ya tu sabes!

Well we had a super duper amazing week! A lot of fun for sure! :) We saw plenty of miracles. And tomorrow Ana Rodriguez gets baptized!!!! And so I am extremely excited for that one. She is very special and soooo ready for baptism! Wish you all could come :).

 

This week Elder Soares from the Presidency of the 70 came to our mission. He is from Brazil. Pretty funny guy. Still has an accent! His daughter was there too and she just got out of the Paris mission, so I asked her if she knew Elder Adams. She said if she saw him probably, but she knew the name. I almost yelled at her for not knowing the greatest thing in that mission behind Belgium waffles, but I held back :p... He gave a good talk. Talked for about 90 min. Really humble guy and had some interesting stories to tell. It was a good spiritual feast!

We have been teaching a family of 7 and we set a baptismal date with them this last week!!!!!! And they should be coming tomorrow to the baptism as well :). I really hope so! They are really cool and like what we are teaching them. It is the Rodriguez-Arroyo family if you wouldn't mind praying for them! It won't be an easy road to baptism, but possible! So we are praying a lot for them.

We learned about God's will a lot this last week. I think that a lot of the things that go wrong in this life, we often wonder "why"... We had some cool experiences with that. Like last yesterday, we went to an appt at 1 and 2 o clock and both postponed for later that night at 7 and 8. So we went back later and one wasn't home and the other had guests over and since we had changed our plans around at night and shuffled some stuff around, our back ups were about 15 miles away and we are running out of car miles. So we went to Heavenly Father in payer and told Him we had done our part, we tried are hardest and our plans didn't work out the way we saw it. We asked Him what He wanted us to do, what was His will. We started driving and a thought to visit someone who we didn't think would be real interested came into our head. We went and followed the thought. We knocked the door, she opened and said that she was busy, we kept talking and then she came out on the porch and sat on her bench and we just kept talking. I could see in her character that she wasn't happy and even though she acted happy, she knew something was missing. We had a great lesson with her and she went away feeling the spirit that night. She speaks really good English so we passed her on to the English elders. I learned a lot from that personal experience. Sometimes our plans aren't the Lord's plans. Our will isn't always His will. But I know He sees the big picture when we can't. We often get frustrated and upset when our plans don't go through, but I know that is because He has something better. So a goal I have now is that when my plans and ideas don't go through, that I am not going to get frustrated, but search for what God wants me to do and learn.

I love you all and I am so grateful for your prayers! I hope all is well :)

From Disney World

love Elder Christiansen

Hey

So we had a pretty exciting week! We were able to set a baptismal date with Ana so that is always good! The Lord has prepared her for sure! Her date is for April 30th! And she came to church and her granddaughter and great granddaughter and her great great granddaughter as well haha. She is incredible! She went on a temple tour with her granddaughter, Lymarie. They really liked it. And Lymarie and her daughter are also progressing! So they are the highlight of my life right now.

We had ward conference on Sunday and that was really good! The Stake President gave a real good talk on how we can learn and study, but we can never know until we experience it. and he talked about how that is how it is in the gospel and especially with repentance. He gave an example about how when he got to Florida, he had seen tv shows about riptides and what to do if you get caught in one and one day he was snorkling and he saw a turtle, so he was just watching it and watching it and then like 30 minutes earlier the turtle looks up at him and he could see in the turtle's eyes the expression of "what the heck are you doing?" And so he came out above water to find himself what seemed about 1 mile away from the shore! And he had learned about rip tides and what to do, but now he was experiencing it. He didn't tell us what he did or what happened, but he was speaking, so I imagine all turned out well haha.

 

We met a pretty cool Cuban lady this week who has been to church a couple times with her nephew who is a member and she likes it, so she might have some potential! :)

 

There is nothing greater than missionary work I am learning. It is missionary fun. President Hall gave a talk to bishops, wml's, ward missionaries, and the missionaries within our stake and he was really bold haha. He talked about how we are too prideful to pray sometimes and don't want to get on our knees and ask for blessings and help. It was one of my favorite talks that he has given and it was like 10 min. long. That's my PRESIDENT.

