June 18th, 2012

 So you don't even know how awesome my area is! Well there is a street
 here that is like little Mexico/South America, so you can just bike up
 and down it and talk to tons of Spanish. It is a big street too, so
 you don't really run into the same person twice too often. The only
 problem is if they are walking, it usually means they don't have a car
 and the church is pretty far away haha, but there are some that do.
 Sometimes I wish I could just build one of our churches right in the
 heart of little Mexico/South America. The work would go crazy! Haha.
 But we meet so many Spanish people it is insane! And a lot are pretty
 positive. We had a baptism this weekend for a guy named Marzolini from
 Colombia. It was awesome. I don't know if Georgianna got baptized in
 Minneola, but I hope so! It is a ward here where I'm at, but very
 small. I guess if they updated the records, they would turn into a
 branch again, and the Spanish people really work towards being a ward,
 so they aren't updating the roster haha. There were probably 80 people
 at church. The building is right across the temple and we do temple
 service every once in a while. We are right in the city with Universal
 Studios, DisneyWorld, Sea world is right outside of our area, and I
 Drive is in it (which is like the tourist spot). The city is awesome,
 and it kind of smells bad too. But there are Spanish, Portugese, and
 Haitan missionaries here. And English. So it is a wide diversity. Our
 apartments we live in are probably the best in the mission (I've been
 spoiled on my apartments) We have a bowling alley (free), basketball
 court, 3 story workout room, Subway, etc. The Orlando Predators
 football team live here as well, so there are some pretty nice cars.

 My body is trying to adjust back to the Spanish food. We can go to an
 appt at 5 and eat and another at 6:30 and they give us more food. This
 week I had Mondongo... Or in English. Cow stomach. The sauce was
 really good and the potatoes were good as well (I think they were
 potatoes) and the cow stomach had no taste, but a really gross
 oyster/rubber texture. So it wasn't too bad. Just made sure I put a
 little rice on my fork to go with the stomach. haha.

 We saw so many miracles this week. Praying for specific things and
 getting them. Prayers are heard and answered! The members in this ward
 are really awesome as well. This place is about to EXPLODE!

 O ya and my Spanish is rough haha but coming back slowly! Sometimes I
 have to stop mid sentance for a couple of seconds to try to remember
 some words.

Thanks for the prayers and support!
 Love and miss you all
 Elder Christiansen

June 11th, 2012

Well I am back into the Spanish work! I am going to Windy Ridge East! And guess what! My dad, my trainer, Elder Spilsbury, is in Windy Ridge West. And that is my boy! So I am really excited. It is going to be fun. If you want to look it up on a map, well just google Disneyworld on google maps and thats my area! I asked President Hall via email where I pick up my season pass, I am still waiting for his reply haha. But I am super excited. I won't be able to come back to see the baptism this coming Saturday, but it is okay, the work goes on. I really loved it here in Minneola and I will miss so many of the people that I met here. There are mixed feelings leaving an area. You are excited to go somewhere new, but sad to leave people you may not ever see again.

So this last week we met a really cool guy named Gustavo from Brazil. He was really prepared to talk with us. We had a lesson on Saturday that went really well and he committed himself to come to church. Which he did come and felt the spirit. He is really cool. The only problem is he is going to Brazil on June 30th for 3 months, so I am guessing the missionaries here will just have to refer him to missionaries there in Brazil.

It has been raining a ton lately. We had an AWESOME thunderstorm last night. It looked so cool. One day it was raining really bad and we were on bikes, and I turned just a little corner, not even sharp, and I hit some pollen (I'm guessing) that was on the sidewalk mixed with some water and before I knew it, I was laying on the ground haha. I was still on my bicylce was the funny part, I did a slide into home base basically. My pants got super dirty and so did my shirt, but luckily I only had two little spots of blood and a kind of sore hip the next day. Feels good to be young still but I swear my body is aging and things like that hurt more than they use too haha. And that same day, my companion got hit by a car haha. Luckily the car was barely pulling out of a parking lot, so it just tapped him a little bit and he didn't fall off. It was a bad bike day. But good news is we later got full car that week and in Windy Ridge, we also have full car. Not to say I don't like biking, but it is too hot haha. I guess in Windy Ridge I won't have to tract as much because people will be walking on the streets. I haven't had an area like that yet where a lot of people are walking outside. And also the temple might be in my area. The church I will go to is on the opposite side of the street as the temple, so it is either in my area or Windy Ridge West's area. It is going to be AMAZING. The only problem is... no hablo espanol. haha. But I am hoping it will come back soon!

