Volunteering for Special Olympics and Meals on Wheels

I had a really great week this week.
Conference eekend was great and i really enjoyed it.. like always. I loved the
boldness from Elder Perry.. I dont think i have ever seen him that
bold. My convert Lacy and her husband drove up today from Duncanville to take us out to lunch. That was super cool to see her. I miss her very much.. by
far my favorite convert:). This week was full of service. We had
interviews with president Durrant on Tuesday and that went well. I am
just sick of meetings and dont really care about taking notes down. I
have 2 months left!! I went on exchanges that night up to Bonham with
a missionary named Elder Hein and that was a little strange. We didnt
have anything in common and didnt really talk that much. Wednesday we
had service at the Melissa Library. I love going there. We go about
every week and help out anyway possible. I hate shelving books though.
On thursday we helped out some other Elders with service for 2
different members... So we split up with them and i went with Elder
Petty. We were asked to help unload a truck of over 3000 pounds of
cabinets but it never showed up so we went to help the other Elders
move their ward mission leader and the worst part about that was he
was not packed at all! I hate when members ask you to come help and
you have to help them pack! We like Investigators... not
Procrastinators!!!

On Friday we helped out with the Special Olympics and had a blast!! We
had to be at the Melissa High School at 7 in the morning to start
cooking Hamburgers and Hot Dogs! We made over 800 each and had to put
them in buns and wrap them in tin foil! This was Wendy's all over
again hahaha. We didnt finish until noon. Saturday was by far the best
service i have done in a while though. We went to the Mckinney Meals
on Wheels which is a place who takes meals to people who are less
fortunate. We were asked to paint their entire office! There was 8 of
us Elders there and we started at 8 and didnt finish until 5:30 that
night! It took forever but had a lot of fun. It seems like Elder
Kruger, Kidd and I were the ones working the hardest.. The other
Elders would take breaks in between and just talk most of the time! I
worked my buns off!!! We had dinner that night with a family is not
members but they have been around the church for 7 or so years and
know a ton of members. The dinner went great and the whole time i was
thinking "why arent these people baptized?" I mean the kids were
wearing Byu shirts and CTR Rings and they said perfect Mormon Prayers
haha. Why they are not baptized is beyond me! But the work still
continues to move forward here in Melissa and i cant wait for my
Valiant Return Home in 2 months!! Hurray!!
 

Habitat for Humanity, Pinewood Derby and Perry Cox's Baptism

We had a really good week this week. On Wednesday we had a meeting in
Dallas with all the English zones in the Dallas area and that was
pretty fun.. But i am not too thrilled to go to them anymore because
its the same stuff over and over again and i already know the drill..
i guess that's what happens when you get close to going home.. I never
though that day would come Ha. Later that night we went to a members
house in the Mckinney 7th ward and we had a huge feast for dinner..
The Holm family definitely knows how to feed missionaries that's for
sure. Thursday was a fun day as we were asked to go to the church and
be the judges for the Pinewood Derby Race.. Oh boy was that fun and
brought back lots of missionaries.. There was this kid that reminded
me of Shea when he kept losing with his whale car and the kid was
acting exactly like him haha.. The pinewood derby can get pretty crazy
especially when you see parents start busting out their video cameras
to see if their car actually won! Theres always one of those parents
haha.

On Friday we did service for a place called Habitat for Humanity and
its a function that helps build houses for less fortunate people..
They have a huge warehouse full of housing stuff and we were just the
muscle and helpers for the day. It was really fun and i enjoyed
helping out and doing some hard labor. Its been a while since i have
done some service that was really good working labor. We attended a
baptism on Saturday for one of the Mckinney Elders and then afterwards
we went to Buffalo Wild Wings for lunch.. I haven't been there since
my first area and it was sooo good! Sunday was a really good day.

Our investigator Perry Cox (the one who is homeless) who Elder Thompson
and I were teaching while we covered the Fairview ward was baptized
yesterday and it was such a neat experience and he even bore his
testimony and it was just such a great experience and nice to see how
far he had come from when we first met him. He has definitely grown a
love for the gospel and he knows it is true because of the blessings
he has received from living it.

Service project: "Bull Crap clean-up" ..no..really!

This week has been pretty slow... mainly cause i have a very trunkycompanion that i love very much and its hard to do stuff when you arethat trunky haha. but on tuesday we had district meeting and that wasgreat! my companion made me train every body cause he said i was goingto be the district leader when he left. so i gave a training on how usas missionaries need to feel the spirit so our investigators can feelthe spirit also! i feel like it was a great training. it lasted anhour and a half for heck sakes! that included some role plays whichwere pretty sweet i must say:). Wednesday was a rather fun day! not so much missionary related butfun:) hehe. so our car had the air bag light come back on so we had todrive into ford to get that checked out again. well the lady said thatthe technician was going to need the car for the whole day so he cantear it apart and find out what is going on with it. we didnt leavethe car cause we didnt have time today. so the wills point elder picked us up and took us to there place for the day. they live abou anhour and a half away from us and are still in our district! crazy!thats east texas for ya haha. well that night we went to a bull ridingarena and got to watch people ride bulls! it was way sweet! The eldersin this area go do service every wednesday at this arean cleaning upbull crap and then that night they get to go watch people practiceriding bulls. so thats what we did:) it was way cool! The next morning we went back to the arena and spent a couple hourshelping clean up crap too for service.. that was an experience! therest of the week was pretty slow but saturday elder moses actuallywanted to work for his last actual full day of working so we did:) Onsunday both wards announced that he was going home in sacramentmeeting. that was pretty funny. that made him a little red in the facehaha. we came back out to wills point last night so we can drop eldermoses of at the place where they take him into dallas today.. we spentthe night at one of their members house having dinner and then playingthis game called dungeons and dragons.. this game was apparently thegame to play before video games were ever invented. i felt very nerdywhile playing it. but it reminded me of my video game playing dayshaha. but that was my week and hope you enjoyed that hehe. i love you mom and hope your day is the best ever:)love elder christensen

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!

Service project

So, this week we did alot of service and heres one story from the week. we had to go clean out this apartment for this couple in their 50's and they were horders! it was so gross! i ended up cutting my leg on a broken mirror and putting a huge gash in my leg. well not huge but deep. its okay no stitches just a bandage and i was good to go. well we took 2 loads of trash to the dump and we got out of there! that place stunk! the man that actually lived there was hospitalized because of the stench in that apartment. he got a sinus infection that ate the bone away between the brain and nose and he ended up passing away yesterday!:( so it was kind of sad to hear that and to see how he lived for his whole life!