Visiting the Zoo, teaching in the thunderstorm, wrestling with goats, and ...more injuries

My week has been great! On Monday we went to the Tyler zoo and saw all different kinds of animals. that was really fun! and.. yes we are allowed to do that:) later that night we had a lesson at our investigators house. the one that just showed up to church. So we taught him the restoration with bro. tannery our ward mission leader.. Well Paul is his name and he is in the process of building his house and so he lives in a trailer right next to it. since his trailer is too small to sit in we sat on some lawn chairs outside and started teaching.. well while teaching it started thundering off in the distance and then it started sprinkling.. so we moved the chairs into his half built house which does have a roof on top of it. a Tin Roof to be exact.. you can probably tell where this is going. well as soon as we started teaching about joseph smith it started pouring rain and my ward mission leader was about 3 feet from our investigators face yelling at him because it was so loud because of the rain! hahaha. funny how that happens right? it was pretty funny though.. On wednesday we drove to Longview which is about 40 miles away from where we live.. We had a specialized training where we were trained by President Durrant and the assistants:) it was awesome! i love those meetings because they are so powerful and you get to see other missionaries and chat with them!

On Friday we had 2 lessons at 7 that night so we split off with members and i went to teach Jennifer Herrington with Bro. Price. She lives so far away from the church and it takes about 30 minutes to get to her house from the church.. well we read Alma 32 with her and its on faith! i love that chapter and explains faith very well.. well jennifer had a baptism date for april 7th but she needs to come to church 3 times and didnt last week so i reset her date for April 21st so hopefully she can make that date. She did come to church for the first time yesterday so we were excited to see her there! Saturday was a long day of tracting. I like tracting down County Roads which are roads where houses are far apart from eachother. i dont like knocking on houses that are right next to eachother. Well we were tracting saturday morning and i rolled my ankle but it was a bad one so we just kept tracting and then later down the street i step into a hole that i didnt see and rolled my ankle pretty bad. i was kind of mad because stuff like that happens to me all the time and no one else. (im referring to my companion haha).. well that night my ankle was double the size of my other one and now my ankle keeps popping. it doesnt hurt as much though.. we didnt get a transfer call saturday night so i guess im staying another transfer and Elder Hedberg is the new District Leader! He better not try to use that against me or somethins gonna happen. Hes already bossy as it is and i have to put him in his place!

Sunday was awesome and we had a very powerful testimony meeting in the bullard ward. i got up to bear my testimony. I love bearing my testimony to people. it doesnt scare me at all! That night we had dinner at the Atwoods house. The people that i got a hat from.. well they have over 300 acres of land and have a ton of animals. mostly goats though.. like 500 goats! well their 13 year olds son drove us around their land in a Ford F-250 truck. and i gotta say.. he was pretty good at it haha. They had to get all of their billy goats into a pen and so we helped them with that.. oh was that a task! after we got them in the pen we had to pull one out at a time so they could take a picture of them.. so i got in there and i was going to town on these goats! I grabbed them by the Horns and i was yanking them out of the pens haha. They tried resisting but were too weak for me;) Thats the week in the life of a missionary!

100% Rabbit Fur Cowboy hat, mysterious house with 8 cats and missing resident, Choctaw Indian and his "sweet grass"

