Fwd: Foto

week nine

Feliz Navidad Folks,

 Well it has been quite a week with the Holidays and everything. We had a Christmas conference with one half of the mission on tuesday and that was really cool. I am not really even sure what all happened this week because time kind of flies by and gets all mixed together so I will pay more attention for next week. It has been interesting to have my first Christmas in the summer season. I kind of miss cool weather, but the warmth definitely opens some new possibilities for celebration. So in Uruguay Christmas eve is the big holiday where everyone celebrates, and Élder Lockhart knew that it would not be possible to get a set lesson with anyone, so what he did was bake a bunch of sugar cookies and we took them around to everyone we know to use as an excuse to get into there house and talk about Christ with them and share cookies. It was a really good Idea, and the cookies weren't half bad either. In fact I would only say that they were about 10% bad, and 90% good. Also I don't really spend very mush money in this area, so I have saved up a ton already, so I decided to treat myself by dropping 1,000 pesos uruguayos on a Christmas eve feast. I got three bags of milk and a bag of chocolate milk, and a bag of chocolate powder, and a bunch of alfahors, and a kilo of dulce de leche,and these uruguayo pie things called frolas. It was pretty great. Speaking of that my super market just had a whole piglet for sale in the carnecería. I couldn't afford it though and it wouldn't fit in my oven anyway. We had permission to stay out untill ten thirty with a memeber that night so we went to our recent convert Victors house. He and his wife are Chilenos so the made us food from Chile which is a lot like food from Uruguay, just with some different ingredients and made in a different way. Any way I didn't have room after to eat all the stuff I bought. We also had permission to stay up until midnight thirty to watch the fire works. What we did is that Elder Lockhart climbed up on our roof and I handed him our chairs and things and those of you who have climbed onto the roofs of things with me before know that I am not very good at climbing so I kind of pulled myself up there and flopped onto the roof, and then we just sat up there and ate alfahors and drank yerba. At 12:00 the fire works started. It was amazing and way better than the fourth of july. It was like all at once the entire country, at least where there are peoples and not cowtles, started erupting with mortars. Definitely the most exuberant celebration in honor of the birth of Christ I have ever seen. It was like everyone made a pact that they would be seen from Mars or expend all of their amunition trying. A floating lantern landed in the tree in front of our house and we thought it was going to burn down but it didn't.

On Christmas we only had church for one hour, and it rained really hard. We ate lunch with the Cardoso family, who have a son on a mission in Brazil. It was a really great meal of meat and beets and things. After that I got to skype my family. My skype account miraculously worked and it was really great to see them. The time went by too fast though, and I got a little teary eyed when I had to press to off button, so I had to sit there for a minute and be melancholy, then I got up and went back to work. Later that night when my comp was doing his skype I got a lot of quiet time to just sit in the chapel and think about the birth of Christ. It was cool to be able to feel really close to him and I am gratefull that we all take the effort to celebrate him.

Also my friend Reid Honeycutt turned 19 this week so if you see him wish him happinesses.

 1: Captain crunch from America for breakfast

2: my pile of junk food

3: A woodpecker

4: Me drinking mate on the roof

week 8

Hey Everyone,

Life here is good and normal. I am getting pretty excited for Christmas because it will be a great celebration. I have been trying to wear my santa hat every night but it is not totally weather appropriate. As far as stuff that happened this week, well we were walking down the nameless street known to missionaries as calle de sangre (long story) and I looke ddown and I saw a wallet in the grass. It belonged to someone named carlos and it was full of cash, so we found his phone number and called him and returned it, so that was pretty cool. I got to break down a wall with a crow bar. I finally got myself a mate, bombilla, thermos and bag of yerba which is everything I need to become a true Uruguayo. The mate is made of a piece of a cattle which is pretty great. I drank some with like a liter of hot water saturday morning and I felt normal all day but then I couldn't fall asleep until 2 that night so I may have to get more acustomed. We were walking yesterday and somebody had tied some horses up in the brush, and apparently people here don't like it when you touch their horses but there didn't seem to be anybody aroun so I touched one and it looked pretty confused, but it made me feel like I was back home so that was cool. ¿What do you call crocidilians that work with stocks and meet regularly with the LDS missionaries? ¡Invest-a-gators! For reasons unknown the hot water tank in our shower stopped functioning so I have been taking cold showers to toughen up my body and become more of a hard core kind of person. It is really not so bad once you get completely wet. Also I had to go to Montevideo today to sign some residency papers, so I am now officially a permanent resident of The Oriental Republic of the Uruguay. Yup.

