chicoutimi is the greatest area, in the greatest mission, in the world. (no offense)

So, my week. Highlights. Wednesday, we committed Marcel Tremblay to be baptized. That was definitely a highlight. Then, on Thursday I had a split with Elder Oviatt! He's from Canada, and it's his second transfer in the field. We had a lot of fun together. Elder Oviatt fits in our dryer. I don't. :p Also, he's a great missionary. His first two transfers have taught him a ton, and I'm super excited to work around him more. The best part about splitting young missionaries? High possibilities of being companions with them one day.

Saturday we had a corn chow. Someone told me that the most corn on the cob any elder had eaten at the branch corn chow was 14 cobs. So I ate 15. Yep, no worries, I'm still me. :P If any of you were thinking about whether or not eating 15 cobs of corn is a good idea, allow me to assure you, that it is not. The next 45 hours of your life will be less than comfortable at best. Also we had two less-active members come out that haven't been out to an activity of any kind in years. That was really exciting. :)

Then, yesterday in church, they anounced that Elder Fitzgerald only has 9 days left in Chicoutimi, and that we'll be out of town for the next three of them due to splits and Zone Study. By the end of Church we had eight dinner appointments set up during the six days that he has left in Chicoutimi. There are definite perks to having a companion going home soon. After that church was super tough for Elder Fitzgerald. His recent convert started crying talking about how much she was going to miss him. Elder Fitzgerald is an incredible missionary, and he's done a lot of good things for this branch. It'll be tough to fill his shoes when he's gone, but I've been really blessed to have spent this transfer with him. I've learned a lot. 

This next week is going to disappear. We're in Rimouski and/or Quebec for 3 days, and then our 5 days left after that are packed full. We've got a lot of working to cram into this short time, but we're excited and ready for it! Elder Fitzgerald wants to go out with a bang, and I pretty much try and do everything with a bang, so if you'll all pray for us I know we'll see miracles before he leaves. :)

I love you all. I love the gospel. I love this work. I love the Book of Mormon. I love sharing it. Elder Fitzgerald told me I give out more copies of the Book of Mormon than any other companion he's had. Oops? I just want everyone to read it, to REALIZE what's inside of it! I hope all of you read it everyday, and that you never take it for granted like I know I do sometimes. 

Well, until next week! Thank you for all the love and prayers!

Love,

-- 

Elder Christensen

Aug 27

Dear family and friends,

 

I have the best job in the world.

 

Love,

Elder Christensen.

 

Alright, so this week was incredible. First of all, we had zone conference in Quebec city, which was AMAZING! It was all about the Spirit, recognizing it, teaching by it, acting on it, it was completely marvelous. President Cannon showed us how to help people recognize the spirit in their lives by asking them if they've felt the fruits of it, and then after THEY have identified the good feelings brought on by the spirit, how to teach them that those things they just felt came from God. It was incredible. Also we learned how to make a delicious breakfast out of fruit, granola, and yogurt, so we've been eating unusually healthy and fantastically delicious breakfasts every morning since. :) We had the area health advisor come talk to us about the top ten healthiest foods and things like that. It was well received. Then, after zone conference, the members cooked for us. This is my plug for French cooking. It is exquisite. It is indescribable. It. Is. Everything I've ever wanted. They made us chicken, but it didn't taste like any chicken I've ever had before. It tasted like the celestial kingdom.

 

Then, we got to do splits with the zone leaders! There are several perks to having a district leader for a companion. One of them is that you get to go on splits with the zone leaders with full confidence that it's NOT because your companionship is having problems. :P I split with Elder Teuira, a big tahitian. It was great because he doesn't speak that much english, so we were pretty much forced to speak french the whole time, which was fine by me. The really great part was that I can UNDERSTAND his french! I love understanding the things that people say. :) So that split was very fun. Elder Teuira came up here to Chicoutimi with me, and little innocent me was completely confident that my experienced, native french-speaking zone leader would have my back in any situation, and I proceeded therefore with absolutely no fear at all of making any mistakes during my first experience taking charge of an area that I've only been in for three weeks where the people speak a language that I don't understand. Elder Teuira's a way funny guy, so basically the two of us just laughed, and talked, and taught, and knocked, and it was a very enjoyable day for the both of us. Everytime you do a split with one of your leaders they conduct a "stewardship interview" at the end so they can get all the details about your efforts to take care of the area that God has given to you, and give you constructive criticism and advice to help you improve. After our fun filled day, I was expecting a fun filled interview as well.

