Aug 26

2 Nephi 2:27

 

Free Agency is probably the most frustrating of God's creations. :P

Well, this week was good! We had a lot of things fall through, many many changes in our plans, but we still had a good week. We had two companion exchanges, so poor elder Smith was out and about Montréal and spent tuesday and wednesday away from home. He was happy to come back thursday morning. ; ) And! Of course, the culminating event of the week was sunday. Our ward is STILL doing so good! There were 5 non-members there, along with several members on the road back to activity. It's awesome. :)

It struck me this week how odd it is, for someone who doesn't believe what we believe, to think that there are thousands of people in the world that just give up two years of their lives to go talk to strangers about religion. When you think about it, the church and it's members put a LOT of time and money into our missionary program! We do it, of course, because it's one of the most important things we can do with our time here on Earth, but when you look at it with a gospel perspective, it really doesn't make much sense.  That's one of the beauties of the Gospel. Perspective! Growth! Change! Wonderful little underappreciated words that combine to shape us into the servants the Lord needs us to be.

Well. Sorry this is short. I just can't think of anything else to say this week.

Saturday we have transfer calls, so next week I'll probably have some sort of exciting news to share. ; ) Pray for me to stay? I mean, I'm down with whatever the Lord wants, but a little petition never hurt anyone right? Right. :)

Thanks everyone! I Love you all! Have a good week!

Elder Christensen

Aug 19

The weeks we live

 

This week was what I would describe as a typical missionary week. ie. Everything we had planned fell through, most of what we tried to do went terribly wrong, we had a LOT of unexpected occurances, and looking back at the end, it turned out to be a wonderful week. :)

 Over the last few weeks we've been very blessed in our finding efforts, and our teaching pool has become quite large, or so we thought. This week, most of the people that have welcomed us in the past, have mysteriously(how do I spell that?) disappeared, or told us to come back in September. :P So! The Lord gave us more Miracles to fill in the gaps. :)

To go through the list of everything I loved from this week would take much more time than I have, but I'll share a few stories!

First off, a family in our ward is from turkey, but no one has seen them since february. Two months ago, we tried to pass by, and discovered that the sister's non-member sister was staying with them, but the actual family themselves were on vacation in turkey, and the sister that was there doesn't speak much french (nor does her husband), so we weren't really able to do much with them. :P We've been passing by occasionally since, trying to get a hold of them, make contact at all, no luck. Saturday, we left the house with our plan all made up,and (as I mentioned earlier) most of it went wrong. We ended up driving back to a different street to fall on our ultimate back-up plan (knock on doors), when my marvellous companion said 'hey, we're near that turkish family. Want to pass by?' what followed was a wonderful meeting, with a wonderful sister with a wonderful testimony, who came to church the next day with her non-member sister. :) That's a miracle if I ever saw one! Did I mention the non-member sister's husband has read the book of mormon? Twice? Many prayers of gratitude have been said in their honor. :)

A very similar miracle happened to our senior couple, who stumbled across an inactive family, the father of whom is not a member. In their first lesson with him, he told them 'you know, I think it's time I get baptized.' :D Well, alright. If you insist. ; )

Those are just two of the many miracles we saw as a district this week, which are all linked (I believe) with the strengthening of the ward we're in! Our sacrament attendance is still on the rise, inactive members have returned to full activity, we've had baptisms, (Did I mention that a young man from france was baptized this wednesday? That was a MARVELLOUS experience! He left for youth conference the same day, and came back spewing forth angelic testimonies of the spirit of the youth of this church. :D) we've got a ward mission leader, and MOST importantly, ever single one of the members has started to catch the vision and get excited about missionary work! I have a testimony that when the members and the missionaries work TOGETHER to share the gospel, we all get one step closer to the city of Enoch. :)

Alright, one last miracle and then I'll stop. We had an inactive man named steve show up at church this sunday. Steve was baptized 20 years ago, and swiftly fell into inactivity, but never forgot the warmth and love he felt as a member of the church. Last week, he decided that he still deserves to feel like he belongs, and to feel loved, and so he went on mormon.org and ordered missionaries. He bore his testimony to us in Priesthood yesterday of the Love of God for each of his Children, and of the power that we have when we transmit that love to those around us. Missionary work, reactivation, fellowshipping of the newly baptized, it's all the same thing. And It takes love. Ask yourselves who you know at church, that has been struggling. That hasn't been out in a while, that always sits alone. Go towards people like that, make the decision, and the effort, to be their friend, and you will change the world.