I made a lot of friends here in the Minneola Ward, it seems like when they started liking me, I leave haha. Maybe they like me because I'm leaving? haha. But there are some real cool people here that I definitely will have to go visit again someday. I will miss the cool hilly scenery here too, but not riding up them. Right now I am emailing from the library and can see the NTC track which is pretty cool. The guy in our ward from Ireland hasn't qualified yet for the olympics, but he will get it. He needs to run a 10.18 and he ran a 10.17, but the wind was at 3.0 and it has to be at 2.0 or something, so it didn't count. Super bummer probably.

Well Love you all and miss you! Thanks for the prayers! Have an amazing week.

Yours Truely ;),

Elder Christiansen

June 4th, 2012

So it was a pretty good week once again! Some spiritual things happened as well as some random things.

We went on a temple tour with two people who are whats called "On fire." One of them was less active and recently is returning to the church. He is pretty awesome. He read the whole June Ensign the first day he got it haha. It has been really cool to be able to witness his progression. The other person was our investigator. She is reading the Book of Mormon, Gospel Principles, Daughter of the Kingdom? (the relief society book), and some other church book haha. She had prayers answered this week and told us all about them. She also says that she is just feeling so much peace. Her friends offered her some alcohol and she refused it. She is REALLY AWESOME! And she loves church and is telling everyone about her baptism. It is on the 16th. Transfers however are next Tuesday, so I would love to see, but we will see what the Lord wants I guess haha. Also this week we got to give several blessings and also I did my first blessing on a home which was pretty cool. Last night we visited some older less active people and they just love talking those old people! But it made their days, so that was nice to see. I am getting better and better at listening, well at least in lessons haha. But I have realized the power in just listening to others and giving them your full attention.

Some random stuff that happened this week: We went over to a single mother's house and she is scared of frogs and she had one on her back porch. So she asked us if we would capture it for us. She asked me if I was scared of frogs, I said "yes", and she asked my companion if he was scared, he said "no". So as we were walking around to the back of her house, he told me he really was scared of frogs and he just wanted to act manly haha. So we looked for it for a couple minutes and we finally slid open their sliding glass door and it hopped out onto the glass. So I had them get me a broom and my companion had a plastic bag. We can see who the smarter one is haha jk. So I'm trying to sweep off the frog from the glass door and my companion is holding the plastic bag. The members were watching us from the other side and as I was doing it, the frog jumped off the glass onto my companion's arm. Everybody jumped, especially him haha. And he screamed too I think haha. Super funny.

And then the other day I was biking down a hill going pretty fast, and I saw something a little in front of me in my path, and when I got closer I realized it was an albino snake. Super disgusting, so I didn't want to run over it, so at the last minute I swerved and missed it. I was super scared it was going to try and bite my leg haha, so I kind of screamed as I swerved around it also. But all was well. My companion looked at it and thought it was dead, but it wasn't too thick, but it was like 6 feet long!

Well that's all I really got time for. It has been raining like crazy. You are either drenched by rain or sweat. I prefer the rain. Today President told us we aren't biking enough. Sweet....... Haha so it looks like we are in for a lot of fun this summer!

Love you all and miss you. Thank you for your prayers!

Love,

Elder Christiansen!

May 29th, 2012

So this letter will be short because I wrote the President a lot and kind of ran out of time. And if I write president a lot, it means it was a good week! We have an investigator who is doing just great! She is reading the RS book, Book of Mormon, and Gospel Principles Book. #TMS? She is awesome! She has a date for the 16th.

It has been raining a lot! I love it. We played soccer in the rain yesterday, it was really fun. There is an Elder here who played on BYU Hawaii's soccer team and is really good.