I was wrong. 

 

We sat down and prayed, and Elder Teuira's smile disappeared as he started to talk. He said "I've been watching you Elder Christensen" Uh oh.... I started making a mental list of everything I hadn't done right that day. Then he asked me a question "did you notice what I was doing today?" "Uh.... laughing?" That got a chuckle. Good sign. "No, I was acting like a greenie." "wait, what?" "I wasn't doing anything." Again, I started to review our time together, and I realized that he was right. He'd been really quiet during all of our lessons and door contacts. I thought he was just enjoying a nice break from responsability while he was out of his area. Nope. The dog was seeing how I'd react if I had a companion that didn't do anything at all. He was testing me!

 

Don't worry, he said I passed. :P

 

It made me think a lot though. In that moment when he told me he'd been watching me, my first thoughts went straight to my failures, the things I hadn't done right. But what Elder Teuira started to tell me about was all the things that I'd done right. All the good he'd seen from me. It made me think about judgement day, when we'll be brought before the bar of God with, in the words of the prophet Alma, "a perfect remembrance of all your sins". At that day, when meet God again, I imagine he's going to say "Son, I've been watching you." and we are immediately going to start reviewing our lives, and think of all the things we've done wrong. We'll be sweating, standing in front of our maker, just about ready to cry. Heck, maybe we will start crying, just from thinking about our screw ups, our mistakes, all the times when we didn't measure up. Don't we know they will be many, those heartwrenching memories. How hard will it be to stand in front of Him, knowing that He knows. Knowing that you failed. Because you HAVE failed. All of us have failed. It's moments like that when I realize how much I need Christ in my life.

 

Anyways, that was my deep thought for the day. Other than that, our week was amazing. We had TWO investigators come to church, and one of them, Donald, met with us afterwards and told us that he knows he's not living his life the way he should, and that he wants to change, but he's scared that he won't be able too. The kid's 15. He's a spiritual giant. We promised him we'd be with him every step of the way, and we're really excited to get to work with him more often. :)

 

Thank you for your love and prayers! I love every one of you. I attached a picture just to give you a tiny hint of how GORGEOUS Chicoutimi is, like an appetizer for in a few weeks when Elder Fitzgerald brings the jump drive back home. Thanks again for everything!

 

Love,

Elder Christensen.

 

P.s., mom. My camera came! :D I'm super excited about it. :P I love you!

 

P.P.s., your stories from the week made us laugh a lot. :) Kloveyoubye!

Aug 20

Howdy howdy howdy!

 

This week in Chicoutimi was chalk full of Miracles. With a capital M. Every day before we go to work we pray and ask for the Lord's help in accomplishing the things we have planned for the day. We figure that what with doing the work we do, we sort of can't do it without some divine help. In that same prayer, however, we always ask that we'll be able to accomplish His will, just in case OUR will and HIS will are contradictory, so He'll know that we know that His will takes priority. It's weeks like this week that convince me that My God has a sense of humor.

 

Last Monday we had nine lessons set up for the week, to which we were planning on bringing members of the branch. We like to bring members when we teach because it shows the Branch that we are, in fact, working, and it helps them feel involved in the work. Helps them catch the vision. Also it helps our investigators get to know the members, which makes coming to church easier. Basically, it's just a million times better with members at lessons. As a general rule up here, we have a tough time bringing members to our lessons, due to a lack of, well, members. This week was going to be different though, because we had nine lessons set up with investigators, and members ready to come to every one of them. Guess how many of those lessons we taught.

 

Two.

