Burning Piles for service and another Texas Storm

We had a rather slow week this week but oh well... on Tuesday we went to Sis. Forhans. a less active lady.. and helped her burn her burn piles. it was way fun! knowing me.. a pyro!:) no i did not burn myself or any of the sort so dont worry haha. we will probably be going back to her house probably this next week or something so we can burn some more:) so much fun!
Wednesday elder moses had to be at the zone leaders appartment at 7 in the morning. because they were going to zone leader council in dallas and they asked the district leaders to come as well.. well we were a mile away from the zone leaders and they sent us a text saying it was cancelled.. apparently a storm was rolling through dallas at the time. and it was pretty bad! so we went back home and about an hour later the storm hit us. oh my gosh! it was huge! it rained very hard non stop for almost all the day. we were asked to plan that day cause of the storm. so we did. even after planning it was still too bad to go outside and tract so we stayed inside and napped:)
So on thursday elder moses ended up going in to dallas and i went on an exchange with elder miller. so i got to drive that day:)! we went to visit one of our investigators in flint. he lives about 20 miles away from us. He needs to be dunked! he comes to church every week and knows it is true. we just dont know what is holding him back. we ended up tracting for a couple hours after that and found no body.. all there was, was old people and they were cranky!
So on friday we went on a "quest" to jacksonville.. as elder moses put it. Jacksonville is considered the guetto of our area. there is so many black people there and hispanics! well we also went with the Tyler 2&3 elders. they are spanish. Elder LeFevre and Elder Cardenaz. we stopped at a rest stop called Mt. Selman and it is probably the highest point in East Texas and is like 2 feet short of being considered a mountain. you can see probably 35-40 miles out. its very pretty. well elder cardenaz is a greenie and he has a fetish of flipping elder moses' tag off because elder moses started that like his first week haha. well elder cardenaz was trying to flip his tag off and wasnt watching where he was going and walked straight into a pole! hahahahaha it was the funniest thing ever. he was pretty embarrassed and elder moses could not stop laughing!! hehe. well anyways. while in jacksonville we split up and i went with elder cardenaz and we visited jack parmer. a recent convert. and natalie price one of our investigators. she needs to be baptized too but she wont quit smoking:/
Saturday we had Interviews with the mission president. they went great.. i figured they would be a lot longer than they were but president doesnt ask us questions. he just wants us to talk to him about our area. so mine was like 5 minutes long. On sunday we had stake conference and President durrant was asked to talk. He gave a very great talk and had the whole tyler stake laughing. He told them this is how you remember my name. my name is Devin George Durrant. so my initials are D G Durrant. if you change the G to an O and say it.. it says.. D O Durrant. and if you say it fast it sounds like Deodorant hahaha. it was very clever i must say.. later last night we had a lot of appointments punch so that made us pretty mad.. but oh well.. Thats my Fantastic week:)

Another great week! Camerons' baptism

Cameron's baptism

This week went great! I told y'all last week that I was going to have a couple baptisms this saturday. Well I only ended up having one. It was for Cameron Meroney. It was definantly a great experience. We also had a lot of non member family members of Camerons there too so that was good! This week was a little slow because I got a cold earlier in the week and ended up getting a really bad sore throat and that put me out for a day or so. I literally couldnt even swallow my own spit. It hurt that bad! Earlier in the week we went on an adventure with Bro. Thomas to hunt down less active members out in Frankston and Chandler Texas. Oh my gosh! I am so glad that I am fortunate to have an actual house to live in back home because every body we visited lived in a trailer home and there was pitbulls galore! Everyone had a pitbull! It was a little strange. but scary! Those dogs are not something to play with!
We had a lesson on thursday with we had a lesson with Kylie Glover and Lexie Thomas. both sisters but different dads. they have been coming to church every week for more than a month now. and that was our first lesson with them. We set a baptism date with them for February 4th. it was awesome! They are so ready its not even funny! Friday we went on exchanges with the Willspoint elders. They live like 60 miles away from us and in the other district. We normally wouldnt allow exchanges like that but since Elder Moses's mtc companion is in the Wills Point area.. we allowed it. they had a whole day of trunkiness! hahahaha. my day friday on the other hand was kind of strange. I was with Elder taylor. he is a 24 year old guy and kind of a goofball. He is into a game called dungeons and dragons which apparently is the most nerdiest game ever.. and he tried explaining it to me and it was really weird. I ended up sleeping most of that day cause i was sick, so we werent very productive... Tonight should be a good dinner. Bro. Robison is taking us to this place called shoguns which is a japanese steak house. kind of like tapenyaki:) im super excited!!!!