First off i just wanna say that i absolutely hate daylight savings time when on a mission. well the springing forward one. the falling back is tons better! I had a member yesterday at church catch me yawning for like the 10th time! she told me that i have been yawning all day and that i needed to stop haha! But this week reminded me alot about plano.. Lots of tracting! oh so much funn!!! can you sense the sarcasm? On Tuesday we worked all day in Frankston Texas. That is where Brooks Atwood lives and works so we stopped into his hat store and i bought myself an all black 100% Rabbit Fur Cowboy Hat. so i am now one more step forward to officially becoming a real cowboy haha. i just need boots now:) We went out with the stake patriarch that night his name is Joe Odom. He knows so much its ridiculous! well we stopped by a member that has 2 types of cancer and he has like 2-4 months of living according to what the doctors say!:/
On Wednesday we were in Arp Texas and we stopped by a lot of inactive members and this one house we stopped at is a very nice house and he lives right on lake tyler. well we have stopped by this mans house a ton of times but i have only been there in the night so you cant really see anything. well that day we were there during the day and of course no answer.. but he has like 8 cats living in his house.. The same TV screen is on every time we go over there. his pool is almost black and has turtles living in it and his mail box is packed full and has a wasp nest growing on the mail! Me and my companion were like detectives haha. we were coming to the decision to where he just moved out of his house and left all of his stuff there.. or he killed his wife and then committed suicide and they are both dead in the house... what do you think? hahaha. but what are the cats living off of? their carcasses? sorry if you are getting nauseous at this point. well on to a better note.. we had a fantastic lesson that night with 3 of our investigators (kandie, anna, and rickey). we taught the restoration to them and then we invited kandie to give a kneeling prayer. it was so special and she said it was her first time and it was a perfect prayer!
Thursday was a lot of tracting and that night we had a lesson with Jennifer Herrington way out in the sticks of Jacksonville again. well we taught her the Plan of Salvation and then i committed her to baptism on April 7th and she accepted:).. she is a really quiet person but maybe thats just her personality. who knows? we had another lesson planned for Kandie, Anna, and Rickey on friday but they had to cancel because anna might have pneumonia and they had to take her to the hospital. The rest of the weekend was a little slow for us but while we were tracting yesterday a man across the street yelled and asked us how we were doing.. he also said we looked nice because we were in our suits. i think he was referring to me though cause im a boss:)! well this man was a Choctaw Indian and he let us in. well it went really bad because he was saying so much false doctrine. he didnt even believe god loved everyone! it was kind of sad. so i told him i find it hard to believe that our heavenly father would put us in families so we can grow and learn to love one another if he didnt love us. so that was pretty much the end of that.. he gave us some plants called sweet grass.. he said it was something they use in his tribe to get rid of bad stuff? Weird! Well that was my awesome week in a nut shell;)

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!!!!

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!

Did you know that you are only 24 inches away from Heavenly Father?

We had a great week this week! District meeting was very powerful! We were taught how to use different study techniques and how to study more effectively.. especially for our investigators. what i learned the most was.. you are only 24 inches away from our heavenly father. the distance it takes for you to drop to your knees and pray to him! i have definantly taken advantage of praying on my mission because i know that prayer really does work and that my day always goes by so much better when i have a prayer to start me off! we have had about 6 cancelled appointments this week from different investigators. its way sad when that happens. 2 reasons why. you dont know what else to do besides tract when that happens and number 2. you want to teach them the gospel so bad you feel sad for them! We did have a lesson with our top investigators though on thursday. it was with mykel-15 mikayla-13 Corrine-13 and colton-11! when we got there we first asked the parents if we could set baptism dates with their kids because they are under legal age limit. well we had our lesson and actually had dana (mykel and mikaylas) mom join in on the lesson. at the end of the lesson we set baptism dates with all of the kids except corinne. she is still not sure because she also attends her dads baptist church.. of course!! well when colton agreed. corinne was like.. what about dads church? and coltons said. that was until i found this one! it was the coolest remark that kid has ever said! he has ADHD so he is bouncin of the walls all the time! when we were leaving with a prayer we asked dana frost to give a kneeling prayer and she did. it was such a cool experience!!
Friday night was the whitehouse christmas party and that was great! i got to meet more of the ward and enjoyed an awesome christmas play by the primary kids!:) Saturday was a very long day! we drove to jacksonville which is our farthest part of our area. i never thought i would be in a town where white people are a minority! there is black people all over the place! not that its a bad thing. its just different. we had a lesson later that night with our investigator natalie price. it was also her birthday and we gave her a full set of scriptures. she loved it!!!! she was very grateful! she will eventually be baptized when she decides to quit her smoking habit. On sunday Dana frost brought her children to church all the way from arp which is about a 30 minute drive away. talk about dedication! she also had a migraine and still came! (Dana is not a member). after sacrament they were leaving because dana was too sick to be there so we asked her if we could give her a priesthood blessing and she agreed! so we gave it to her and it was very neat! i could definantly feel the spirit working on her and her children!! anyways.. that was my awesome week!:)

Picking up trash, fixing cars, proselyting at ward carnival. All in a week's work for a missionary!