Things are going great here. With using mormon.org in lessons, it is really fun and the lessons are more diverse and better I think, so we are having a lot of fun with that.

We helped lay some tile for a service project on Saturday, I woke up for church at 5:45 the next morning and felt like a train had hit me in the middle of the night haha. I hurt so bad at church.

It was pretty cool because we went to this one guy's house and he had forgotten his inhaler at work and he was all worried about how he maybe was going to have to call an ambulance that night in case he had an attack, and so when he said that story, I just gave him mine because I have a lot and he realized how God answer's prayers and his faith was strengthened because of that, so that was pretty cool.

The member's here are so awesome! I love them more and more every week. I hope they love me more and more every week haha. But this ward is really cool and I am learning SO MUCH!

We might go on a temple tour with an investigator tomorrow, those are sooooo awesome! You walk around the temple and a guy talks about the Restoration, Plan of Salvation, temples, etc. and they are really spiritual. So I am excited to go tomorrow to that. We are going with our awesome investigator. She lives by a member and earlier today we went to teach here at the member's house, and the member was suppose to pick her up and when we got there, the member answered the door and told us she went to knock on the investigator's door, her roommates answered and they said that she had run away. I was tripping! Luckily she was kidding and the investigator was around the corner laughing. And then we had a cool lesson with her.

Love you guys!

Thanks for the prayers and letters!

Love,

Elder Christiansen

May 21st, 2012

We had a pretty funny/cool/awesome week. One night we got home and we decided to pick up some old papers and call some people. So we called like two people and one answered. She said we could come over in a couple weeks to help her mom or something. (It was a weird conversation). And she didn't seem to positive. Then about 15 minutes later we get a text from her saying that she had been praying for some support-assistance earlier then we called a little later! So that was pretty cool. The weird thing was that the spirit had guided us a couple times that day and they were just little thoughts and no huge impressions. I can know see why we always have to be open to thinking and pondering and meditation!

We set 2 baptismal dates this week, which was pretty awesome! We taught a lesson by just reading out of the Book of Mormon, and then explaining the verses. It was a powerful/simple/ easy to teach Plan of Salvation lesson. It was really cool. Teaching from the scriptures, especially the Book of Mormon has to be the best way to teach because the spirit is in them. In our district we have 4 Spanish missionaries, one that speaks Creole (Haiti), and 3 English missionaries, but one is from Russia. So we have 4 different languages spoke amongst the 8 of us, which is pretty cool.

So a sweet event this week is that we got a new car! A 2012 Ford Fusion. The vehicle guy came over and said that he wanted to trade bike racks from the car he was driving, with our old corolla's bike rack. I said okay and asked how he wanted to do it. He told me to just take his car. I looked and it was a brand new fusion. Made my day haha. It is the coolest car in the mission behind the mini vans.

We heard a story about a kid named Jabari Parker? A Mormon basketball player that is better than LeBron? Some member told us he was on Sports Illustrated, so that sounded cool.

We also got permission to go and watch the guy in our ward try to qualify for the Olympics. He missed the A cut by .05 seconds! But he has more chances. It was really cool.

Well I love you all and miss you! Have a great week and thanks for the prayers!

Love Elder Christiansen

PS sorry for the short letters... I really do love you all though! ;)

Something cool I learned today. I hope I quote it right. It went something like,"We can't have physical evidences for everything because that goes against the doctrine of agency." It was from Elder Cook's talk at conference. It was pretty cool!

143

May 14th, 2012

Well my Mother's Day call was awesome! I am really glad I called at night because my mind was racing as I went to bed, but luckily I woke up with the missionary focus back with me. But I really loved the phone call. I have always loved all my family and friends, but as I hung up the phone, I realized how much more I love you guys than before my mission. I didn't want to hang up the phone at all! But I do love all of you so much and am grateful for all that you do for me!