Good luck everyone! Bon Courage! Thanks for all you do. :)

Love,

Elder Christensen

Aug 12

What a week

 

I really do start these all out this way don't I? Hmm. I'll have to be more clever next week.

Well, today's already been interesting. We woke up early this morning with grand plans to go to the montréal botanical gardens (Because it's free if you show up before 8!) Problem was, that's not true during the tourist season. 30 bucks each, we opted out. No worries though, the OLYMPIC STADIUM was just across the street with a high rise restaurant! So we headed over there to get drinks (we're cheap, remember?) and look at montréal from above.

It's closed until one on mondays.

Alright, last resort, we'll go out for sushi.

Sushi was under construction. Closed until further notice.

Maybe we should just go to dairy queen and get some ice cream to soften this failure

Dairy queen's closed until noon.

We ended up just coming here, after taking a lovely drive around montréal, in lovely morning traffic. :P What can you do?

But! Putting our odd morning aside, this week was WONDERFUL!! I mean, the week itself was about the same thing that always happens. We visited people, got dropped by some, got stood up by others, had WONDERFUL lessons with others, the regular rollercoaster of real missionaries. :) Sunday was the day that made the week.

    Between the four teams of missionaries at our ward, we had 4 investigators and a plethora of not-as-less-active-as-they-were-before-we-found-them members at church, combined with a visit from the stake president and a Whopping church attendance of over 80, AND.......... WE GOT A WARD MISSION LEADER! :D The first time I came in contact with this ward was during my days in Laval, around 6 transfers ago. At the time it was a struggling little ward with average sacrament attendance of around 50, who had just lost it's ward mission leader to a calling from the stake (despite the protests of the bishop), and didn't really have anyone else to replace it. The missionaries struggled, the members were tired, it was a tough ward. Now, here we are, six transfers later, and our teams couldn't even talk to our investigators because they were too busy being talked to by all the members at the member organized potluck that we now hold every second sunday, with 30 more active members and a ward mission leader. :) Life doesn't get better than this.

I think, even more than seeing individuals progress and come towards Christ, the most fulfilling part of my mission has been seeing the GROUPS progress. The wards, branches, stakes, districts, zones, any group of people, catching the vision, and doing the will of the Lord, TOGETHER, in UNITY. It's the recipe for miracles. :)

That being said, It takes the individuals to make it happen. I've really come to appreciate, since being here, the importance of even the 'smallest' callings. Everything needs to get done. We need everyone, doing the best they can. When that happens, the spirit can work with us, and we live in Zion, no matter where we are and no matter how many members come to church.

I love you all! A big thanks to my dedicated readers for your support and prayers!

God bless.

Aug 5

Cheres amis

 

Salut et Bonjour à tout le monde! One more wonderful week here in Ville-Marie! :)

Lets see... where to begin.... lets go for a rundown of what's happened here so far!

Lundi

P-Day! not a lot, but very tasty! We went out to Centreville (downtown) to get some Vietnamese food with the other elders from our district, which was SUPER good and super fun, and then back to LaSalle for a family home evening with a Haitian family. And an african family. And another Haitian family. And maybe one or two more.... we got lost with all the people running around, and all the FOOD! One of the best things about the Canada Montréal Mission is the food. People here come from all over the world, which means the food does too. ; )

Mardi

Appointment with our investigator Alain who FINALLY started reading the Book of Mormon and took off like a shot! He read most of 1 Nephi this week. :) We followed that up with a bit of knocking and some sweet sweet metro contacting, since it was the last day we'll be able to use my beloved metros. :( Also, we went home Teaching with a member of our ward and ran into a miracle as someone in his apartment recognized us and asked to know more about the Book of Mormon! :D

Mercredi

We lost our Metro cards. :( They took them away since we have a car. Dirty dogs. Then, District Study! followed by a district lunch and a quick meeting with Elder Bendio (The Bendio's are a senior couple from Orem and they're wonderful). After that, a day full of knocking on doors followed by a dinner appointment with a Hindu couple from L'Îsle Maurice, which is near La Réunion. Fun fact about Indians, they eat with their hands! Always. I think I'll have to bring that tradition home.

