Sept 24th, 2012

Nothing to crazy happening this week, but just a lot of little stuff. Some guy tried to buy my bike off me for like $10, but I didn't sell it to him. And that is about as crazy as it got. We got soaked on Friday. It rained pretty bad. But we saw lots of little miracles this week. Being in the right place at the right time, etc. My testimony is strengthened every week as we follow our plans.

Right now we are teaching a lot of people, just having problems with getting them to progress! We had 9 new investigators last week and 7 the week before, but I don't know where they all went haha. But we got some good advice to try and help them progress. Its called getting bold and dropping them if they aren't progressing.

Right now we are teaching a guy named Elias. He is really cool. He is looking for the truth and is reading quite a bit in the Book of Mormon. We have a program in our mission where we try and hook our investigators up with a companion to read the Book of Mormon with about every other day. It is hard to get started, but when it gets started, it is money. He read all of 1 Nephi in 2 days. He has gone to church a number of times and is obviously reading the BofM, but he still hasn't felt it. He feels better, but he wants a little more assurance, so hopefully he will get baptized soon.

I don't know what to say this week... sorry.

We had invited about 16 investigators to church and about 10 of them seemed somewhat likely to come. We had 2 there haha. Kind of a let down, but 2 is better than 0 :).

We saw lots of little miracles this last week of finding random people.

Well yo se que la iglesia es verdadera. he encontrado muchas bendeciones por causa de ella. estoy agradecido por una familia que me ama y por su ejemplo para mi. agradezco que tengo muchos amigos que estan serviendo misiones alrededor el mundo. la oracion es real y se que nuestro padre celestial las contesta. el libro de mormon es la palabra de dios. les quiero mucho. y estoy muy agradecido por sus oraciones.

Elder Christiansen

143

Sept 17, 2012

The roller coaster ride is going back up! Haha. So on Saturday we had a Stake mission meeting. With all the missionaries of the stake and all the WML, bishops, and ward missionaries that could make it. It was pretty awesome. We even had Elder Munns from the Seventy come and speak. His brother is a lawyer here in St. Cloud, FL and is on a ton of billboards haha. The name Munns was sounded familiar when it was announced. He really gave a great talk. It was actually amazing. He talked about is a PRIVILEGE and BLESSING to share his testimony of Jesus Christ with others. He said missionary work is like a sleeping giant right now and is ready to be awakened. He talked about how with every thing that is going on, how this time is unlike non other to share our beliefs and testimonies. He talked about how the Wall Street Journal had had like 10 headlines with word Mormon in the title in the past week or something along those lines. He told of an experience he had where he was on a plane and he started talking about the church with the guy next to him on the plane. He said that is easy for him to talk about the church with anyone. The invitation is the hard part for him. He said as he was sitting there, the plane started its descent (sp?). And the scripture "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ" came to his mind. He looked at the guy and said,"if you will give me your address, I will send two young men to your house to share more with you." (so of course we are all expecting to hear how this guy got baptized 3 weeks later) And he went on to tell us that the guy stared at him for about 3 seconds turned his head, looked out the airplane window and never talked to him again for the rest of the flight. He said it was awkward, it was embarrassing, but he shared also how it doesn't matter what the guy thinks about him, for he will not be ashamed of the gospel of Christ. And then the Stake President later shared a story about how he was busy running to a surgery or something for him to do in a hospital that he rarely ever visits. And a lady came behind him and got his attention and he was trying to get away to get to his next appointment. He had sincerely been praying for missionary opportunities he said. The lady then said, "Do you remember me?", she said "You gave me a Book of Mormon 5 years ago, I am now ready to learn more." Miracle. A hospital he is hardly ever at, right time, right place, the seed was planted and took 5 years to be ready. He shared with us how he has a reminder on his phone to do missionary work. I invite you all to put up a picture, something on the fridge, your phone, whatever that reminds you of this work. It is important. The more we have missionary work on our mind, the more we will have opportunities to do it.