 

Hope you have an amazing week! We will! :) Thanks for your prayers!

Elder Christiansen

143

:)

Soooooo we had a very good week! It was amazing! I love being back here in Clermont. Me and my companion are getting along good and I am getting to know the Spanish group little by little so that is good! They are very cool. We are a group within an English ward and so the first hour is English with translation and the 2nd two hours have Spanish classes. But since last Sunday was fast and testimony meeting, we had our own fast and testimony meeting in the relief society room. It was a very good one. There are usually about 25-30 people that go a week, but last week a less-active/part member family blessed their baby at church and their big family came, and we had 3 investigators and some other people came that aren't regulars so all in all there was about 50 people! Haha we filled the Relief Society room, so we had to bring more chairs. The family with the baby blessing made us look pretty good haha. One person told my companion, wow! There are a lot of investigators here! Hahaha, yup wasn't us, but they can think it was so maybe we can get more help from them. :) The group is really good. They love to go to lessons with us, so that is good!

We had a miracle last week because we had 3 investigators at church on Sunday. They are Ana (great grandma), Lymarie (mom), and Maria (daughter). The Grandma is a member in my first ward, valencia, in oviedo. Other missionaries referred them to us because they went to their baptism that they had of a cousin or something. And so our first lesson with them, I was on exchanges so I didn't get to meet them, but I met them all on Sunday. And guess what! A year ago when I was in Minneola I taught Lymarie's son, Chris and his wife dianne. So I had already met Ana and Maria but not Lymarie! Haha. When I talked to Ana a year ago, she said something like, "I don't want to listen, I am getting baptized in the future." something like that. So I guess Ana has been in contact with the church for about 25 years! And the night of the baptism she went to the other day, her father came to her in a dream and told her she needs to get baptized, so now she is finally ready she says! :).. I will be able to teach them tonight for the first time! They are a real special family. I hope all goes well! It was definitely a blessing/tender mercy/miracle. Please pray for them. The Lord can do more for them in 3 seconds to help them out than we can in 3 years!

We had a fun week. Knocking a lot of doors. I love it! We are having a great time down here. Lots of miracles, I appreciate your prayers, they are definitely helping us out!

Love you all!

Elder Christiansen 143

General Conference

Well I don't think I really have to say it, but General Conference was really amazing! I really loved it. I learned a lot. I hope that you all as well were spiritually fed by the words of the living oracles of God. I don't know what oracles means, but it sounds really good so I'm leaving it like that. I learned that I need to love a lot more. My whole mission I really have loved the work and I have worked hard. But I felt like I really need to love more. Love is what creates a lot of desires in this life. When people know that God loves them, they will desire to change and come unto him. They also talked that as people feel that they are accepted by others with good morals in this life they will do good things. And if they don't feel accepted, they will look for acceptance in other places usually not within the gospel. I know that God loves us all. That love is true love that does not have measure. His love is the most desirable thing in this life. We feel His love through the Spirit. It is peace, happiness, and tranquility. I really want to work on loving my investigators knowing that I love them. I want every contact as well to know that I love them. A lot of them are not interested, but I still want them to know that I love them and that God loves them as well.

Conference was really amazing. They talked a lot a lot about missionary work. Just do it! Lets pray, set goals, and open our mouths, the Lord is hastening His work. Let's catch the wave. Let us not be ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It truly changes the lives of our brothers and sisters. They need it. It is a real simple equation, study the scriptures, plan your life with purpose, teach the truth with testimony, and serve your God. Always invite. People often will not change unless invited to do so. We can talk all we want but we must invite. 3 simple words, Come And See.

We had a good week. Things are going great here, I love it. I cannot complain, I have Jesus Christ as my guide and friend, I know that I will always have him to lean on and to build my foundation on. He is the Son of God. He suffered, died, and resurrected. He is the Prince of Peace, I love him so much and am so grateful for him and all he has done. I am eternally grateful for my mission. It is amazing. I know God loves us and knows whats best for us. He is perfect. The plan is perfect. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is Jesus Christ's church as restored through the prophet Joseph Smith. He saw God and Jesus Christ, the Book of Mormon is the word of God, there is power within its pages. I love it. The field is white, already to harvest.