Jeudi

Split with the MacDonald Elders! I gave up the car for a day to go into the north Island. Lots of walking. Those Elders are way more in shape than us. :P So we had another day of knocking and Less-Active hunting, combined with the most interesting pass off lesson I've ever been in. Two Phillipina ladies that were so set on arguing with eachother they wouldn't listen to us! It was quite the event. :)

Vendredi

Another visit to our friend Alain to talk about what he read, and then a lengthy planning session which, when it was finally finished, we followed up with More Knocking! I love to knock. The worst days we have are the days when we can't knock. :P

Samedi

Started out with an early morning lesson with an african man, followed by english class, Lunch, another African, and MORE knocking! Today we had a less-active from a different ward call and invite us to dinner. We're trying to get more strict about which missionaries visit which people, so we told her we'd come, but only if we could bring her wards missionaries as well. We ended up in front of her house, writing a thank you note, when she called again to double check what time we were coming. As we started to tell her we were already their, we heard a man in the background say something in.... spanish.... and we realized we'd made a terrible mistake! The woman we were on the phone with was one of our investigators (who SOUNDS a whole lot like one of LaSalles less actives) and we were far from being in the right place. So. We rescheduled for next Tuesday and went to get lebanese food as a consolation. :P What can you do?

Dimanche

Church, and one of our investigators Came! :D It's been over a month since We've had somebody come to church, and it was nice to just show him around the chapel and sit with someone that wasn't a member during sacrament. Really good day. :)

So. There's a week out of a missionaries life, in a nutshell! We run around a lot, we change plans a lot, and sometimes it feels like we don't get a whole lot done, until we see somebody sitting in the chapel with a smile on their face, and we realize that it really does make a difference, and it's all worth it. :)

Have a good week everyone. Try and put a smile on someone's face. :)

Elder Christensen

July 29

Cheres Amis

Salut et Bonjour à tout le monde! One more wonderful week here in Ville-Marie! :)

Lets see... where to begin.... lets go for a rundown of what's happened here so far!

Lundi

P-Day! not a lot, but very tasty! We went out to Centreville (downtown) to get some Vietnamese food with the other elders from our district, which was SUPER good and super fun, and then back to LaSalle for a family home evening with a Haitian family. And an african family. And another Haitian family. And maybe one or two more.... we got lost with all the people running around, and all the FOOD! One of the best things about the Canada Montréal Mission is the food. People here come from all over the world, which means the food does too. ; )

Mardi

Appointment with our investigator Alain who FINALLY started reading the Book of Mormon and took off like a shot! He read most of 1 Nephi this week. :) We followed that up with a bit of knocking and some sweet sweet metro contacting, since it was the last day we'll be able to use my beloved metros. :( Also, we went home Teaching with a member of our ward and ran into a miracle as someone in his apartment recognized us and asked to know more about the Book of Mormon! :D

Mercredi

We lost our Metro cards. :( They took them away since we have a car. Dirty dogs. Then, District Study! followed by a district lunch and a quick meeting with Elder Bendio (The Bendio's are a senior couple from Orem and they're wonderful). After that, a day full of knocking on doors followed by a dinner appointment with a Hindu couple from L'Îsle Maurice, which is near La Réunion. Fun fact about Indians, they eat with their hands! Always. I think I'll have to bring that tradition home.

Jeudi

Split with the MacDonald Elders! I gave up the car for a day to go into the north Island. Lots of walking. Those Elders are way more in shape than us. :P So we had another day of knocking and Less-Active hunting, combined with the most interesting pass off lesson I've ever been in. Two Phillipina ladies that were so set on arguing with eachother they wouldn't listen to us! It was quite the event. :)

Vendredi

Another visit to our friend Alain to talk about what he read, and then a lengthy planning session which, when it was finally finished, we followed up with More Knocking! I love to knock. The worst days we have are the days when we can't knock. :P

Samedi

Started out with an early morning lesson with an african man, followed by english class, Lunch, another African, and MORE knocking! Today we had a less-active from a different ward call and invite us to dinner. We're trying to get more strict about which missionaries visit which people, so we told her we'd come, but only if we could bring her wards missionaries as well. We ended up in front of her house, writing a thank you note, when she called again to double check what time we were coming. As we started to tell her we were already their, we heard a man in the background say something in.... spanish.... and we realized we'd made a terrible mistake! The woman we were on the phone with was one of our investigators (who SOUNDS a whole lot like one of LaSalles less actives) and we were far from being in the right place. So. We rescheduled for next Tuesday and went to get lebanese food as a consolation. :P What can you do?

Dimanche

Church, and one of our investigators Came! :D It's been over a month since We've had somebody come to church, and it was nice to just show him around the chapel and sit with someone that wasn't a member during sacrament. Really good day. :)

So. There's a week out of a missionaries life, in a nutshell! We run around a lot, we change plans a lot, and sometimes it feels like we don't get a whole lot done, until we see somebody sitting in the chapel with a smile on their face, and we realize that it really does make a difference, and it's all worth it. :)

Have a good week everyone. Try and put a smile on someone's face. :)

Elder Christensen