Planning baptisms, Visiting a farm, hoping to acquire first Texas Cowboy hat

This week has been awesome!!! My companion Elder Moses is too trunky to tract haha so now if we dont have any lessons planned and we are not doing anything we will go hunt down less actives in both wards. and believe me!! there is so many less actives its not even funny! But this week we got 12 LTMP's (lessons taught with a member present). those are the best kind of lessons because when a member is present the investigator is hearing their testimonies too and not just ours. Friday i went on an exchange with one of the zone leaders, Elder Layton and that was an awesome day! We tracted for 3 hours or so and we were able to get along very well! We also went on the exchange so he could interview Colton and Corinne Clay for baptism and also Cameron Meroney! So this next Saturday we will be having 3 baptisms:) Corinne Clay is still saying that she is deciding between mormon and baptist but she passed her baptismal interview so more than likely she will be baptized!! We also are going to start teaching these 2 girls in the Bullard ward on thursday and they have been coming to church for quite some time now. I had no idea they were not members. So if we get special permission from our mission president we can teach them everything on Thursday and they could also get baptized on Saturday. so there is a possibility we could have 5 baptisms this coming Saturday:) if not then we will have 3 this week and 2 next week:)

Saturday we had the privelege of attending the baptism of Isaac Northcutt. He just turned 8 and he had asked me to give the talk on the Holy Ghost. The Northcutt family is so cool! They were the ones that let me skype home:). Well after the baptism Isaac's grandma came up to me crying saying how she loved my talk and that it was very good:)! That made me feel pretty good:) I was just surprised that Isaac had asked me to do it and not someone from his family! He loves the missionaries though! He asked me one day. "Elder Christensen... will you still be on your mission when i go on mine"? That was pretty funny! He was surprised when his mom told him that i will be 30 years old when he goes. Thats crazy to hear haha! Last night we had dinner at the Atwoods house. They are so cool! They own over 500 or so goats and then they have peacocks, horses, an emu, ginne fowl, etc. Anyways they have a flippin zoo at their house. They also live next to his parents house and they are the owner of the Atwood Cowboy hat which is a very popular cowboy hat. So i think I'm probably going to get one:)! So that was my week and i finally survived a week without using any bandaids:)

well mom i love you very much and hope your week is great!

love elder christensen

New Companion, Story of Forgiveness and..yes..MORE war wounds!

