BAPTISM!

We had a baptism this week! He is from Venezuela and is 18 years old. It was awesome! The spirit was so strong in the room! I had the opportunity to be the one who baptized him. As I got in the font to baptize him, the water temperature reminded me of Lake Tahoe haha. Poor Manuel had to get dunked in it too. He came out barely breathing haha. But even after the cold water, the warmth of the Spirit took over. He was a miracle. We prayed so hard to have 1 baptism in November and the Lord definitely answered our prayers. When we set the goal of 1 baptism in November, we still hadn't found him. He got baptized in about 4 weeks!

 

So we had a good thanksgiving as well. We played some turkey bowl too with other missionaries and some members. The Stake President was playing. He is real good and really buff haha. He was trying to sack me because I was quarterback (not a very good one) (we were playing flags) and I was trying to dodge him and another player and my knee went out pretty bad. It has been swollen, but don't worry, I am walking. I talked to President and everything will be good, but I probably wont be playing sports on the mission for a long time because I don't want to risk it. On Friday I woke up not feeling to good and my knee couldn't bend too far (luckily we were in car), but we were blessed enough where we were still able to work all Friday and for the rest of the weekend. A lot of missionaries got sick on Friday for some reason. Florida turkeys must be evil or something. haha bad joke...

We really had an amazing week! We are seeing a lot of miracles. We have found a couple new families as well :). We taught the restoration to a 17 year old girl this week and she understood it so perfectly! The spirit was really strong. It is the most true message in all of the world.

We had an experience where we had prayer tracting planned along with a couple potentials as backups and we were going to visit the potentials instead of tract, but we felt to tract and we did and just chose a random building in the apartment complex and found one of the nicest ladies I have ever met on my mission from Peru! It was a miracle. We recently taught her with a member present and she wants to come to our English classes! We started up some English classes last week. Our first day was Saturday. 4 people came: me, my companion, and the two other elders in our ward haha. But the class will grow in the near future!

We taught a really cool guy from the Dominican Republic and he has a desire to read the Book of Mormon, he is awesome! He is just moving in like a week. But we will teach him until he leaves.

We taught a family from D.R. too. We taught a Restoration lesson in like 7 minutes. We try to teach 5 min lessons of just doctrine and it works pretty good. The family understood the Restoration in the 7 minutes and felt the power of it as well. It was amazing! We talk about things afterwards and get to know them at the start of the lesson, but the part where we teach the message, we try and keep it 5 minutes and straight doctrine to let the spirit do the teaching.

Elder Starks got in another bike crash again! #4... He passed me now on crash numbers. He went over the handlebars again haha. Good times.

Love you! Thanks for your prayers! :)

Elder Christiansen

Bueno!

This week we had a pretty good week once again. Things are just kind of rolling and rolling. Time is just going toooooo fast! I feel like I write you all every 3 days!

 

So we had been teaching this girl whose dad is a LA member and we hadn't really been able to set a baptismal date with her because there house is crazy when we teach and stuff and she really hadn't felt the spirit. But on Wednesday we went on a temple tour with her and her friend. It was gr-r-r-r-r-eat! We set a baptismal date with her and her friend also wanted to be baptized, but we first have to talk to her parents. It was a good experience for them.

 

We also set a baptismal date with a Part-Member guy this week. He is like 23 from Mexico. His only real problem is soccer. He works 6 days a week and on Sunday he likes to play soccer. So he doesn't go to church all the time. So we have to give him the ultimatum... Soccer or an Eternal Family... We will see what he picks. I wish people could just see the blessings that the gospel brings! But faith precedes the miracles.

 

We have a baptism scheduled this Sunday. He just has to get a new job. But he is a citizen, has a car, speaks English and Spanish and some Portuguese, so it should be too hard. But he is great. He is 18 and wants to serve a mission! He is a miracle.