Well on Sunday the talks were of course on Mothers. I learned A LOT from the talks. One of them is that the speaker said that some mother's do not like mother's day because the feel inadequate or like they have made a lot of mistakes. I could really easily relate to that because I often feel inadequate as a missionary, every single day actually. But I just want my mother to know and my grandmother's and all the mother's out there that they are so special in God's plan. They have such a hard job and they do an amazing job! I hope that no mother feels inadequate, but that is just Satan. He knows our potential and he knows what we are capable of doing and becoming. He often tells us that we aren't any good and brings our mistakes to us to make us feel bad. One thing brought me peace this week that helped me realize on how we don't have to be perfect. I am pretty sure that I talked about it last week too, but it was GRACE. Grace is the best! It is the enabling power of our lives, it is the strength that we receive from the Lord, it makes up for all of our imperfections. We weren't perfect, we aren't perfect, and we can't be perfect in this life. But luckily Jesus Christ makes up for everything that we can't do. And He loves to do it. He knows we are going to fall short, but time after time his arm is always extended to us. I know that I can't be perfect, mother's can't be perfect (right now), but it is always reassuring that everything can be made better and perfect through the Atonement of Christ. The Lord will make up for what we can't do. We just have to have faith, try our hardest, repent, and repeat and all will be taken care of. I like the story of Peter falling in the water. It was his fault, he wanted to walk on water and he lost faith and he sank, but he did something that all of us can learn from, he called on Jesus to save him and help him. And then we read that Jesus IMMEDIATELY extended His arm and saved him. Peter could have just thought to himself, well I got myself into this, so I should get myself out of it, but he didn't. (I stole this from and April Ensign talk... haha) The Lord makes up for what we can't do, we just have to call on Him.

I love my mother and my grandmothers and my aunts. They have all helped me out in my life and have done a wonderful job in raising me. I couldn't have asked for a better mother. I love her and miss her.

Happy Mother's Day!

L-L-L-L-Love,

Elder Christiansen

May 7th, 2012

Well this last week was pretty good! First of all to my aunt Karin who wanted help with her Book of Mormon class, read the October 2011 ensign of the Book of Mormon, it is so golden, the lesson will be AWESOME if you use it!

Last week I got impetigo everybody was just looking at it when I would talk to them haha. But I got medicine and it is clearing up, so that is good haha. But it was pretty funny.

Also we were biking the other day in the street and there was this little girl on her bike on the sidewalk with training wheels going the other way. And her older sister was with her, and the little girl was just staring at us, so I asked her if she wanted to race (in a nice voice of course haha) and she just kept staring at us and she ran off the sidewalk and fell off her bike! But she landed on her feet so that was good, it was pretty funny and I also felt kind of bad at the same time. That I guess would be my funny story for the week.

I was reading this morning about grace in the Ensign and it was really good! It was from Elder Bednar in the April Ensign of this year titled "The Atonement"? It talked about how grace gives us power and strength and how a lot of times when we are facing a lot of hard trials we pray for the trials to go away, but we should be praying to have the strength to get through the trials, so that was pretty cool. Examples in the Book of Mormon was with Nephi being bound by his brothers, and Alma and his people being in bondage. It was a new perspective for me.

I have really gotten into reading the Ensigns. I learn so much from them and my appreciation for knowledge has grown. I hope I can apply that to school work after the mission because I have realized just how AWESOME it is to learn! And there is no limit either. I have learned so much in these past months, and not just facts and skills, but attributes also. We can always learn and grow. And when there is opposition we can grow even more! Opposition is for our good and is needed for spiritual growth.

A cool quote I heard this week was something like,"In order to receive all the Father has, giving all we have is required."

This week, the recent convert we baptized told us she is engaged! I am hoping that I will still be in Florida when they get sealed in a year! That would be so awesome. It was pretty cool news. This week we also had the opportunity to give a couple of blessings. The Priesthood is so real. And I am grateful to have it. I think the priesthood is just all about love. It is there to help and serve others and of course for the salvation of God's children. We have a pretty good hospital here and so there are patients from all around, so sometimes we get random calls to go and give a blessing to someone. It is always a great experience. The people we get to meet, even though we don't know them, we seem to be able to just love them right away and they love us right away. I know that that wouldn't be possible in any other work except in this work, God's work. The blessings of being able to be a missionary and serve others is so AWESOME!

Thank you all for your prayers, love, and support!

Love,

Elder Christiansen