 

That's why I say this week was full of miracles. What we had planned..... didn't work out at all this week. None of it. What did work out was what The Lord had planned. Because everything fell through we spent a lot of our time knocking, and to break up the life of knocking we passed by old investigators and less-active members every now and then as well. We ended up finding a guy named Rock, just sitting on his back porch in his underwear (not uncommon for Quebec). He told us he was having some trouble in life right now, and he's been praying, but he's starting to wonder if God really hears him or not. He said "It's funny, you guys showed up today. I was just asking God if He really cares." We also bumped into a group of guys that we met last week, only this week that got super excited about the Book of Mormon and the pamphlets that we had. They cleaned us out. ; ) And then, to top it all off, we had another miracle man show up to church. The son of a woman who was baptized last december, who she has been trying to pray to church for almost a year now, showed up at church today, and told us he wants to keep coming.  This week, our plans got destroyed, but the Lord's plans were carried through. Our will was swallowed up in the will of the Lord. It was pretty cool. :)

 

Anyways, Gotta drive to Quebec city for a zone conference today, so I'm out! I love you guys! OH! I almost forgot, I found a funny scripture in the book of mormon! As a representative of Jesus Christ, I have to remain neutral in all political discussions, so I would never try and influence your decisions on who to vote for, but you should all go read mosiah 22:13-14 before voting. :)

 

I love you all! Keep me in your prayers, you know you're in mine. :)

Love,

Elder Christensen

Aug 13

Heya everyone!

So! Great week up here in Chicoutimi! Speaking of Chicoutimi, You should ask Brother Whettstein what years and what areas he served in. Thanks :) Also, the only Hélèn in our ward was just baptized two weeks ago, so the woman he was talking about is probably gone. But I'm told that most of the branch moved away a few years ago, so we're smaller than we were before. :P

 

Anyways, this week was awesome. We went on splits with Alma (yes there is an area of the mission called Alma, and no it's not a church name. The city was named by natives. Hmmm.....), where my good friend Elder Heder is serving! I was in the MTC with Elder Heder, and we rode the plane out here together, so going on splits with him was an awesome experience. He's a stellar missionary, more motivated than most human beings I've ever met. The drive of that man has turned the branch of Alma around completely, they just had a baptism a couple of weeks ago, and they've got two more investigators with baptismal dates, and a whole board full of progressing investigators. Elder Heder is an incredible missionary. So splits was great, it was really cool catching up with him again. We have a phrase in the mission "Miracle splits" because a lot of times miracles happen while we're on splits. That did not happen to us this time, but as soon as we unsplit and I was reunited with Elder Fitzgerald we had crazy miracles and found two solid new investigators. One of them, Martin, just saw one of our pamphlets and came up to us asking if he could have one and if we'd come back and talk with him about it. We're going back to see him again today. :) Missionary work is different up here. The accent is super hard to understand, and no one speaks english, but the members love us with everything they have, and they love teaching with us too. Me and Elder Fitzgerald are praying fervently that we'll be able to have one more baptism in Chicoutimi before he goes home at the end of the transfer. Hélèn is the first baptism Chicoutim has had in about a year as well (Funny how my areas all some to be recently baptism deprived...), but we both feel strongly like the work here is about to start moving like it hasn't in too long. So, keep us in your prayers. :) 

Something I learned during my studies this week that hit me pretty hard was in Mark 4: 15 - 20. It's the parable of the sower, where it talks about the different kind of ground that the seeds fall on, and the end result produced by each of those different kinds of ground. The thing that struck me was that of the five patches of ground, only one became fruitful. There was only a fifth of the ground where the sower sowed the seed that obvious visible results came from, but even the four non-fruitful patches of ground were affected in some way. When the seed is sown, it has an impact. All the time. Everywhere we cast the word of God, everywhere and with everyone that we plant gospel seeds, there is an impact. How extensive that impact is depends in large part on their own agency, on the choices they make, on the "quality" of the ground of their soul. Nevertheless, every patch of ground on which it is sown is changed, and while we can never know before hand exactly how much impact that seed will have, we can know with a surety that if no seed is sown at all, the ground will remain barren. 