We also taught an old couple last night. He use to be a pastor in Cuba, almost got killed for his belief in God. They originally just wanted to "make prayer" with us in their house. The impression came to us to share a little more than a prayer. We taught the Restoration to them. The wife has been battling cancer for 9 years. She said she loved the way we taught. The peace that was there. The message of the restoration is TRUE. Peace is of God. It wasn't adrenaline or excitement we felt last night, it was the peace of the eternities that filled the room last night.

 

Love you all and miss you. Your prayers brings us miracles.

Elder Christiansen

Gotta put a smile on :)

So I am not going to lie. This week was rough. The area was on fire and we had a couple families we were teaching and it all looked really positive. We had a baptism planned for a family this Saturday which was going to be awesome and this past week it felt like everything just slipped through our fingertips. We set some really high goals which last week seemed achievable and we didn't come close to achieving them. It was pretty discouraging. We have no idea if we will have a baptism this Saturday, but probably not. But even though we had a lot of problems and everything just seemed to come down at once, we still saw many blessings. We are teaching this one guy and he is really awesome and we have spiritual lessons with him because he is just so hungry for the gospel. He committed himself to try and get his wife and kids behind him in learning more about the gospel. We could very well see an awesome miracle this week from his desires to want more in life. Another tender mercy from the Lord this week is that we found a family of 5! But the husband isn't here in town. He is in Tampa. But the mom is from the Dominican Republic and she is really nice and he is from Espana, and they have the chattiest 3 daughters I have ever met... Two of them are twins who are turning 8 this week and the oldest is also 8. I don't know how the mom does it. But they were so nice. The little girls loved us, they grew up in Espana too. The husband comes down here every Tuesday, so we have an appt with them this Tuesday. Hopefully it goes well!

I also had bike problems this week. Flat tire!!!

Well this week was kind of depressing, but this one will be better! Even though we had a rough week, we still taught more lessons than in my first two areas haha. Well the church is true no matter how short my emails are.

Thanks for the prayers! Love ya!

#GMC
Elder Christiansen

Sept. 3rd, 2012The Good Life

This week we had the opportunity to go on a temple tour with our investigators. They invited one of their friends to go as well! So that was really cool. I had to translate for them and the Lord helped me out so much with that, so that was really cool. We have a member in our ward who usually translates for our investigators, but he couldn't do it today, so I had to do it. The tour went really well and it is always a great experience no matter how many times we go. It is such an amazing blessing to have a temple so close and I love to feel the Spirit outside of it.

We had an insane day of being led and guided by the Spirit on Thursday. We were so blessed. We had an appointment fall through at 5. Our next appointment was at 6, and so we went to do our back up plans for 5 and 5:30. We had two options to try for the backup plans in different areas. So we kind of just chose the first one without too much thought. We went to visit a potential, and as we got out of the car, we met a Spanish lady and got a return appointment for her. Then we went to knock the door of our potential. There was a Spanish lady sitting on the stairs outside of the door that wasn't our potential. So we asked her if Barbara was home. She told us Barbara didn't live there (happens quite often). So we asked her if we could sit down with her outside and teach her. She said yes. So we taught her and in the middle of it, we asked her how she felt. She said that before we had come, she was angry and was upset and just not having a great day, but she said that now she felt good and calm, and just at peace. So that was awesome. Then after her, we visited a different lady and we got there and she wasn't home, but we talked to a little girl and she said she lived in the house and that her mom was on her way home and would be home in a minute. So we waited and she came home really fast, we taught her for the first time and set a baptismal date with her. It was awesome that the day just worked out perfectly and that the spirit guided us in the quietest ways.

The church is true.

Love you and thanks for the prayers!
Elder Christiansen

Aug. 27, 2012

Well things are great here and sounds like things are great back home! Shout out to my mother! Going to have my first sibling after 21 years of being the only child! As long as I am still spoiled all should be well ;). But I am very excited to have a sibling!

This week was very amazing. We have been teaching the daughter of the recent convert and the best thing is that when we teach her, all of her friends want to listen as well. And they LOVE it when we come over! I just wish adults were the same as kids. We taught them all how to pray this week. And at the end they all said a prayer. It was a great opportunity to see the smiles on their faces after the prayers.