This week has been great and has gone by super fast! pdays are the start of the weeks and they come and go but when it is pday its so nice! a mission is so exhausting but i love it! on pdays. we get together with the tyler 1 and ysa elders and we just hangout and play a board game called settlers of catan! It is so addicting and is probably the best board game ever made! we had zone conference on tuesday in tyler and all of our zone was there! after our lesson we had lunch and then had a ginger bread making contest! it was so fun. our ginger bread house looked like a cross haha. it was pretty sweet though! we are teaching 4 kids right now that all want to be baptized but we just need to get permission from the parents because thats a rule! lame!! thursday was planning day and we planned with the tyler 1 and ysa elders and since planning goes all the way till 2 in the afternoon. we had tons of spare time so we played settlers of catan!:)On friday we had a lesson with our investigator who had a baptism date for this saturday the 17th but thats not going to happen because she doesnt have the desire to quit smoking. she knows the church is true and loves coming every sunday with her 5 kids! she wants to be baptized before her oldest kid turns 8 which is sometime in february! shes a great lady though! later friday night we went to a baptism for the tyler 1 and ysa elders. the girl was 19 and her name was tayshia hunt!! She is from washington state and she actually went to high school with kellen moore! pretty cool right? i thought so! Saturday was a day of service!!! we started off by picking up trash on a highway that the bullard ward adopted! after that we helped fix the emergency brake cable on a members ford truck. well i mostly watched elder derrick fixed it. that made me kind of mad because i am always helping when it comes to fixing cars! elder derrick worked in a shop for his job before the mission so he thinks he knows the in and outs when it comes to cars haha! he knows quite a bit though! anyways.. after we fixed the car we went to the whitehouse carnival to set up the ward bean bag toss. we also got permission to set up a booth right next to the bean bag toss with all of our commissary (bibles, books of mormon, pass a long cards, etc.) well the carnival started at 2:30 and went till 8:30. since we were not allowed to actively prosolyte and could only talk to people who came up to us and asked questions. we only talked to about 10 people in 6 hours! it was a terrible turn out and i froze my butt off! the bullard ward christmas party was that night too and we missed that! it stunk! on sunday we had 6 investigators at church! we were very excited about that! overall the week turned out to be pretty successful!

Christmas light injury & meeting Glenn Beck

Me and my companion have been super busy this week! we have been doing a lot of tracting and a lot of teaching!! we have an investigator who has had all of the lessons and has a baptism date set for december 17th but she is struggling badly with kicking the habit of smoking. i have heard that smoking is the worst habit to quit.. even harder than quitting drugs like marijuana or cocaine for example.. she knows the church is true and told us the other day that she wants to be sealed in the temple with her husband when they are both worthy.. her husband is a member but inactive and also smokes. on wednesday we helped and 83 year old man in the whitehouse ward put up chrismas lights. and knowing me... i always have to be injured some way or another.. i was threading the lights through my had trying to untangle them and one of them just had to be broken and it sliced my finger open. it was bleeding pretty bad! but i just put a band-aid on it and kept working:).

On Thursday i went on an exchange with Elder Fry, and since we went on an exchange i got permission to finally drive our car. its been 5 months since i have driven so i thought i would be rusty. not even! its like riding a bicycle. once you learn you don't forget how to haha. i am horrible at backing out my companion too so i dont ever do that! Thursday night while on our exchange me and elder fry went to the church and played basketball with the young single adults branch. i was balling it up! i think people were a little jealous;).


Saturday was definantly my favorite day of the week!!!! Glenn Beck was doing an autograph signing at the hastings in tyler so me and my companion went with elder fry and his companion elder wheatley and we went to talk to people standing in line.. the line was huge!!!! a lot of people recognized us too!! it made me feel like a celebrity haha. there was also protestors and my companion had this bright idea that we should go and contact them. well guess who was the brave one of the group. this guy! none of the other elders contacted them! well when the line shortened up we hopped in line and i got to shake glenn becks hand! it was way cool! we also got to get a picture with him:). so as you can see.. i am super tired from last week! i fell asleep in sacrament yesterday.

love you tons!love elder christensen

Transfer to Whitehouse

So, this week i got transferred to east Texas to a area called Bullard and Whitehouse. It makes Plano look so small! If we were to drive from on side of our area to the other.. it would probably take about 70 miles to do it! okay so my companion is Elder Derrick and he is from Salt Lake City, Utah. When I got here, he told me about all of our investigators. we have quite a bit and one has a baptismal date for december 17th so i hope that goes through. Her name is Natalie and she has a smoking problem, but I know the Lord can help her with that. We have about 8 investigators total right now that we are teaching. so much more than we had in Plano! My area reminds me alot like the mountains because there is trees everywhere... except no mountains haha. Thanks giving this week was great although it was kind of hard not being with family. The families we ate with were the Prices, Walls, Reaves and Bro. Parmer. We all ate together. The Walls have a daughter who is a year younger than me and she is gorgeous! It's so hard not to flirt with her being a missionary and all haha. So, this Bro. Parmer guy is way cool! He is 83 years old and about in january or something. the missionaries knocked on his door and said he wanted to be baptized on his door step! He was so golden! He received the melchizadek priesthood 6 months later!! Elder derrick also surprised me by saying I had to give a talk at church on Sunday. It was on the plan of salvation. Well when sunday came around, I gave one of the best talks i probably have ever given! It was awesome! The ward members really appreciated it too! These wards are great but super small! well that was my week.
love elder christensen