Mark 14:4 "The Sower sows the Word"

We all have the seeds. It's up to us to plant them. Don't let those opportunities pass you by. 

 Well, I'm sorry these letters are so short nowadays, but my area is GORGEOUS and I want to make the most of my time in it, so I'm going to call that good for now! Feel free to e-mail me if you have any other specific questions. I love you all!

--
Elder Christensen

From Br. Wettstein:

My first area was Rimouski, which, along with Chicoutimi, are the two furthest north areas in the mission.  Rimouski is on the west side of the Gulf of the St. Lawrence (on the Gaspe Peninsula), and Chcoutimi is on the west side of the gulf on the mainland.  When I was there, the missionaries they sent to Chicoutimi were 6' 6" and 6' 7".  Needless to say, they were the tallest people in the entire city.  When they went tracting, they often scared the people to death when they answered the door (I was also the tallest guy in Rimouski, and I'm only 6' 1").  For some reason, the further north you go, the shorter the people get, so there's a good chance he'll be Gulliver over there.

He should be happy he's going this time of year.  I was there in the middle of winter.  With the wind chill, it got down to 110 below one day.  When it warmed up to a balmy 70 below the next day, we went out and broke off (note: not chopped down) our Christmas tree.  It was stoopid cold.  The waves in the gulf freeze close to shore.  Imagine walking out on the ice, and you have to navigate between 6' waves.

We had a baptism in Chicoutimi of a lady named Helene. I can't remember her last name.  But she's short (natch) and kid of round.  She was a journalist, and she spoke pretty good English for someone from so far north.  I wonder if she's still there . . .

Thanks for the update.  Give Elder Christensen my best.

Chris

Aug 6

Dear Family,

This is not Elder Christensen. This is actually his companion, Elder Fitzgerald. I'm from Orem so we're pretty much neighbors. You're son is super slow in his emails. Probably because we have no deadline or time limit so I'm writing you for him. He might add on more information.

So to answer your questions. Chicoutimi is about 2 hours north of Quebec City or 5 hours north or Montreal. On a map it is usually called Saguenay because there are technically 3 big cities in our area: Chicoutimi, Jonquiere and La Baie. About 10 years ago they merged it all and they call it Saguenay because the river next to us is called the Saguenay. There is a little history about the area. We live in Chicoutimi though and that is where the branch is located. We have about 40 active members so it's really small. The chapel that we go to was the first chapel built in Quebec so that's a cool fact for you guys.

So for the week we just had. It went really well. We found 2 new investigators. The first is a guy named Marcel. He is really hard to understand for both of us because his accent is super hard and he has no teeth. We taught him about the Book of Mormon and invited him to be baptized but he doesn't want to yet because he thinks it isn't God's will. He also decided to come to church so we'll see if he is really committed or not. We also met a lady named Nancy. She's a mom in her 40s and she doesn't really have any belief in God but believes in good values. Your son did a really good job talking to her in French. She has 4 kids and we talked about how our message can help her with her family and she is interested so we'll see what we can do.

We also taught a recent convert named Helene. She was baptized last week and yesterday she got the gift of the Holy Ghost. She is a really cool lady and super funny. She's in her 60s and she loves to talk. She was super happy to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. That is what we taught her about. She also gave us blueberries and pineapple which are your son's least favorite fruit but that's ok it means more for me. Just joking though, your son is really great I'm excited to work with him. We're going to have lots of success.

Well, I'm not sure what else he's going to add to this. We're going to have lots of miracles. It was nice talking to you. I'll probably come see you guys when my mission is over if that's ok.

Love, Elder Christensen (through Elder Fitzgerald)

July 30

Momma! Oh my goodness, I have SO MUCH to write to you about! Alright, where to begin... Lets start with last week!