We have been working hard and trying to find those people who are "connected" to the church. And get them baptized. We are hoping for 4 baptisms in December. That is our goal that we set. We prayed for what the Lord wanted us to achieve and 4 came to my mind, I've never baptized more than 1 in a month, but we can do it!

 

We also saw a miracle with a member's dad who is not a member who came to visit him for a while. We taught him a lesson and he drove us home and says he sees something different in our church. He will be here until January and we are going on a temple tour with him this Wednesday. Baptism on vacation? That would be awesome!

 

Well things are going great here! Loving life...

#143

Elder Christiansen

Nov. 11, 2012

Well we had a pretty good week. Best week in a while. We didn't teach as many lessons as we usually do, but the lessons were more quality than quantity and we are seeing some progression in the investigators. One is currently looking for a new job so he can go to church, another family is looking for a new apartment so they can live the law of chastity and also looking for a new job so they can go to church on Sunday. We are blessed.

We had a meeting with President Hall last week. A good 7 months ago we learned a door approach called "Peace and Blessings". Unfortunately for some reason or another our mission didn't catch the spirit of it and I was one of those unfortunately. So this week he told us to repent, and do it. So we basically knock the door and say something like... "Hello, we are representatives of Jesus Christ, we have been sent to leave His peace and blessings with others. Can we come in and bless your home and your family?" And we get let in about 800% times more than usual and we get to know them, their needs, listen, discern, then say a prayer and bless them by the Priesthood we have. It is going great in our area right now. It makes me strive to be more worthy so I can use the power of the priesthood. I think the best thing that it does is that people see us as representatives of Jesus Christ instead of "Mormon missionaries". So they let us in a lot more times. We pray real earnestly with them, and they feel the Spirit, it is amazing. Then we ask if we can come back to share more, and no one yet has said, "no". So we are seeing miracles from that. The priesthood is REAL. It is such a blessing to have it. Sister missionaries do it as well, just not by the priesthood, and it is powerful too because they are representatives of Jesus Christ. It is a blessing to bless others. We help them feel the peace that the world can not give, but the peace that Jesus Christ can give. Missions in the Florida area have been using this technique and baptisms have doubled. We are planning on ours tripling. It helps us work harder, be more obedient, more worthy, use the priesthood, and bless others.

We have a baptism date for the 25th of Nov. He is GOLD, just looking for a new job, but he came to Stake Conference yesterday!

Love you thank you for your prayers!

Elder Christiansen

Nov. 5th, 2012

So last week was really awesome. Last night just topped things off. We taught this one 17 year old from Honduras. He is really prepared for the gospel. He is awesome. He works at Bay Hill golf course.... That is the golf course of Mr. Tiger Woods himself... I think. But it is really nice. We are going there today for P-Day. See if they let us in haha. But his name is Moises. We taught him at a bus stop last night. Way cool kid. We also are teaching this lady Maria and last night we read the Book of Mormon with her and in the middle of the lesson, we had the impression to invite her to be baptized, so in the middle of the lesson, we just invited her and she said yes! Her date is for Dec. 23rd. She has to get married to her "husband". And we also taught another really cool family yesterday la flia gonzalez. We will see if they are married haha. It was really cool, last night we had a lot of plans, and the Spirit told us to do none of them, and kind of mixed them up a little bit. We had la flia gonzalez planned at 7 to visit, but we felt to visit him at 6, and he was there, so we taught a lesson. Then went to Omar (he was planned) we set an appt. with him to come back. Then we felt to go to Maria, who wasn't in our plans and set the baptismal date with her, then we felt to call Moises and have a lession with him and he was down, so we taught him and he wasn't in our plans either. It was really cool. The Spirit is always the way to go haha. And it is always just little impressions. It is such a blessing to have it in our lives.