This week we left the apartment and we talked to the first lady on the sidewalk. She was Spanish and had a couple of kids. As we taught her and asked if we could come over and share more she said she already went to a church and that all churches are good. So we shared more and tried to share something to capture her interest, but nothing was working. We asked again if we could come over and she once again said all things of God are good and that she was fine where she was at. As we left I was thinking to myself for a while "what is a great explanation for why there is only one true church?" I already knew some responses to it and I know the doctrine behind it, but I was just refreshing my memory of the doctrines and trying to come up with more things to prove that there can only be one church. Because I knew the question would come up again. Later that day we were in a lesson with an investigator that is awesome, but hasn't committed to baptism. We invited him to baptism and his response was "I was already baptized, why do I need to do it again in your church?" So it went right along the same lines as the question we had got earlier that day. It was cool to see how the Lord had prepared us earlier in the day to be able to better answer the question later in the day. So once again we shared the doctrine behind it and it seem to hit him pretty well and then like always we traced it right back to the Book of Mormon and praying to know if it is true. It was a pretty nice reminder of how sometimes the frustrating moments happen for the well being for others.

We taught this lady this week who is very awesome! She has a family as well, and we plan on teaching them. She also gave us a referral to go teach her friend. And we taught her friend as well. Her friend is seriously seeking for the truth and knows that there is only one true church. They both are very awesome. We have really been focusing in district in asking EVERYONE for referrals. I wish I had done it my whole mission. It is a hard habit to get, but we have the biggest teaching pool that I have ever had and this is the busiest time of my mission. Sometimes the Lord puts people in our paths because they know other people who are ready.

The Holy Ghost here is so important. This week by just following a couple of thoughts, we saw miracles. Not super big impressing thoughts, but the little subtle ones. It is such a great help in missionary work and a great blessing of being a member of this church. We prayed to go to a street this week and found a super awesome family! Families are the best and our message is for the families. It was a amazing. The dad seemed to really like us. He said he lets all kind of missionaries in but I hope that he can see the difference that we aren't just other missionaries. I think he might of because we didn't teach him, but we talked to him as he was cooking. And he had a pretty busy 10 year old son that was nearby. We opened up mormon.org/mormon messages for him. And he loved them! The dad told us that is was a miracle he was sitting still haha.

This week I realized how important it is to feast upon the word of Christ in order to receive personal revelation. As I pray for guidance and direction, the answers that come to me usually come in the form of a scripture that I have read before. It happened again this week and it was such a blessing. I am so grateful for all the scriptures that we have in this church.

Also during my studies this week I realized that I had been neglecting an important part of the Restoration as I have been teaching. I have taught gospel dispensations before, but not terribly too thoroughly. This week I learned that I need to. As we did that as a companionship, our restoration lessons have been so much better! The investigators understand it so much better. It is so rewarding to see the light go on in their eyes that says, "wow, that makes sense." I remember when that happened to me in the MTC. We had an investigator this week who just really loved the Restoration. We usually try to keep eye contact as we teach, but investigators aren't always accustomed to a lot of eye contact, but this investigator was not blinking! That's when you know they are into the lesson. It is such a great feeling when others are interested in what you are saying. I love the question "So where is your church at?" after we teach a lesson.

And this week a family that I taught in my first area, passed us as we were riding on bikes and they were in their truck and so they pulled over and we talked and they moved into this area! So that was cool and they want to talk to us again!

BABABABAPTISM!

Another sweet week in the best area ever. It started out pretty rough and then heated up. I met the meanest guy of my mission so far haha. We knocked his door and before I could tell him who we were, he started yelling at us. He asked us if we were Jehovah Witness's, we said no and it kind of took him back, he then asked who we were and once we said the word "church", he started yelling again haha. NO TRESPASSING!!!! But the thing was we contacted some Spanish people and they gave us his address. So I asked him if Raul was there (the person we contacted) then he yelled at us even more saying "do I look like Raul?" Then we tried to to explain to him how Raul said this was his address, so I opened my planner to try and show him, but before I got to the page, he took it out of my hand and threw it. So then I punched him reflexively in the face. Just kidding.... He would have beaten me up pretty bad haha. So we picked up my planner and just walked away. He was wearing a San Fransisco giants hat, and I was going to compliment him on it, but he was too busy yelling haha. But I forgave him because of the good looking hat that was on his head haha.