1: My cow horn mate.

week seven

Queridos Hermanos y Hermanas,

It was another week of hard work. We were actually hindered a bit because we ended up having to go to Montivideo three times for Elder Lockhart but he should be fixed and we still got good stuff done. One cool thing that happened this week was that we were walking down the street we live on and we saw a couple of guys in their driveway trying to move this giant cabinet, armoir thing. We asked if they needed heop and they said yes! I was super excited because people never let us help them with stuff off the street, so we ran over there and put our sculpted musculature to work moving what was definitely the most humongous piece of furniture I have ever move. Then we shared a message with them and they agreeed to let us come back and they were super cool. I would like to thank my dad for training me my whole life for this moment by making me move all that furniture with him. If you see him give him a pat on the back and tell him good hob for effective fathering. I would also like to thank my Grandpa Christensen for advising me to serve in any capacity I can. Definitely some of the best advice I've ever been given.

In further news ¡I got bit by a dog for the first time this week! It was a big angry german shepard that jumped up and nicked my elbow as I was leaning over a gat. It only broke the skin a little bit and didn't break my shirt fabric, which is pretty cool because now I can say that happend to me on my mission and also probably won't get an infection, so don't worry mom. Any way the guy we were contacting was super interested in our Christmas campaign so ¡ vale la pena!

A thought: a few weeks ago my cousin Carrie, who is serving como misionera en Málaga Spain, said that in spain they don't feed you until you are full just untill you have had enough. Well in Uruguay they feed you untill you are full and then they kepp feeding you and feeding you, and then they give you a bunch of coke, which is a beverage I used to hate but the mission changes you. It works for the Uruguayos though because Breakfast and dinner aren't really a thing here, just lunch and snacks.

A chiste: So there was an ice sculpting contest, and the theme of this contest was to see who could create the best and most detailed replica of any South American country. A pair of sculptors were working together and one of them was appropriately bundled up, but the other was only wearing shorts and sandals, nothing else. The first sculptor thought this was a little strange so he said to his partener "aren't you cold" the second sculptor thought about it and said "well, I guess it is a little Chile".

Also my brother Seth's Birthday will probably be this week, most likely on wednesday the 14th, which is the day it usually comes on, so if you see him that day, and it actually ends up being his birth day, wish him happiness.

I did some mathematicals and figured out that in the last six weeks if we walked a conservative 2 miles a day we would have walked something like 84 miles total, but we probably did way more than that so it could be like 200 which is cool to think about.

Also another elder was handing me off my camera and it kind of dropped and got a little messed up, so most of my pictures might be kind of psychedelic untill I figure out what to do about that.

1: Me, Élder Diaz, and the viejito

2: you know physics is broken when this happens to your face

3: A bird that turned out not too bad

Week six

Fellow travelers through time and space,

Well preparation day is on tuesday this week because it gives everybody who is changing areas this week a day to get ready to leave on wednesday. Speaking of which, I made itt through my first change in the field!  It seems like it went by way faster than the same amount of thime in the CCM. In fact this whole year went by faster than any ever before. I will probably wake up one day soon and realize that I am 120 years old and my whole life has gone by. Anyway me and Elder Lockhart are staying here in Lomas.

So I was studying my scriptures, especially Isaiah 53, and I noticed how the scriptures always talk about the Savior being despised and rejected of men, being cast down and trodden down and so forth. The scriptures also talk a lot about the Savior carrying things for us like our griefs, our sorows, the chastisement of our peace, and many other things. So it seems to me that the atonement, in large part, is about Him who is great and strong descending down low so He could lift the rest of us, who are weak, up to where He is. I don't know I just really like that imagery.

It suddenly got really hot this week, like the kind of heat that makes you want to lie down and fall asleep and never half to wake up again, but I here it gets way hotter than this and I am sure that in winter we will be begging for the heat so that should be pretty fun.

We also got to go to downtown Montevideo in the other mission yesterday so Elder Lockhart could get an ingrown toenail taken care of so I included a picture( of the city not the toenail).

 1 an oven bird. They are pretty fascinating. you should look into them.