 

First of all, my split with Elder Rasmussen! Elder Tarrin Rasmussen is from American Fork. I knew of him in high school, but never actually KNEW the lad. We had a split last week, which was awesome. It was cool to get to talk to someone from good old A.F. we just went out knocking for like six hours. That could have been very unenjoyable, but with Elder Rasmussen it was super fun. We laughed incessantly all the day long, and I feel like we had something really cool spiritually happen too, but I can't remember. :P Then the next day we found Rick. Rick is an Italian man, that seemed a bit.... shaky... at first, but turned out to be miraculous! After our survey he said "alright, I just have one question for you guys. What took you so long?" It turns out that about six years ago he had missionaries over all the time, but they just dried up and stopped coming one day and they hadn't seen them in years. So, needless to say, he was super excited to see us, and invited us over for dinner. :) We haven't been back yet, but we're super excited to go see him.

 

Next! I don't know why I wrote Brian Powell.... Man. Remind me to never do this whole "quick reminders for myself next week" thing again. But, he DID threaten to call president Cannon if I got transferred. He's a funny guy.

 

Alright, on to the REAL stuff! So this week.... was long. We knocked on a lot of doors, and we just didn't see very much success. But! We did meet this woman named Holly. She's a friend of one of our members that I've actually met before, and the member asked us to drop her off a new book of Mormon because she'd lost hers. So we did. Our innocent drop off of a book of Mormon quickly turned into a lesson when Holly started asking all sorts of questions, and then she asked if we could come back some time. THAT was super cool. :) Other than that, our week this week felt significantly less productive than other weeks that we've had, even though we worked much harder than we have in the past. It was a little average, right up until the end! We went to help some of our new investigators paint their kid's rooms, and found out that they'd both started reading the book of Mormon, and they'd been praying together and individually, and it was just awesome! Randy (the husband) doesn't understand the Book of Mormon at all. He had to go get a dictionary and a thesaurus to look up words he didn't get, but he still reads. He texted us yesterday asking if we could come over and read it with him so he can make sure he understands, because he'd read another chapter and felt like he wasn't getting much out of it. He's a stud.

 

The best part? They both came to church on Sunday. :) They're a miracle, and they're SUPER prepared. :)

 

Other than that, our only real excitement was that TRANSFER CALLS were this week! We got a phone message from an investigator named Lise saturday afternoon, telling us that she'd read the chapters we'd left her the day before (she read for the first time ever!) and that she really liked the book, and then she thanked us for touching her life, and told us how much she'd miss us if either of us were transferred. It was amazing. I love the people here so much.

 

On that note, transfer calls. Drumroll please? I will be spending my next six weeks........... in Chicoutimi! A decent sized town in Northern Quebec, the closest other missionaries to which are between one and two hours away. It's one of the three "Booney's" areas of the mission (Chicoutimi, Alma, and Rimouski). So. I'm leaving on Wednesday, and my new companion will be Elder Fitzgerald, who is on his last transfer. There are 15 new missionaries coming in this transfer, so everyone in the entire world is training, including Elder Odle, who will also be serving as District Leader here in Chapel Hill. My prediction is that next transfer, when 13 MORE new missionaries come in and Elder Fitzgerald leaves, I'll be training in Chicoutimi, so I'm gearing up to learn as much as is humanly possible from the exceptional missionary that I'm about to have for a companion!

 

I'm sad to leave chapel hill. Saying good-bye already started, I put one of my tags on the Riviere(our haitian family)'s fridge, the ward told me farewell on Sunday, and the next couple of days are going to be spent visiting all of the people that I've become so close to in my time here and exchanging information. I love this ward, this place, these people, more than I thought I COULD love, and while leaving them is going to be like tearing off a piece of me and leaving it behind, I know that what I'm going to find in Quebec will be even more amazing, and I'm so excited to see what miracles the Lord has in store up there! I love this gospel. I love being a missionary. I love all of you.

 

Love,
--
Elder Christensen

P.s., No. I don't have bad days. :P It's kind of weird... I haven't had anything close to a bad day since getting into the MTC.... I mean some days are better than others, but the worst days I've had have been pretty alright days in my book. And yes mom, I do write in my journal every single night. :)

 

I love you! you should send me some more stories about your mission. :) Oh! And if you could send me a picture of the family that I can carry in my wallet, that'd be cool. Everyone makes fun of me because I have Tash in there and not you guys. :P Kbye!