Thank you for your prayers, I love you all.

Elder Christiansen

Back for round two

Feels good to be in the same area again haha. We cover two English wards and since I already served in one of the English wards, well I know half the area already. I had my worst week ever on not being clutch haha. First day... We go tracting for about 4 hours. The first person we talk to is this like 12 yr old kid. He was swinging an axe at some bushes trying to cut them down and he was struggling. So I offer to help, he says yes, and I ask him what he wanted us to cut down. He said the bushes and a smaller tree. So I just go to work on the tree. About half the way done with it, the mom comes out screaming,"NO NO NO! What are you doing?" uhhhhhh... So best believe I threw the kid under the bus and said, he told me to chop it down. And she looked at the son and wasn't too happy haha. And they were his chores too haha so she wasn't happy about that. I apologized and she wasn't mad at us, just the kid haha. Then so as we are leaving, I see two older men walking so I say, How are you gentleman doing today? And I soon noticed that it was a man and his wife... ooops again. Then later in the week, the automatic key pad to our car is broken and we drive to a spot to tract for 2 hours, we park, I turn the car off and put the keys in between my lap to say a prayer. We say the prayer, I get out, and lock the car manually, shut the door, ooooops again. There were the keys on the seat. So we started tracting and calling to find people to help us and we ended up having to tract 4 hours instead of 2 waiting for help haha. But we saw 2 miracles from it. We met a guy that lived in Utah, he is from Argentina, and we talked to him, he didn't seem too interested and he said he went to church quite a bit in Utah. We kept talking and he opened up more and more. He gave us his number and said to call him, as we were leaving, he said, I was going to wait till next time, but I'm just going to tell you now. I am a member. My companion then put his arm on him, looked at him in the eyes and told him it wasn't a coincidence we met and that it was time to come back. Then later we found a Peruvian lady (best food in the world) and said a prayer with her and ended up teaching her yesterday and she is coming to conference this Saturday! Her son is in Mesa Arizona, so of course he is investigating and I guess really loving it! So we will see with her! And when we got to our car, there was the member with two metal bars prying our door open with a wire trying to pull our keys through. With time it worked haha, pretty cool. Car took a little damage though.. Oops. So my non-clutchness turned out to be a blessing. Glass half full!

 

Church was good this week. It is an English ward and there is a Spanish group in it. It is weird going to an English ward again. It is a real good ward, but very different than Spanish one's. In the English ones you have to go up to the members, and introduce yourself and the usually give you a welcome. In Spanish, you are like a rockstar. You go on, people come to you, take pictures, sign autographs, they ask you where your from, how much time, tell you to come over so they can feed you and get you fat, etc. Spanish people are really outgoing and love to love others and talk. We gringos are usually self-centered and don't know our neighbor's name haha. Unless your Donny and he see's someone with a new truck ;).

 

Don't pray for me... April fool's! Please do! Love you all!

Elder Christiansen

NOOOOOOOOOO!!

I am getting transferred today! :( I love this area so much and the people that I have met. I wasn't happy to come here and now I don't want to leave. I am going back to Clermont! I was in Minneola which is in clermont and that was English work. Now I am going to be in Clermont still but doing Spanish work. We will live in the same complex that I lived in in Minneola haha. My companion is elder Jimenez de Mexico. He moved here though when he was 8. He is pretty cool. I would be upset to go there, but I learned my lesson last transfer. The Lord knows best. So I am happy to go sad to leave. Bittersweet is the lifestyle on the mission for sure! Today we have to switch houses with the sisters because their house is huge and ours is small and there are a new set of elders coming in and well I would be living with them but I am getting transferred. So I get one night there. There is a jacuzzi bath tub in the master bedroom. I was looking forward to that haha. But I guess I will have to test it out tonight lol. It is seriously so big! There are a lot of new areas in the mission. It is crazy. I think that is the hardest thing for President Hall. Is to get housing for all the missionaries.