2 some cool clouds over the Giannatasio where I live

3 some buildings

4 some uruguayo churros

5 My friend and zone leader Elder Slimming is going back home to chile this week so I included a tribute of him with his homemade fishing rig

Week 5

Dearly Belove Friends and Family,

This week was a pretty normal seven day period. We mostly just worked hard trying to find new investigators. Actually there were a number of instances where we were lead to run into people we needed to run into just at the right time. A lot of times it was people who have had the missionaries over before and are perhaps more prepared now and want us to come by and chat. A couple of days ago this kid about our age actually pulled up in front of us on his bike and asked us for folletos (pamphlets). That was pretty crazy because no one ever asks to talk with us so i pulled out a handful and told him to have as many as he wants. We actually ended up walking by his house later and we had a chat. His name is Emiliano and he got hit by a motorcycle about a year ago and is really grateful to God to be alive. He wants us to come back so that is cool.

For thanks giving we were going to have asado with this family but that fell so we went to the elderes house in El Pinar and made chorizo tacos with southwest seasoning. Because I am a Missionary writing an Email I guess I am obligated to write an unbearably cheesy, totally cringe worthy list of things i am grateful for.

Alfahores

Dulce de Leche

The hot water tank in our shower

Dogs that don't bark at us

People who are interested in our message

The Fam back home

All of the miracles I get to see

The Miraculous change the Atonement makes in peoples live.

Also I figured out how to do thïs. Christensen out.

1 They have the same green parrots here as in Mexico

2 the Saur I found. His name is Ronnie

3 The sum total of our Christmas decor

4 Elder Slimming making us his farewell asado

Week four email

Hey everybody,

More good news because our investigator Victor got baptized this week. Victor is a very gracious 74 year old Chileno. He is a doctor and a writer and is just super cool and smart. His story is that one day a few months ago Elder Bravo and Elder Slimming were on intercambios and they knocked on his door, and they are both Chilenos  so Victor fest like he should let them in. Anyway he read the Book of Mormon and gained a strong testimony of it and the restoration and the gospel but he didn't want to get baptized yet because he is old and wanted to be sure. So they just kept teaching him the lessons and he would always take really detailed notes and have good questions from his personal study. Sometimes he would even call us with questions. So me and Elder Lockhart were there and we were teaching him about the fast beecause fast sundya was coming up, and he said he wanted to fast to be able to understand more about the gospel. So we did the fast with him and Elder Lockhart recieved some revelation about what to do. We went back and taught the last required lesson which was diezmo, and then Elder Lockhart said " you know we fasted with you the other day and we feel like the best way for you to understand more is to be baptized and recieve the gift of the Holy Spirit" Victor basically said " your right lets do it on the 19th". And the rest was history. We need to find some more good investigators though.

Also Elder Rasband Came this week. We had a big conference with him and Elder Christensen of the 70 and both missions were there. He is very warm and friendly in person and he had everyone shake his hand. He also gave a really good talk and I could feel the presence of the spirit in the room when he spoke.

That was pretty much my week.

1: swallow

2:us and victor

3:The endangered Uruguayo house eagle

4:stuffed squash. 'Nuff said

week three email

¡Howdy Folks!

Well, I had my firsst baptism this week! It was for our investigator Saya (the y makes a "shh" sound so it is like sasha). Her story is that a few months ago she started living with her aunts family who are really strong members of our ward. She started going to church with them and she realized that she wanted her life to be like that. She started taking the missionary lessons and over time she has developed a really strong testimony of the restoration. Her baptism was on Saturday and her cousin Andy baptized her. He is a real capo because he has a super strong testimony and comes to lessons and stuff with us. it was really great to see someone make this step in their life to follow Christ. Pretty cool stuff.

I also went to a wedding this week. It was for Richard and Hermana Concepción. They were a couple in our ward who were living together so Elder Lockhart and his old companion Elder Bravo went and dropped some cane on them and convinced them to get married so we were kind of obligated to go. Uruguaya weddings are pretty low key. If you are getting married you just go to a government office, your friends and family come wearing whatever they feel like, some witnesses sign a form, a judge or something comes out and says some legal stuff in spanish, you trade rings, then you walk outside and everybody chucks rice at you, and then you leave. Then a ton of doves come and eat the rice. I think that was only the second wedding I have ever been to.

I bought a bag of ultrapastuerized milk this week. That was a mistake. Definitely the worst tasting thing I have had so far which is a good thing and a bad thing. I also had canelones which are condensed cream of broccoli soup wrapped in crepes with creme cheese and tomato sauce on top. Pretty interesting. And that was pretty much my week. Kind of flew by.

Oh, also one day we were trying to unlock the gate to leave, but we couldn't because it was hot and the metal had expanded, so Elder Lockhart jumped the eight foot fence, and I tried to follow but I am not very flexible so when I landed I tripped and fell in the grass.