July 23

I love you guys lots, but I'm quite pressed for time today, so I'll have to postpone this week until next week.... I'm just going to make a note that next week I need to tell you about my split with Elder Rasmussen, Rick, and Brian Powell. Also, there's a guy in my ward named Leonard Reil that went to school with Chad Kroeger, lead singer from nickelback, cool huh?

Kloveyoubye!

--
Elder Christensen

July 16 part 2

Hey again! It turns out I had a bit of extra time today because Elder Odle had to finish some emails too. So! I'm here to give a quick report of my INCREDIBLE week!

 

To begin with, this week was an off week because of that weird study on Monday, and our P-day being on Tuesday, then we had Elder Odle get sick on Thursday, and our Friday was given away to unexpected time constraints. So, we ended up only actually having Wednesday (which was pretty uneventful), Saturday, and Sunday to do our "usual" Missionary work. That being said, between Saturday and Sunday were miraculous, and we ended up doing about four days worth of work in those two little days, so our week ended up being about as productive as.... any... other week.... Which was a miracle! :D It's all in the details my friends. ; )

 

I found a couple things out this week. First of all, if Justin Taylor ever reads this, he should know that an Elder Oscar Dimas who served with him in the Philippines recently returned from his mission, to the ward in which I am currently stationed. WHAT?!?! That's right. Secondly, vertigo (or a spinning sensation in the head) can be brought on by a number of things, including rapid shifting of the pressure in your head, which is sometimes a side effect of having a lengthy cold. How did I learn this? My companion Elder Odle got vertigo Thursday. The poor guy could barely go to the bathroom by himself (I said barely, but he did in fact manage it all by himself thank you very much.).

 

Also yesterday we met a family that began investigating almost two years ago, during Elder Odle's first transfer out of the MTC, and then stopped investigating because a missionary turned them off. Principle: The more potential you have to do GOOD, the more potential you also have to do HARM. Please, whenever you are acting in a church calling, remember who you're representing. I have seen SO MANY TIMES out here the harm that has come when a missionary has spoken or acted rudely or unthinkingly. I guess what I'm trying to say is "O be wise; what can I say more?". Anyways, we met with them, and they're SUPER awesome, and way gung ho about learning about the gospel again. Granted, even the most golden of investigators sometimes turn out to be less than they appear, but this family really seems legit. Randy and Maryellen Siba, they have two children, Vegas (age 5) and Phoenix (Age 2), who are adorable, and they are looking for answers to all the right questions. So! You'll probably hear more about them in the future. :) Today for P-day we went to see the Canadian Parliament! That was way cool (Although, it's not nearly as cool as..... whatever our equivalent of Parliament is), but super hot. The humidity up here in Canada is KILLER. I'll send back a couple of pictures from my day.

 

Well, that's about all I've got time for. I love all of you, as always, and I'm super stoked to hear from you next week! Keep me in your prayers! You know you're all in mine. :)

 

Love,
--
Elder Christensen

Photos July 16

Elder Odle and me!

Justin and Tracy! Two of my all-time favorite investigators, who we helped move to London. :(

Sister Gagnon, her youngest son Daniel and me! You know the guy that emailed Mom for ideas of which speech bubbles to paste on the photos of me he raided from my Fb? His wife. We <3 Gagnons!

The Canadian Parliament and their Ever-burning Flame!

Elder Blank and me posing as the statues of two important Canadian Men. Elder Blank is terrible at statue posing.

Canadian Library of Parliament! The oldest building in Ottawa.

Myself doing a gargoyle imitation.

A unicorn carved into the front of the Parliament building. Also myself, pretending to be said unicorn.

My zone in front of Parliament! From left to right: Elder Duran, Bigson, Myself, Godoy, Meza, Odle, Pistorius and Blank. We're missing Elder Williams and Elder Rasmussen (From AF!).