This week we had a great Sunday. We had some investigators come to church! Lalo came. He should be baptized here pretty soon. The 20th. We had Maria like always! She is doing good. Then we had the girl named Brenda from Argentina come. She is pretty cool. She just moved here and so no english. And her spanish... well... its different. I will call her on the phone and be like "Hola, como esta?" And then all I hear is, "kdjafljdklajklfdjiefei voz che djkfjsdkl como estas? Ask Donny what that means. But she uses a lot of different words than the other spanish countries. So it is pretty funny to talk to with her. And she has a different tone of voice and accent. instead of saying playa (beach) like ply-ya she says it like ply- sha and she says aysha instead of ay-ya.. it is spelled ella. which means her. So sometimes I have to think for a while to understand her haha. and she talks fast. She should be baptized sometime soon too! It is crazy to work with her because she is argentinian, her member friend is Puerto rican, and her other friends that we teach are from Ecuador. So we got all types of spanish going on including our gringo spanish. Good times.

 

We definitely saw some miracles this week. Especially at church. I had a question that I brought to church and the answer came to me as I was sitting there in sacrament meeting. Our gospel principles class had like 20+ people in it! full of investigators/Less Actives/recent converts, us and the teacher, WML and 2nd counselor of stake presidency. It was a real peaceful drive home. I love days like those. Where you just feel the peace and love of the gospel. The Lord is blessing us so much. The branch works really hard here! They are amazing. It is a blessing to be here!

 

I love you all and miss you!

Elder Christiansen

Hola

Here I am writing again! These weeks go by way to fast. And a lot of times, I sit down and I can't even remember too much because everything is just going by so fast! This week was another good one. As President Hall's time is counting down he is pushing us more than ever. I love it. Right now we are focusing on teaching everyone we see and asking them if we could share a message with them and if we aren't teaching someone we are finding. And there is no down time never. It's really hard because people love to talk about sports, life, etc. but we are being told to basically get down to business, get out asap, and go find someone else to teach. I like it. I feel like it will change our mission. It is really getting us fired up. A lot of us work hard, but insanely hard is the next step I guess haha and I am excited for it!

 

Well a really cool investigator just moved to P.R. for two months. She is the one that always feels the spirit really strongly. We took her on a church tour this week and she walked in the chapel and it was like a brick wall of the spirit hit her right in the face. Yup, best believe. She loved it! And we had two hermanas their from our branch and it went really well. It is kind of good she moved though because she goes to a church here, but it isn't in P.R.! But ours is. So she will probably get baptized in P.R. She is loving the BofM! It is really amazing to work with her and just adds to my testimony as well as the truth to the BofM.

We also were tracting the other day, met a lady from Ecuador! She was older and pretty lonely. We asked if we could say a prayer with her. She said yes. We asked her what she needed in her life and then prayed accordingly. She started crying during the prayer and then we taught her the restoration right after it on her porch. It was a really great experience. There is no better feeling than truely blessing others.

We have another investigator named Carlos from P.R. He is a tough one! The spirit is definitely working on him though. Chipping away at him little by little. We taught him the Plan of Salvation and it made a lot of sense to him. And he really liked it. And to my surprise we actually set a baptismal date with him haha. It was definitely a miracle. IDK how it happened but he is doing really well and his heart is being more and more softened.

I fixed my bike this week finally. It was a pain in the neck! It has been out of order for like 2 months haha and we are running out of miles, so I had to fix it. I learned a great lesson though. Take care of your stuff and if something little breaks, fix it because in the future something big will break. And then the other one is: if you don't know what you are doing, take it to someone who does know what they are doing. I truly have learned a lot from my bike hahahaha. And it is a testimony of how we learn more through trials and afflictions than through easy riding ;)....

Love you all, miss you! Keep praying for those miracles! I love them

Elder Christiansen