1: Saya and Andy

2: for preparation day last week we wnet to the Elders house in El Pinar and made breakfast burritos from scratch.

3:A couple of these giant doves they have here like twice the size of a pidgeon.

4: my piture of milk in a bag.

Week two

Exalted Friends and Brethren,

Well This week has gone by really fast, becasue everyday we work hard. It means I sleep great though. We got a cool new investigator this week. It was monday and Halloween, and there are some little kids that go trick or treating here, but nobody puts up decorations or anything. So we thought we would take advantage of people opening their doors and do a little tracting. The first door we clapped at this young guy came out and we told him who we were, and then it came out that we were both Americans, and he started talking to us in perfect english. His name is Joaquin and he spent the last year traveling through southeast asia, and somehow he learned english doing it. We asked him if we could come in and he was like "yeah sure guys" so we went in and talked to him and his dad for a bit, and then we asked if we could share a message. He asked if we would give it in english, so I got to share the restoration in English!!! It was really great becasue I could actually participate effectivley and follow the spirit and stuff. I had been hoping that I would be able to share the Gospel with someone in english on my mission but i never thought that it would be in the first week. We went back on wednesday and by the time we got there his mom had baked us straight up american style choclate chip cookies. You really do see blessings on the mission. We also randomly ran into his sister doing street contacts. We are totally getting that family baptized.

We also found some other cool people like this guy named walter who has talked to missionaries before. This thing happend saturday night where we were walking in the street and this guy walked up to us and he was like come with me. So we followed him and he was totally intoxicated and I was worried he was going to fall into the ditch on the side of the road. He was like i served a mission for the evangelical mormons. And we were like where, And he said Europe, and we were like, what country and he said, chile. we got to his house and then he yelled at us like TALK TO MY SON! And then he left the room and we were like, what is going on? and his son was like oh he has just been drinking, so then he came back and he was like I could hurt if I wanted, which was super funny because he was like a good foot shorter than us and chubby and drunk and not very muscular, so we said we have to go and he was like " ok by freinds take care", and then we gave besos and left. So that was a good life experience.

Some other things about Uruguay. They have fireflies here just like back home which is great. All of the cigarrete boxes have pictures of premies and lip cancer and things which is good because it makes our job easier. There was and elder who lived in our house who had a thermometer and proved that when it is cold our house is actually colder inside and when it is hot our house is actually hotter. Sometimes I have to teak a break and stand outside for a minute to get back to a normal temperature. I have a lo of pictures form the beach this week because we went fishing with the zone leaders, but don't get the Idea that my area is super beach oriented because it really doesn't feel that waya at all

 Me and elder Lockhart

A grebe or a gannet or something. 

A picture of the temple that a little girl in or ward drew for us.

A very cool key ring

Me with a sea lion jawbone I found

Zona de Costa Fotos:

First Email from the field

Happy Halloween!

First of all I would just like to say that Uruguay is amazing, and I love it here. Second of all Is an account of the past week. We got on the plane in Mexico and got on our way. All of the airline personel would occasionaly make comments about us missionaries and the church. I think that they thought that we couldn't understand what they were saying, which is true, but more than they thought. We got to santiago just as the sun was rising. It was really spectacular looking out over the andes mountains as they were beeing sillouetted from behind and a green glow came through the fog. We changed planes and I got to Montevideo with all of my stuff, except thet somebody tooke the handle covers that I had put on my checked luggage. I am not really sure what they would want with those. President Eddy, my mission president, is really great. They took us all back to the mission home and fed us a lot of food, and we spent the night in the mission home.

The next day I met my trainer and went to my area. My traners name is Elder Lockhart. He is from Huntington Beach California, where he liked to surf. My Area is called Lomas de Solymar. Thats is like saying hills o' sun n' sea. We are right on the coast so I got to look at the beach the first day. It is pretty cool because you can see the ships coming in to Montevideo, and Buenos Aires. I also saw a dead sea lion, which is by far the biggest dead thing I have ever seen on the beach.

The ward here is great. Everbody is friendly and helpful. I bore my testimony in church yesterday. It was allright. I can't really understand what anybody is saying because the accent here is different, but I get a little better everyday. We have a bunch of investigators, one of whom has a baptismal date in a couple of weeks, and some others who are really interested and have strong testimonies but just want to take it slow before they get baptized. We have a lot of work to do every day.