My week has been great with my new companion! his name is elder moses and this is his last transfer and his first time out in east texas! i have heard a lot of great things about him and they are so true! he is an awesome missionary and he is super funny! i picked him up tuesday afternoon and we went back to our apartment so he could set up his stuff.. well we went out to work the rest of the day and then came home and did our nightly planning session. which i havent done in a transfer because elder derrick didnt like to do it. we also had companionship prayer which i also havent done in a transfer cause elder derrick didnt like to do that either. well as the night went on we chilled and chatted it up until bedtime.. well guess what he did. i was doing something in the kitchen and he yelled for me so i came around the corner and hes standing in the hall way mooning me! hahahahahaha! it was so funny! so this whole week we have been catching eachother off guard showing the full moon! i think right now he is in the lead by one. 4-3. yeah were keeping tabs!:)
On tuesday we had a lesson with a less active family who has a unbaptized 10 year old son named cameron.. well we committed him to baptism on january 21st and we are super excited about that! elder moses has a goal for us to baptize 9 people this transfer. i definantly have the faith to do it. we just got to be very obedient and hard working missionaries! so as of now we have 3 set dates for january 21st and we have about 9 progressing investigators who are about ready to fall into the font! we had a lesson thursday night with our other investigators corinne and colton clay. we read 3 nephi 11 with them and corinne could definantly feel the spirit. you could see it all over her face! we brought bro. robison with us and he was telling corinne that he is going to the temple the next day and that he was going to put her name on the prayer roll and he explained to her what that meant and she was so surprised! she thought that was way cool! so she should hopefully be ready for baptism as long as she continues to keep committments!
On Friday we had an appointment with a tract out lady. well she totally forgot and her husband was telling us that we could come back this week so hopefully something happens with that. well bro. northcutt was with us that night and he lived around the corner from that appointment so we went to his house so i could do some laundry and we chatted with the bardsley and northcutt family. we also made a bon fire in the back and made s'mores:) it reminded me so much about camping! so sweet! well saturday came around and we went to camerons house for another appointment with him and come to find out that he had stolen some candy from a dollar store and his mother caught him. well she made him take it back to the manager and he chewed him out saying he wasnt allowed back in the store.. well if that wasnt bad and scary enough for this little 10 year old. his mom called the cops and had them come talk to cameron. they told him if it happened again they would put him in juvy! so when we went over there you could tell he was very upset so i put my arm around him and told him.. when he is baptized everything he has done "bad" in the past will be washed away and he loved hearing that. so our lesson with him was on forgiveness and we really layed it down on him:)!
Our next lesson that night was with natalie price and she ended up forgetting about our appointment and wasnt there. well her house is out in the sticks!!! she has a siberian husky who is female and a siberian husky/wolf who is a male. well they had puppies together. well natalie had told me about this earlier in the week and that her husband built a little barn for the puppies. well i wanted to go see them. well the female husky wasnt chained up and she was very friendly. the male on the other hand was chained up to a wire that was hung between two trees with a distance of 30 yards or so. that way he could run back and forth.. well the wire was right next to the barn so he was pretty much guarding the puppies. so we had to distract him so i could get in there and that was easy haha. well i was dumb enough to try and pet the husky/wolf mix and he jumped and clawed the crap out of my arm so my arm looks like freddy kreuger got ahold of me haha!
On sunday elder moses got a lot of crap from members about how old he is! it was pretty funny! he blended in with the members very well though! sunday night we went to a little town called "Troup" to hunt down less actives. well none of the houses have house numbers on them so you have to look on the mailboxes. well my gps took us to this house that didnt have a house number anywhere so we knocked on it and this old guy was friendly and told us it was the wrong address so we went to the house next door that ended up being the right address. well this guy was in his car and got out when we pulled up and he had this huge rifle in his hands. it was kind of sketch. well he told us that his wife (who is the less active member) wasnt home and that we should not go to the house next door. which was the one we knocked before him. he said that that guy would shoot us dead if we did. well thank goodness the lord was with us that night because he was very friendly! apparently he has had stuff stolen off his property and so he goes to bed with his hearing aids turned all the way up in case he hears something going on!! Scary!!!!!! anyways thats my crazy/fun week for ya;)! i love you mom! have an awesome week!
love elder christensen:)

6 month mark reached!

This week has been awesome and really busy! Monday sucked because i literally did not want to do anything because i was thinking about home too much! but i got over it and now im back in the routine of the things!! on wednesday we went out to jacksonville which is about 30 minutes from where we live and we went to a recent converts house and re-roofed his house from 9-4! boy i tell you what! that was a project. i definantly was feeling the results of that the next day!! not as much as elder derrick though haha. Thursday was my 6th month mark and i burnt a tie:).. well guess what! while i was burning my tie it dripped onto my finger and burnt the crap out of me.. so now i have this huge burn blister on my finger and i already used up all my bandaids haha.. and neosporin:). Friday we were able to go over to a members house and watch the byu vs. tulsa game! which byu won 24-21 but it was a horrible game! the whole first half byu was playing horrible! but they won so thats all that counts! later that night the family which is the northcutts took us out to eat at a place called cheddars. oh man its so good! if i remember right there is one in boise.. but i could be wrong. Saturday i went on an exchange with elder wheatley my district leader and saturday we decided to go on a bike exchange since we missed biking around in our last area:) it was way fun and we also found some huge lions that we rode:). well saturday was also transfer calls day and everyone in my district is getting transferred except me:(. elder derrick is going back to the city to mckinney and my new companion is elder moses. and he only has one transfer left so i will be the one killing off moses (sending him home). we will see what happens!