We taught this PM named Manuel, his family got baptized a couple months ago by none other than my MTC companion, Elder Yentes down in South Chase, but then they moved to Venezuela and everyone thought they were lost forever. And one day we went to talk to a member and a kid stopped us and told us he was Mormon, so we found out where he lived and they weren't a family on the records. It turned out to be the family that Elder Yentes baptized and they moved back to Florida from Venezuela. And the little kid and the mom got baptized, but Manuel couldn't because he had to work every Sunday. So it was a miracle find for sure. The Lord put them in our path. But we are teaching Manuel, he is looking for another job right now so he can get baptized. He is so awesome, he said one of the best prayers I have ever heard. He is a tender mercy from the Lord, hopefully he gets a new job and doesn't have to work Sundays :).

Missionary work is the best in the world. Everyone should serve, it is such a blessing. I know this is the most true work in the world. I have felt the spirit too much on my mission to deny the message of the Restoration of the Gospel. It is the greatest, most powerful message in the world.

Emails are short, but I hope you like them haha. My life is amazing.

Love Elder Christiansen!

Imma Floridian

Soooo, it is kind of cold here! Like 65-70 degrees with a little wind.. haha. It feels kind of chilly, not going to lie. We turned the heater on in our car haha. Everyone here is so accustomed to the heat. We were driving down a road, and people got winter coats and beanies on haha. Pretty crazy sight.

This week was pretty awesome. We saw a miracle. We have an awesome investigator who he had problems with alcohol, tobacco, and coffee. So last Sunday, we taught him the Word of Wisdom and gave him a blessing and had him say a prayer for help. Well a week later and he hasn't relapsed at all and he has given up everything! He is feeling the spirit and feeling happy and he said he really has like no desire to do those things. So that was really awesome to see the Atonement working through him and see the change in his life and countenance. The Atonement is so powerful if we have faith in it. He has tried to quit a long time ago, but the help of Jesus Christ and His Atonement is always the best way to go for repentance!

This week we saw a lot of blessings and we got to teach a lot of lessons and found some new investigators through members and us. One of the member referrals, we taught her and her husband the Restoration, the wife went to church last Sunday and loved it, so we were excited to teach her, but kind of nervous to teach him because when she described us to him, it didn't sound like he would be as interested as her. But we taught them and he felt the Spirit really strong in the lesson. Almost to tears, so that was a great experience as well. The Restoration is such a powerful lesson, I have seen so many miracles by teaching it. It is definitely true haha. It is such a blessing to have it.

The work here is going great, a lot of lessons a lot of finding, just trying to get them to baptism!

The church is true. I have come to love the gospel. It makes us happy. I love sharing it with everyone and watching it help them in there lives. It is such a blessing to serve a mission. All young men and women should go on missions, it will change there lives.

Love you all and miss you!

Elder Christiansen

Soooo tired, but we keeeep going!

Well it is the end of October and last week still felt like August! C'mon Florida! But the mornings and nights are really nice.

So this week I had a pretty great experience. We have been blessed so much recently. We have been finding and teaching sooooo many people, seeing a lot of miracles in that aspect of our work. And we had some high hopes for a family (Yessika, Clara, Brittany, and Juan) then a family of 6 named the Carmona family and then Elias who all looked like they would get baptized soon. Yessika was so golden, her and Clara went to church and liked it a lot, and they had a date for the 4th of Nov, but then on Saturday, Yessika and Clara told us they would be working on Sunday, and they have to take their car, so the rest of their family can't go to church. Broke my heart. I wanted to cry. Then that same day, we were going to go on a temple tour with the Carmona family and they were going to LOVE it, but they couldn't because of work. And it just felt like they were dropping off the radar because the parents worked so much this week and that just kind of drained my attitude too. So after all of that I was riding on my bike, super down and bummin' because it felt like we had so much "baptismal success" in the next month and it was trying to slip through our fingers. And that has happened sooo many times on my mission, where we are so close to baptisms and they just all fell at once. So as I am pitying to myself on my bike, I remember a conversation we had with some members a couple days before. We talked about Jonah and how he was hot on the mountain and so the Lord caused for a goard (plant) to grow to give him shade for a day. Then the next day the Lord sent a worm to eat the plant and Jonah got really mad and upset. But then the Lord tells him something like, "Why are you mad? I caused the plant to grow in the first place?" I was called to repentance by the Spirit there on my bike. All of the blessings and the progress of our investigators was because of what he had done for us. He helped them progress, he prepared him, and then when they started to fall back a little bit, I started to ask "Why?" But I realized that I had been blessed more than I could ask for. So I soon got over my little sadness haha. And realized that God has given me all of the success that I have had and all the blessings that I have had. But that has really got me thinking about life. All the time we ask, "Why? Why me? Why this?" But everything we have is from God and was given to us. It was a great lesson to be learned. And then I read Elder Stockard's letter home that Papa Tom sent me. He has some incredible faith and was an example to me. I could feel the spirit of his letter and I realized that all will be well, these families will progress, Yessika will have Sunday's off and the Carmona family will be just fine, and allllll is well. Even though we had a frustrating 2 hours, this week was AMAZING! So many miracles, we found about 30 new potentials this week and got 6 new investigators and taught a lot of lessons. Why do I droop in the sad moments? haha. This life is amazing!