We ate at Panda Express this week :). Miss it. There aren't any Jamba Juices in Florida though :(. So we didn't get to do the Jamba/Panda swagg.

We had zone conference this week. It was super powerful. The spirit taught us so much. I got called to repentance once again! Every time I tell you! I learned that I need to work on my faith and charity, and basically all Christlike attributes haha. Why are they so hard!!!!???? So I read some talks on humility and I love the one "The laborers in the vineyard" by Elder Holland.

The baptism was so perfect yesterday! Sister Felicitas Castano. It was a long and difficult 4 months to reach the point, but it was all worth it, (I got to work with her for 3 of them). It was definitely the hardest baptism of my mission and once again when we are sitting in her baptism, the humbling whispering of the Spirit says,"Remember you did the easy part, this is His work." (Something like that ;) ))) It was so amazing to see her go in the water. She has changed so much. She has so much faith. She has been through a lot, but she is now spiritually born into the fold of The Shepherd. Makes me so happy! A member baptized her who has been a member for about 1.5 years. He is the bomb. We are seeing so many miracles and blessings :). This work is the best, pray for missionary opportunities.

The church is true, bessss believe!

Thank you for your prayers!

 

Love Elder Christiansen...143

Aug. 13, 2012

This week was pretty good as well. There really isn't such thing as a bad week though! We had a great time. We were on bikes. Two nights we got absolutely drenched. Kind of got caught in some rain. The rain isn't the bad thing, it is the lightning that scares me. Because you don't see it for a while and you think your good, but then all of a sudden you hear a big boom and see a flash and it shakes your eardrums. I always duck. And then on Saturday, there weren't many clouds in the sky, but we had lessons lined up at 12, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6:30. And we also had 3 other people who we told we would stop by if we had time between 12-5 and they said that would be okay. Well from 12-4, we couldn't pay anyone to open their door for us haha. All 8 people who said we could come by weren't home. So we were outside all during that time and I started to feel real hot and my face hurt, and I looked at a sign and it said 100 degrees! Me and my companion got pretty roasted. Him more than me haha. But the night ended well, so all is well. I think the reason that no one answered the door was because (well first of all the Spanish street here is called Oak Ridge) all of our appointments were on Oak Ridge, and the HUGE Spanish church on Oak Ridge decided to throw a party, and all of Mexico decided to go. I am pretty sure Elder Hubbard's, Stockard's, and Johnston's investigators were all there as well. We biked past the church like 4 times trying to go to the next appointment. There were so many families there at the activity. I wanted to contact there, but decided that wasn't the best idea. They had like 5 jumping blow up things, and 4 huge blow up water slides, and singers and music and other stuff all for free. When it comes to the truth or bouncy houses, little kids are always going to choose the bouncy houses. You lose that battle, you lose that battle 9 out of 10 times. Haha. But good times anyways.

We saw a lot of miracles this week. Thanks for your prayers, love you guys be awesome! Pray for missionary opportunities

This week I found out one of the old investigators I had in my first area just got baptized!

The church is true, don't ever forget it. I know my emails are always short, I wish I could explain everything that happens, but there are just so many little miracles that happen every day.

Hopefully we will be having 2 baptisms this next Sunday.. We will see :).

We do this thing in our mission where we leave priesthood blessings in other's homes and it is so awesome! The families just love it and the Spirit comes in and it really cheers people up. The priesthood is real! It is a blessing to have it, it helps us grow so much! This week President taught us that the men have it because they need to work on Christlike attributes. And women just naturally have them :).

Well Love and miss you!

Elder Christiansen

143