The weather here is interesting. One day it is humid and breezy, like a kiss from the air. The next day it is just ridiculously umbrella breaking windy, and the other days just warm and sunny. The food is spectacular. It is like a bunch of sweet grandmothers from the south, great Britain, Germany, and Italy all got together to cook a giant lunch for their grandchildren.

Unfortunately that is all I have time to tell today so Chau!

Elder Christensen

1: A tiny Chilean mountain. Others were bigger but I couldn't get a picture

2: Elder Lockhart in our house.

3: Our House

4:I believe this is an Inca dove. Which experts can't agree on if it is the same species as the mourning dove

5: Our chapel

For real this time.

 Hello everybody,

This is my actual last email from the CCM and I am not going to say a lot, I just wanted to put a few pictures on the record. It has been an emotional past few days, with everyone saying adios and such as that. It is just me and Elder Cole here in the computer lab, because everybody else left early in the morning. Our Bus leaves at four so that gives me five more hours to rest and prepare.

I have a request. There are two species of deer in Uruguay. One is known in english as the marsh deer, and the other is known in spanish as el venado del campo. If someone could find out for me the spanish name of the former and the english name of the latter, as well as their Latin names I would be greatly appreciative.

Reflecting back on my time here I have recieved a lot of spiritual food, which I am grateful for. I have also recieved a lot of physical food which I am also grateful for. I have not gained a lot of weight but I have lost a lot of muscle mass so you get the idea. Hopefully these will have prepared me for the rigors of the field. I will report later.

1: Us and Hemana Gutierrez, our morning teacher

2: An alright picture of a red and black bird

3: Us and Hermano Suaste, our afternoon teacher

4: A tree full of parrots stealing the branches for their nests

5: Me and Presidente Eggleston, who likes to recite poetry, and Presidente Suaste, who likes to speak English

Last Week

Dearest and most esteemed people who read my emails,

My travel came this week so it is getting real. I will be leaving Monday night at about 8:30 for an 8 hour flight to Santiago Chile. Then we have a three hour layover and a 2 and a half hour flight to Montevideo, after which we will be spending a night in the mission home. And then I have no Idea what to expect. We weighed our bags today to make sure they were under weight. I had about 24 pounds to spare, but Elder Cole was about 2 pounds over. I am going to see if we can cut out the lining of his suitcase, maybe the covers and non essential pages of all of his books, or the middle part of the soles of his shoes. It will work out somehow. There are nine of us going to Montevideo, and a bunch more going to Santiago, so the plane should be fun, but I probably won't sleep.

Yesterday President Bonnie Oscarson, the young womens general president visited. She gave a cool devotional about a number of things, like relying on the Lord's help, and accepting when He cuts you down to make you into what He needs you to be. It is nice to know that the people in Salt Lake havn't forgotten about us down here in Mexico.

I was talking with Elder Gray, the leader of one of the other districts in our zone, and he said something that really struck me. He said " I have found that you can learn as much as you want to here." He is right, and that is kind of the reason that we are here on the Earth, to see how much we will choose to learn. I haven't been able to stop thinking about that.

I have another spanish joke ¿ Cuantos estrellas hay en el cielo? ¡ Cincuenta! ¡ Ja Ja Ja Ja!

We had a really cool experince today that I would like to share. We were walking to the comedor for lunch, and decided last minute to take a shortcut. We passed a maintenance area and a work shouted at Elder Fa'amausili "Hey you the samoan!"( He is from Denver). He then told him that he had a coworker who wasn't a member and wanted to ask him about his beliefs. Elder Fa'amausili was able to share his testimont, and the man was very interested. That's not all folks. At lunch Elder Fa'amausili told us how he had been praying for a week that he would be able to share his testimony with one of the workers who wasn't a member, but that this morning he had decided that it wasn't going to happen and this would be the last time that he prayed for that. And then he was specifically singled out to share his testimony with someone who had only been working here at the CCM for three hours. It shows how the Lord awnsers our prayers, and how after the trial or your faith you recieve a witness. Pretty cool.

I Don't know if I will be able to email again before getting to the field, so I would just like to thank everyone who has been sending me emails. I am sorry that I don't have sufficient time to respond to everyone but I really apreciate your words of support and the opportunity to hear about what is going on back home.

With a sincere heart and truthful intention,

Elder Christensen

1: A blurry but otherwise cool picture of the moon

2: Antes

3: Despues

4: There is a bird in this picture

5 and 6: Some pictures that people in the district drew of me