We have a member in our ward named Dennis Cabrera. She has been a member for about 1 year and 3 months. She is so amazing though. I don't think she ever stops smiling. She doesn't have a car, but will pay people to take her to church, find a member, or even invite a friend with a car to church. She is magic haha. She knows the blessings of the Gospel in her life. She is the definition of a member missionary. She has probably brought 10 different people to church, invited 200 to church and activities, and given out 20 BofM's in her 1 in the church... I just felt like talking about her because yesterday she did her magic (which is just inviting with a smile that says "this gospel makes me happy") and invited her friend Maria to church. Maria loved it! And her 4 yr old son Angel. Maria wants to bring her husband next week and tonight we have an FHE, (hosted by Dennis Cabrera) with Maria+ family, other ward members, our investigator Elias, Yessika and family, and hopefully the Carmona family. It is going to be awesome! Missionary work is the greatest blessing!

love you all!

Elder Christiansen'143

Oct 15th, 2012

So sweeeet! We had a zone conference again with Elder Zwick from the 70. It was very powerful. LOOOOVVED it. He let us in on the behind the scenes of the the changing of the missionary age, so that was very cool. I learned so much just about strengthening myself and strengthening my foundation. The mission really prepares us for the rest of our lives. When we work harder on our mission and study harder, we prepare ourselves more for the challenges and temptations that come later in life.

We saw some miracles this week! We had a 2 ladies and their families who wanted to go to church and they have a car, but the front tires were flat, so yes, we filled them up with them on Sunday haha right before church. Then she noticed that the front tires were wearing down and they had that wire stuff feel on it. I knew that wasn't good, but she looked at me and asked if God would help her get to church, I said yes, and off we went for about a 20 minute drive there. And they got there and back with no problems. So I count that as a miracle because they don't have driver's liscences and they were really scared to go, but Heavenly Father provided the way to obey His commandments :).

Also we have been teaching a guy and sometimes his kids and he LOVES the gospel, but hasn't progressed because his wife is catholic and she hasn't been participating in the lessons and he doesn't want him and his wife to go different dirrections. On Saturday, we had the opportunity to serve the wife (she is VERY nice), and on Sunday we fasted for her heart to be softened. And that night, we taught him and her! And she accepted the invitation to hear the lessons along with her husband! The spirit had touched her, that was awesome.

The ward here is getting so much stronger. It is amazing. This area is litterly the best. We had a ward party on Saturday which was awesome. (Spanish church parties are a little more crazy than the English ones) haha. They play English music, with some questionable church lyrics in it, but must people don't understand except for us and the kids haha. So that was pretty funny. But it was a great party.

Today was transfers, and I have been with my companion for 2 transfers already, so I was telling a lot of people that it was probable I was leaving... BUT I'M STAYING!!! SO EXCITED! :) The Lord is great!

Well thanks for your prayers, I see miracles because of them!

Elder Christiansen